Strange. Those 4 prints I left at the Salvation Army 2 days ago are gone today. Either someone bought them or else someone recognized them for what they are and threw them away. Hah. Or maybe they moved them to the back area. I don’t know why they would do that but what do I know of their business?

They used to make a deal of saying that items are priced at a central location, not on site, and that items donated at that store could be sent to other SA locations. So maybe they were shipped elsewhere, though again it’s hard to imagine why they would go to any trouble. If they did send them elsewhere it might be because there was no room to hang them on the wall, and maybe they did not want them sitting on the floor. Meh, who cares…

Or maybe those pictures were better than I thought, or they just appeared to be better than they are on account of their humble location. Someone must think they got a bargain. I think I paid over $50 each for those stupid things.

No time to type much today. Slept way too late. Watched some of the CNN coverage of the health care legislation, which they now say will not go up for a vote. This White House claims there will be a vote tomorrow AM, but the White House does not schedule such things. They cut to a meeting with Trump and representatives of the trucking industry, which seemed kind of random but whatever. Trump was wearing an “I Heart Truckers” pin. It’s in these type of meetings, which you don’t usually see televised, that you can totally see why Trump won so many voters. He’s just a really funny and engaging guy, at least when he is in his element. I had such thoughts whenever he did radio interviews and such. None of that was enough to get my vote, just saying…

I should not be surprised but it is a little strange to know that grown up people I know are pretending that Trump is not there. It’s like a child shutting his eyes and thinking that no one can see her, that it makes her invisible.

Friend is coming over tonight. I made no announcement that my living space is quite a bit less cluttered this time. Will wait for the shock and awe.

I got a new showerhead, which is notable only because I read a funny story about the horrors experienced by people who open their showerheads and look inside, finding kinds of foul shit growing in there. I have not looked at mine yet but I expect to. It’s one of those things most people never look at.

The other night I was telling someone was the story of Alice, the elderly woman who lived 2 floors up from me when I was on the east side. One day I opened the door to go to work and she was standing right there, scared the buggers out of me. She said something about her freezer being broken, asking if I could come look at it. We marched up the stairs, as slowly as one might when they are 80+ years old.

She opened the door to her place and I swear I have never seen so many roaches in one place. They were everywhere, on the walls, on the windows, climbing over my shoes. She opened the freezer and a small avalanche of roaches poured out. A cluster of them was concentrated around the kitchen sink drain.

She handed me the ice tray from the freezer, saying it was broken. I shook the roaches off and placed the tray where it belonged. There was nothing wrong with it, but Alice seemed satisfied that I had fixed it. I left, shaking roaches off the bottom of my pants, and exiting the building.

Coincidentally, weeks or months later, I got into a conversation with an employee at the nearby convenience store. He lived right upstairs from me, between Alice’s place and mine. He asked if I had seen her place. I shook my head and said yeah. I think he went so far as to report her to the building management, though I don’t know what if anything came of that, nor do I know for certain that he really did that. I could have done something like that but I would have felt weird about it. If they sent up an exterminator that might just push all the roaches into neighboring apartments. Part of me thinks that siccing someone like that onto Alice would have humiliated her, but she seemed she was so far gone that she might not even know what was happening.

That incident reminds me as well of a time at Oberlin, when I lived on Main Street. I never opened the bedroom window or raised the shades. The room was dark, just as I have always liked it. So I was somewhat horrified to actually do that one day, lift the shades, and find the window was completely blanketed with huge flies, the kind which don’t move much. I don’t know what that species of fly is called exactly but I sprayed the lot of them with a half a can of RAID and listened as they dropped, one by one, making small thudding noises as they hit the floor. I swept them up. It was nasty.

A woman I have seen around this area for years, who I recognize from Avon, just walked past. One day I will find a copy of the Distribution Sheets that had everyone in the company’s name on them, and see if that woman and another one I see around are actually who I think they are.