Life in the big city

Let me tell you what happened this afternoon…..

I am illustrating this story with a cute puppy because … (if you read the story I’m sure you’ll understand). Image by Cindy Parks from Pixabay

First, there was the woman who pulled down her pants outside the window and “watered” the concrete patio.

Then there were the two men shooting up on my stoop.

Honestly.

It’s been quite a day.

The first part of the day was quite placid and normal, with no inklings of what was to come. I did some laundry, baked muffins, mucked about in the garden, and did reasonably well at all the New York Times online games that involve words. (No Sudoku for me.)

Then it was time to go to the gym. We work out with a trainer, to ensure that we don’t skip any reps and also to guard against re-injuring all those nagging spots that take so long to repair these days.

And about half way through the workout, the trainer exclaimed, “Oh no, she’s back!”.

We followed her gaze out the window of the ground-floor gym towards the covered patio, where there are benches attached to circular planters. On one of these, a woman had seated herself and was proceeding to unload a rolling grocery cart full of merchandise.

“That’s the one,” said our trainer, “She’s the squatter”. On two earlier occasions, our coach had seen this individual pull down her…