god_has_a_belly_button crOwl i first saw her when i was pulling weeds. she had a pt cruiser with ohio plates and was loading junk in the back. and then, when i was spraying the red bricks of the alley next to her ramshackle house with an herbicide, she asked me what i was doing with a suspicious, worried look on her face. "i'm killing weeds," i said, attempting to act innocent of the crime she was accusing me of. i tried changing the subject. "you're a long way from home." she said she was originally from ohio, but had lived in pittsburgh for twenty years. she had recently bought the car there and hadn't changed the plates yet. a half hour later, after discovering she was a teacher with a grad school education and had a crazy artist aunt, we touched on several bizarre topics from successful marriages, essential oils, raising children, animal therapy for the mentally ill, growing seeds, making your own compost in which she suddenly became quite animated(nearly jumping up and down because some tomatoes had grown on their own from the seeds she had inadvertantly placed in it), to the holistic treatment of poison ivy. she was rolling up her pant leg to show me her nasty patch of the dreaded skin ailment itself. when she told me about a hernia surgery she recently endured, i was praying she wouldn't show me the scar. somehow we even touched on spirituality, how i finally am able to accept my father's death, how she saw god in a black man asking her for money. that look in her eyes was real. that smile was so fucking convincing. i wasn't about to dispute it. i told her about my middle daughter, hilary, who is in san diego trying to figure out which man she loves more. a mexican marine/che guevera type or her punk rock musician/bohemain she currently shares an apartment with. that face, it just demanded information. when i told her next year i'll be married for 25 years she was thrilled, but revealed she suffers from a debilitating depression, that going to the store to get her dog food is the only reason to get out of bed. crizzy came over and joined us. he met her old, deaf cocker spaniel and told me later it was filthy. he has a bad case of poison ivy so she told him everything she knew about treating it and the dangers of using steroids and how the oil can enter the bloodstream and start new patches. it's weird how we are with people. how certain words become alive and create conversation, all of it like a wildfire growing into something beautiful in the middle of a wednesday under blue skies and the smell of italian food cooking from the cafe behind us. we had to get back to work when she reached out her hand to tell me her name was lori. i told her mine was kevin and said maybe i would see her shopping at whole foods someday. 040826 what's it to you? who go blather from