Shock and Awe

Waking up feeling crummy this morning — moving slow, feeling sluggish and loopy, I decided today was a good day to sit on my arse and do nothing but scrapbook, with the TV providing background noise.

I was pleasantly doing so when, all of a sudden around 11:00, everything went quiet, the power went out.

Taking it as a sign to go outside, get some fresh air, I suited up and started off with a slow stroll around the complex.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when, just as I’d predicted — that "My luck … now that I’ve taken the car out of storage, the crew will magically reappear", there they were, working on the back and right side of the complex.

Not only were they working but, still with a lot to do compared to what more needs to be done, they were working fast, picking up momentum.

Figuring that, at the pace they were paving and striping, they’d reach my side by tomorrow — that is if they show up, I later moved the car to one of the spot they’d managed to complete so it wouldn’t be in the way of wherever they next went.

The slow walk invigorated me. By the third time around, whatever had weighed me down in the morning was gone and I was moving at a pretty good clip.

Just as I was ready to head back upstairs, see if power had been restored, I ran into Red Light who said Activity Director had something going on in the Community Room — a Mother’s Day Luncheon, so I pivoted over to the event.

The room was packed. Even a few guys showed up, which is fair because just like I was both mother and father, some guys are both fathers and mothers.

The lunch was not the dainty little tea sandwiches one would expect for Mother’s Day, but instead were huge sub sandwiches from Jersey Mike, which I thought more appropriate for Father’s Day.

No matter to the residents. They will eat anything from anyone who makes free food available to them but, when I noticed Red Light and newer resident Homegirl, with whom I was seated, were not eating their sandwiches and inquired why. Red Light said it tasted funny. Homegirl just said she wasn’t hungry.

Interesting.

As with most things management arranges for us, there were strings. We didn’t have to listen to a lecture, but the luncheon was funded by a Medical Group that is setting up an office in one of the offices across the street.

Since it takes three months to get an appointment with my doctor, and nothing is done but her try to push pills, medications, expensive unnecessary procedures, I may do some due diligence and check the medical group out for emergencies.

There was also a woman promoting her Insurance Agency. She provided us with cookies and roses.

I don’t need an insurance agent, but accepted the rose.

Homegirl, being the open friendly type, previously shared with me that she’d been in property management and sees a lot of things wrong with how this complex is run — no surprise.

She’s also a very talented artist, attended art school and, besides painting, creates all manner of items that she sometimes sells at art fairs and cultural events.

She showed me photos of her work, but she does so much and so many different art forms that I can’t begin to tell you what I was shown, except that some is beadwork and painting on cups, designer water bottles.

This cup that I won at bingo last week is her work.

Though I didn't so much as win it as it was she gifted it to me.

Spotting it on the prize table when I walked in, I was immediately drawn to it, coveted it, hid it under a kitchen towel so no one else would see and win it before I did. Evidently Homegirl was watching and, when she won the first game, she took the cup as prize and gave it to me.

At any rate, conversation today was about trouble she was having with two of the guys. One — who she named/described but I can’t picture him, kept coming onto her, hung around outside her unit, came into the laundry room when he saw her there, which prompted her to hold her keys between her fingers to use as a weapon if need be.

The way she described how he hit on her, the guy sounded ignorant, uneducated and, when she got her keys ready and told him to buzz off, he dropped a note into her laundry basket that she didn’t see until later. The note saying, with misspellings, how is was that he wanted to get to know her.

I’m not clear on whether he’s given up the pursuit, whether she’s reported him to the office (as if that would do any good) but she said she’d had quite enough and went off on the other one.

Whereas the first guy came across as ignorant/uneducated, the other guy’s approach shocked me — and I don’t shock easily.

He’d been following her around, camping out on a bench in front of the Laundry Room across the quad, which is where he can spot her comings/goings, telling her how he’s a minister, a barber, does security work on the side.

"WAIT! I know this one", said I.

It’s Handsome Guy, the same guy I'd blogged about, just a few days ago, who had come onto me again.

Just to be certain it was the same guy, I told her his name and where he lived. Bingo! same guy.

Shock and Awe.

What shocked me was not so much his playing the odds, throwing feelers out for more than one of us hoping to reel someone in. What shocked me was how he’s always been polite and gentlemanly in his approach to me, but some of the things she shared about how he talked to her in his approach was pure sleaze, insulting, trying to be slick like a pimp.

He tried to talk himself into her unit by, after observing her young nephew often visiting, offering to come into her unit and cut the child’s hair for free.

When that didn’t produce, he somehow knew she’d be in the Community Room on Pizza Tuesday, or followed here there, and made a point of also being there.

Now Homegirl is a big girl, a really big girl — boobs, hips and whereas I dress to hide/downplay my features so as to not draw unwanted attention, there's no way to hide/downplay what she's got.

At any rate, she appears to be driving the men wild and, Handsome Guy is reading her as cheap, easy, on display, someone he can approach at a street level and, when he followed her to Pizza Tuesday, he said something so suggestive, looked her up/down with a nasty smirk while saying it, that she blew her top and began cursing at him in front of everyone — "loudly" said she.

What he said was .... when Activity Director was describing the pizza options — cheese, vegie, meat, Handsome Guy had replied, "Meat" turned looked up/down at Homegirl’s bodacious body and pointedly said, "Cause I like meat".

He’s a chameleon. Approaches me like a respectful man trying to date me, approaches her like a down and dirty sleezy scummy guy wanting to jump her bones.

Cursing him out in public seems to have worked. Got his feelings hurt and embarrassed, humiliated, publicly put in his place by a female, so he dare not show his face on Pizza Tuesday again, and she says he doesn’t even speak to her now when seeing her out and about.

As for me, now that I know he’s a chameleon — takes on different personas dependent on who and what is before him, even though he never had a snowball's chance in hell with me, I'm disgusted by the way he approached and talked to Homegirl.

You just do not talk to women that way so, if and when I see him out/about, I’m gonna take off in the opposite direction. I do not want to hear anything he has to say.

Returning to my unit, I found the power back on and an email from the power company with no explanation for the outage other than "analyzing problem".

Judging by news I just heard on TV, I’m going to need a new cup — "I Love When I Wake Up and No. 45 is Liable for SA and Defamation".

What a day this has been, as I also see the DOJ is after Santos. Next up is Clarence Thomas.