And… we’re back. It’s 1997 I’m about to (kinda, almost) start getting my shit together.

CHOCKTAW DRIVE

In order to leave Adelaide and still be able to afford a decent place we needed a roommate and a after much disagreement discussion Shane and I moved back in with Malcolm into a really sweet 1920’s apartment located at the back of a quiet, sleepy complex just barely off El Cajon Blvd. The place was great, with beautiful hard woods, built-ins everywhere, a vintage stove you could fuel with firewood (if you wanted), it was small but adorable. I knew moving back in with the two of them was a bad idea but at the time I had no job, no money and few other options.

Shane and Malcolm spent most of their time playing video games and hypodermically injecting watermelons with hard alcohol to serve at parties we would throw every few weeks when a new ‘punch’ concoction was ready.  Malcolm had also started a very sucsessful hydroponics “garden” in his closet. Because the apartment was small I spent my time watching them play video games or wondering how long it would be before SDG&E starting questioning why a 700 Sq foot apartment was running a $300 monthly electric bill. In order to get away from my living situation and the ever pervasive smell of Hindu kush I started frequenting  the pub at the corner – Kelly’s. Kelly’s was my first regular hang out bar, it was a quiet Irish Pub that only served beer, just beer. I didn’t particularly like beer then but I enjoyed the dim, smokey air conditioned atmosphere of the pub (a love that has withstood the test of time).

Very shortly after moving I interviewed for a job in the office building that separated my apartment from the Boulevard, it was a job less than a 2-minute walk from my front door, and I got it. It was my first real 40 hour, 9:00-5:00 job that didn’t involve a cash register or require me to wear a name tag. Ironically this job that was in sneezing distance to my back door did required me to have a car, so I did what anyone desperate for a job would do – I lied and said mine was currently in the ‘shop’.

I lied, but I scraped, and borrowed and cajoled some money together. I paid my friend Heather $200 of the $500 she was asking for her 1988 Pontiac Grand Am and then promptly never spoke to her again. Sure, I felt bad that I had ripped her off but in my defense the car was a piece of shit and really not worth $500. It was white with a red junk yard hood, it had front end damage from hitting a deer full speed on the freeway. It came to me with outdated Michigan registration, it would never pass California Emissions tests and therefore never be legal in the state. I decided to forgo insurance as an unnecessary expense and this began years of owning crappy, illegal, uninsured cars (that’s probably another six-part blog series “Shitty cars I bought off lien sale volumes 1 through 14”). I drove with one eye on the road and one on the lookout for the CA highway patrol – I only ever got caught once but it was Christmas night and I managed to embarrassingly half  cry/flirt my way out of it.

I started working and everyday got to drive loads of mail to the back entrance of the post office where I would wait to be let in while looking at my old townhouse on Seminole Dr. It was like I had come full circle – sort of.

The apartment on Chocktaw Dr. was surrounded by thousands of little lizards, Ruka took it upon herself to terrorize them –  everyday I would come home to anywhere between 10 to 20 tails on the doorstep, she’d bite the tails off them, present them to me as trophies and the lizards would scurry home to grow another one.

Also around this time Ruka stopped eating dinner, I was worried about her for several weeks before I discovered that one of my neighbors, a blind older woman was using her Social Security checks to buy my little cat fresh chicken livers and feed them to her while I was at work. This was fine until we moved again and Ruka became indignant at the idea of canned cat food.

So, I was working full time and taking evening courses at school, Shane was still, well, Shane. Feeling empowered by my new job and awesome coworkers I decided it was time to stop thinking that I could change people and start thinking about my own future with out him. I put on my big girl pants and broke up with him – in a letter – that I left for him when knew I wouldn’t be around.

to be continued…