Decons Should Not Lie

We live down the street from a beautiful church. Well. An historic church.

Mad Props to J. Wood Photo

At any rate, the church has been dying to get a hold of Alicia LeDoux's property right across Stone Street. They finally got their chance when the real estate contract Johnny Marrujo entered into collapsed, thanks to the mortgage crisis. The street bought the property, razed the buildings, and paved it without a permit.

I don't want to live on the same block as a parking lot. We already have problems with druggies and pushers hanging out in the neighborhood, perpetuating the heroine problem. Now, they're more than happy to hang out in the new parking lot.

During a mediation session with the City, the deacon claimed that he did not know that the church needed a conditional use permit to pave the lot. He claimed not to know that the Santa Barbara-Martineztown Neighborhood Association meets on the third Thursday of the month. And has. Since the earth cooled. He claimed the parish was not receiving any help from the archdiocese of Santa Fe. Their rep was there. Deacons should not lie.

Sunday of Divine Mercy

Two Sundays ago, it was the octave of Easter. It was also Divine Mercy Sunday, a day when even the most hardened sinner is welcomed back into the fold. We did not go to Mass. Our little church was joyfully playing a Wesleyan hymn when the GF went outside.

"Where's the cherry tree?" I don't know. It's in the ground. On the corner, where it has always been. Why? "Because there is no cherry tree on the corner." La otra guera and I had planted the Nanking Cherry last September to balance out the Persian and Woods Roses that would keep the bums from hanging out on our dirt corner. We had to dig up about 165 square feet of asphalt before we could plant anything. Where the Nanking cherry had been growing happily since September, was a perfectly round hole, as though the tree had been dug up with a post-hole digger.

I threw on my clothes and we jumped in the car, GF driving and me spotting. Not three houses down, there was our tree, planted in our neighbor's yard. It was fresh too. I marched down the drive, grabbed the trunk, and pulled straight up, and the tree popped right out, root ball perfectly intact. It wasn't even as wet as the surrounding newly irrigated planting area. I marched up the street, cherry tree in hand, stuffed it back in its hole, and marched back to the neighbor's.

I felt a little like Dirty Harry when I growled my warning that if he ever took anything out of my yard again, I wasn't just going to take back what is mine. "That's not your tree; it's my tree. I bought it at Walmart!"

Oh yeah? "So what kind of tree is it? Where's the tag? Where's the bucket? Where's your receipt?" He replied that he bought it three days ago and he didn't have the receipt anymore. I began to doubt myself. Then I imagined the IG, already suicidal and paranoid to a fault, poisoned by this upstanding customer of Sam Walton, foaming at the mouth and convulsing. I hesitated.

It's funny how criminals, or those who deal with criminals, are indignant when you call them on it. If you were to see one driving your car away, and confronted him, and took your car back, the bastard would have a way of making you question reality. "No, this isn't your car! It's MY car! I bought it at Walmart!" [Make sure when you read that, you sound wounded and indignant and wronged]. So, I started crying. "What am I going to do?" The guy looked sincerely worried. I cried some more. "All I want is a pretty garden." Oh boo hoo. The guy really looked uncomfortable.

"You can keep the tree," he announced munificently. He handed me a cutting for a Virginia creeper vine. "Here, just plant this. It will grow like crazy." I went home, got the cherry tree, some yum-yum mix, some homemade compost and the wheelbarrow. I wheeled the disputed tree back to the place I pulled it up from.

We planted the tree together and had a hug. I still really resent that asshole. I know that he didn't dig it up, but he bought it from some tweaker who did. The Nanking Cherry looks great in his yard. I bought another one at Plants of the Southwest that afternoon. Sunday of Divine Mercy.

como que busted

So. It's almost the end of CSI New York. It sounds like somebody is hitting a trash can over and over again. Now somebody's hitting a car. Again and again and again. I venture outside to see what has happened. The City of Albuquerque is doing construction on the sewer lines that run through Martineztown (the flooding was horrendous in 2006). Edith has been closed between Odelia and Mountain since March, and now the intersection of Edith and Mountain has been closed since April 8, 2008. There are "Road Closed To Thru Traffic" signs up at Mountain and Woodward, and Mountain and Broadway, but that doesn't stop jackass semi-truck drivers and ignorant ABQ Ride drivers from trying. They must turn around at Walter and Mountain (0ur fair intersection) because their ginormous vehicles can't navigate the narrow streets of the village.

So. That brings me back to tonight, CSI New York night, grading papers night, lounging with the IG and the GF night. Someone in a pickup truck is trying to knock down the cement barriers at the intersection of Edith and Mountain, all the while being hung up on the new pavement poured to protect the new manholes. The idiot has fairly torn out the bottom of his beautiful Nissan pickup truck trying to smash through the barriers. Finding no success and nothing but flattened tires and torn-out oil pans, moronico decides to ride the sidewalk to the parking lot of the NM State Department of Labor, where he figures, "hey, why not change the tire [one of the tires?] I seem to have flattened battling with rebar?" He and his buddy are so soused that when the cops show up (in less than a minute I might add), he can barely stand. They're so stone cold busted, they just relent and put their hands on the hood of the patrol car. "Have you ever been convicted of a DWI?" the officer asks. "No," is the sullen reply. Ah. Schadenfreud.