So the other day I actually remembered to bring a couple of the empty paper bags from my trunk into the Trader Joe's (yes!) and found I only had enough groceries to need one.
"I don't suppose you guys could use the other one," I offered the cashier.
She smiled at me warmly, looking much like a pretty middle aged elf with a wee bit too much brown eyeliner and replied, "Yeah, we're not supposed to - you know, we don't know what you've been carrying around in there."
So I told her, "yeah, funny - I've been using these to carry around dead cats."
Without missing a beat she replied "Not to mention the neighbors missing cat," in a voice that made it sound like she was reciting a line from a school play.
Only in L.A. I thought! Good crazy - right?
But then there was today. I went to my public library - or the Santa Monica Homeless People's Lounge. It was a no audition day and I was attempting to get some work done outside of my apartment because I can't seem to concentrate when there is something to eat or clean or organize or... that's a different post. I sat at the only table with a free space - across from a homeless woman who didn't look dirty enough to smell (what? I can't think if I can't breathe!) She was very carefully, and in precise handwriting, copying recipes from the April Issue of Good Housekeeping (ironic huh?) into a top bound spiral notebook. Every now and then she would pause and then place her hands flatly around her notebook and around the table like she was playing the table like a giant piano. Her nails had a strip of pink along the center from being painted long ago. I tried not to stare - I tend to be pretty judgy and I didn't want her to pick up on that with her crazy homeless perceptive super powers. (you know - like in movies it's the homeless people who play the Casssandras - they say some great and scary truth, cackle and run off in bad knit caps...) Anyway - She gets up and sure enough comes around the table to me. She smells clean as she leans into me and says,
"I bet you'll be dead when I get back because I own the landmass you are trying to steal from me." She then exits - leaving behind a carefully written recipe for Roasted Spring Lamb.
But you know what? I wasn't dead when she got back. But my battery was - so I packed up and carefully did not look at her on the way out.
Good crazy is fun. Anyone who reads "Good Housekeeping" must be crazy crazy.
Posted by: Rhea | April 15, 2007 at 12:12 PM