Thank you to all my wonderful blog friends who commented so lovingly and with such great sympathy...

Why is it that things all seem to happen like fruitflies popping out of their eggs? All at once, with no warning, suddenly the country that is your home is invaded and you are no longer alone with your fruit. Your fruit comes with friends.

Maybe there are too many bruises on the fruit. Bruises like forgetfulness and tiredness and a need for a long, hot bath.

I'm pondering fruit because today, on my way back from the city I locked Renee's keys out
of
her
car.

Yes, I know. Whatever you have to say to me, I know.

I have an excuse. We stopped so that I could nurse the Leaf baby, (who, by the way, can say ba ba ba now) and I left the keys in the ignition while I nursed him. Then we blissfully hopped out of the car and into the dollar store to buy stickers for YaYa for our upcoming road trip.

The mistake was in not taking the keys out before we got out of the car and locked all the doors.

A couple of hours later, after some very fun adventures that involved asking lots of people for help, we were on our way. The people from the tow company that came out (no, I don't have AAA, and yes, I think people like me should) were feeling jokey. They noticed that Renee had bought me ice cream to make me feel better, since I was obviously on the verge of turning over the tomato cart, and said, "There's an upside to everything! You got to have ice cream!" I just glared them down, and said bitterly, "Yeah. $50 ice cream."

Anyways. I told them this story, so I thought I'd write it down:

One time, in the City, our red van, got stolen. We don't really name our vehicles. It's red van, blue van, blue car. RV. The red van has a little problem with the ignition, which means that pretty much any key can start it. I can write this on the internet now because our van is in a junkyard. Apparently this happens to a lot of old Toyota vans, and apparently thieves in downtown San Francisco happen to know this. Because one day, it was just gone. Bummer. We filed a police report.

A few weeks later our great friend Jesse turns to Chinua and smacks himself on the forehead. "Chinua!" he says. "I totally forgot to tell you something!"
"What?" Chinua asks.
"You're going to be really mad," says Jesse. And he tells him this story: "I was skating downtown, near the Civic Center, and all of a sudden I saw our van. I mean, I wasn't sure, but then I saw the In N Out sticker on it and I was sure it was ours. So I skated after it and I got the guy to stop. He looked pretty nervous, but I just said, 'that's our van,' and he said, 'oh--my friend had it.' I told him it was stolen and he said, 'I can give it back, but I just need to drive to Daly City because I'm picking up a friend and he's waiting for me.' I said, 'sure, bro,' so he gave me his phone number and I let him go."

We were pretty blown away by this, but then Jesse told us that this had happened a week before. He just forgot to tell us. Anyways, to make a long story short, the police eventually recovered the van. Crazy, huh? Jesse's pretty nice. Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses, as we were talking about the other day.

Right now what I'm really supposed to be doing is writing a reference letter for my friend Curtis who is going to get a job as an EMT. He and his wife Elena are leaving this weekend. Moving away. I can't say how sad this makes me. It's hard for me to even imagine this green place without homeboy and his lovely wife. I'm thinking that maybe if I just write a really bad letter, he won't be able to leave.

That will probably backfire.

I'm going to write the best darn letter I can.