help it grow, even if it doesn't need it.

I help an elderly woman in Cleveland Park (about 25 minutes walk North of my house) with her garden. She lives in a large (6 bed room) old (c. 1875) stand alone home that has a sizable perennial garden. She has lived in the house some 45 years and has done the garden herself but, as she is now in her early 80s, she finds it hard to do much more than watering, weeding, and the occasional light planting. I help her with the harder, dirtier work when she needs it.

This month she is on vacation with her husband, children and grandchildren. While they are away I am watering the garden a couple times a week. On my way there Tuesday I walked down Connecticut Avenue through Van Ness and Cleavland Park, it's a nice little strip and I enjoy the people watching and the scenery of the little shops and old apartment buildings. There is a particular apartment building in CP that has brick pathways around the grounds. That is not very unusual in DC but these particular bricks are glittery and have a swirly center like when you stir together a bowl of berry pancake batter. I am quite in love with them.

Another apartment has a lot of English Ivy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Ivy) that grows as a ground cover around most the entire grounds. That is also not uncommon in DC. The European native is an invasive species around here but many people plant it (or leave it as it often creeps in like a weed) because it's evergreen and needs practically no attention other than edge pruning to contain it. In my opinion, it's for lazy people who want a 'garden' without any effort what so ever. I detest it. Not to say that I hate the plant itself but it is more than obvious that it should not be grown in this region. I met a man from San Diego and he told me that English Ivy is the primary threat to the forests near where he lives. I would imagine the same is true for this area.

The Inn had English Ivy covering nearly the entire garden space (more than 3 house fronts) on the street side. It had been there for several years, because the owner and manager thought it was gave the place a classic, old world look, and had grown to 8-10 inches thick in some areas. It took something like three months for me to convince them that it was a haven for rats and unwanted bugs and had become a most convenient place for passersby to discard their trash and should be replaced with a proper garden. So, the Spring and first half of the Summer I spent ripping out the Ivy and replacing it with some mixed perennials.

It's because I had this experience with Ivy that I was irked and almost angry to see that this apartment building was actually watering a large section with a sprinkler. I can not imagine what sort of idiot would think this was a good idea, much less that it was necessary. I mean seriously, do they water the Kuzu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu) in Georgia?

If DC were hit by a nuclear bomb I'm sure the only thing left would be the roaches and the Ivy.

What makes me tick,

and in some cases, what prevents my ticking. I have a number of fears, phobias and psychological tendencies that I have picked up over the years. I believe some are just my nature (my astrological nature) and some have come from earlier experiences. The past couple of days have taken my entire bag of issues and dumped them all into my lap at once. So, I thought that to get a better grip on reality and bring myself under control that it would be helpful to explore them.

Fear of abandonment - I have an incapacitating fear of abandonment. The thought of being left, of having no one makes me uncontrollably hysterical. I become a completely different person - irrational, blabbering, sobbing, even prone to stalking.

Fear of being alone - Along with being abandoned I fear loneliness. It is not being alone that I can't handle, I often enjoy being by myself and I actually have only a few close friends and don't always spend time with them regularly. It is the possibility of never having someone to be with me always and to share all of my (and their) experiences.


Fear that I am unlovable - I don't think very highly of myself and I have a hard time imagining that others would either. I tend to look for love in all the wrong places. I read once that we seek out the love we think we deserve. I don't know if it's true or not but for a long time I seemed to most want the love of those who could not or would not return it.

Fear of failure - Making other people happy is something that has been important to me since I can remember so I attribute it to my being a Gemini. I was an odd standout and also completely overlooked as a child and sought the approval of those around me to feel accepted. This is no different than most children I think, but I seem to be overly sensitive to the rejection and plane indifference of the people who were important to me. I wanted to do everything as perfectly as possible. I needed to be perfect at everything that those people saw as important or worthy. I thought that if I were then they would certainly love me and be proud of me and that would make me happy, but if I failed the opposite would happen. This childhood fear has followed me into adulthood and although modified, it has not decreased. Likely, this is also why my first instinct is to assume that things must be my fault and my responsibility to remedy.

Fear of a personal dooms day - A mountain from a mole hill, a monsoon from a dew drop... choose any similar metaphor. I will always assume that the worst thing that could happen to me is probably happening to me. Chronic stomach ache, must be Krone's Disease; haven't heard from someone, they must never want to speak to me again; low score on a paper, I'll have to repeat the class - maybe I should just drop out and get a low paying full time job...you get the picture.


Fear of lies/dishonesty - In an earlier post I explained that my childhood was full of dishonesty and lies. After having seen the kind of people and relationships that created I have a grave fear of the same happening to me. This is a large part of why I make significant effort to always be honest with people but I have no control over whether people are honest with me. I don't assume I am being mislead, quite the opposite in fact, I tend to give people the benefit of a doubt even when I probably shouldn't. This makes it all the more traumatic when it does or I think it has happened.

