Give that coyote a one dollar taco.

My mom lives in an assisted living facility. It is a very nice one and she is actually quite happy there. The food is pretty good, they go on outings at least once a week, she has had suitors. The people that work there have been there for years and are very warm and caring. It is the best case scenario for someone with a chronic, debilitating disease, which she has. The one real drawback is that the people who live there, die periodically. When someone dies, they put a framed picture of them by the elevator along with any announcements of pending services. When I was visiting this week, I noticed a picture of a guy I call Patchy. Patchy was actually fairly young (late 50’s) to live there. He had the diabeetus and probably other things too. He still drank and smoked and had lost a leg and an eye, hence my nickname for him. He was always really antisocial and sort of had a chip on his shoulder. I’m sure he had his reasons for his moods. As a fellow moody person, I’m not judging. I said to my mom, “Oh wow, look Patchy died”. My mom says in this very ominous tone, “We all woke up Monday morning….except him”. It was as if she’s seen the cloaked figure of Death tapping people on the shoulder during bingo. Maybe she has. She is on a lot of medication. I signed her up to go see Iron Man to get her mind off of Patchy.

Last Friday we went to meet some friends at a new bar that has like hundreds of beers. It is sort of an arty/yuppie/NY lookin’ type of bar. It’s a little fancy for our side of town. However, it is located in the middle of a neighborhood that is currently involved in a fairly active gang war. We got there 15 minutes before they opened (8pm on a Friday!) and waited outside looking desperate for a drink. They had a large, newly paved (empty) parking lot that they wouldn’t let us park in. “Employees only” we were told. So, we get in there and I’m thinking, “Two strikes on this place”. We get our drinks, which are excellent, sit for awhile on comfy, cool couches, and have a great time. The music isn’t too loud, there aren’t too many people there, the bathroom has a butterfly theme. It’s all good. Our friends get hungry, and we are too tipsy to drive. The bar only serves bags of chips. We go outside and the doorman tells us there are tacos down the street. Huzzah! We walk about a block and we see a huge grilling table on the sidewalk. It’s actually an industrial grill like you’d see in a restaurant, except there’s no restaurant, just the grill and a table with condiments on it. We get some tacos (a dollar each!) and while we are waiting for them, we see a coyote cross the street, moving fast, nose to the ground. It was one of those moments, eating illegal tacos on a darkened street, in a gang ridden neighborhood, while scavengers skulked around us, that made me glad I live here. It’s exciting even when nothing is really happening. We get back to the bar and the bartender gets pissed at us for eating the tacos inside. The reason being, “It’ll smell like a taco truck in here”. Strike three!