Fear of my own vivid imagination - If there is any artistic gene in me at all it would be a story telling one. At one time I considered a career as a writer and thought that I could even be good at it. However, this ease at which I can spin a story together in my head is a most dangerous thing when combined with this list of fears. In some cases, like this week, every one of them can play a distinct part in my emotional self destruction. I can take a string suspicious findings and other unsettling circumstances and weave together a narrative that is nearly a decade long and concludes with my heart run over by a convoy of 18 wheelers with snow chains on their tires, completely alone and unable to trust another person for the rest of my life, which would mean to me that a family would be out of the question. As well as, my want of a good life to share with that family would be so unrecognizably destroyed that on my best day I would be little more than a functioning minimum wage worker at a job I hate and with no one to go home to but a tiny apartment above a garage full of garbage and an even tinier dog.


I hope more than anything that this turns out to be a dew drop instead of the monsoon I fear.

5 Things to be Happy About

1- a weekend of magic

2- clearing thoughts after a bad storm

3- the American legal system

4- rest, relaxation, rejuvenation

5- homecomings

A brief adventure

me: i can't find my phone, will you call so i can hunt for the ringing phone...please
Sent at 12:24 PM on Thursday

me: please look at this gchat
e
m
i
l
y
=)
:'(
are you still in the meeting?
how do i always manage to lose things in such a small house
Sent at 12:29 PM on Thursday

me: stupid phone
it's probably hiding because it knows i hate it
Sent at 12:32 PM on Thursday

me: FOUND IT!
robe pocket
Sent at 12:37 PM on Thursday

The harassment continues

It seems this woman isn't through with me yet.

When she realized that I was finished communicating with her she called my office and asked to speak to my supervisor. When that got her no where she posted an add on Craig's List to warn others that I (and she gave my full name and the name of my office- sort of) was unreliable and would 'BAIL OUT & NOT PAY' if anyone were to rent a parking space to me.

Craig's List has a reporting system so I was able to let them know that this woman was using their site to harass me. They removed the post within 3 hours and I haven't seen any more. I hoped that this was her last ditch effort to either bully me into giving her money or to just get under my skin and hoped/assumed it would be the last of it. I was wrong.

At 1:01am she sent me an email.
when can i expect to be paid for the parking that you screwed me up with-no contact you will have consequences -just watch and see
This troubles me for a couple reasons.

Firstly, even though she has no idea what I look like, we have spoken on the phone several times and she could certainly recognize my voice. If she was able to call my office then she should be able to get the address, it only took me about 2 minutes to do that before I took the job, and we do only live about 8 blocks from each other. I defiantly don't want her knowing where I live.

Secondly, her emailing style is to use all lowercase but she uses ALL CAPS to emphasise certain points as you would in conversation. This is not too unusual, but she does not use structured sentences and the caped words don't always follow a logical pattern of emphasis. In this latest email she doesn't use any caps, so either her button is broken or she is getting more calm about. Generally speaking, unpredictably crazy and calm are a disturbing and dangerous combination.

I am going on a road trip this weekend and am glad that I won't be home so maybe she will further get the message that I'm through with her and there is no use trying to push my buttons.

YOU WON'T WEASEL YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE...

said the crazy lady.

Parking is a hot commodity in any city and DC is no exception. I contacted a woman about 2 1/2 weeks ago in response to an add she had placed on craig's list to share a tandem parking space not far from my house. Everything seemed fine; she was a little odd but I overlooked that because the space was a decent price and I really needed it.

Each day that went by the parking arrangement got more and more complex and I became more and more uneasy with her weirdness. I told her I had some concerns and asked for a day or two to think about it. At first she was defensive but that rapidly turned to anger. For each email I sent her she would send 3 or 4 replies, each one more disturbing than the other. She called me repeatedly from her cell and her home/office and eventually began blocking her number. She called at least a 15 times times and left me 8 messages - in a single day.

My cell phone also serves as the after hours number for the Inn so I had the office phone # on it. I changed the recording but I did so too late because she called the office and gave AO a hard time. I feel really bad about that.

I suppose I should point out that I never actually started parking in her spot and there was no money exchanged. She posted an add, I said I wanted it, and after a couple weeks and some sneaking around the rules of her building she said it was a go. Now that I have decided not to take the spot she has completely flipped out and is making threats and constantly calling and emailing me. I didn't answer her calls yesterday and sent her an email last night saying that I was finished with the matter and that I wanted her to stop contacting me. I have encountered these sort of people several times before and I am very aware that they thrive on engagement, the longer you give rebuttal the longer they have something to feed off of.

This must have worked because aside from 3 late night email and a couple calls to the Inn early this morning (which got her nowhere) I haven't heard from her since. I hope this is really the
end of it.