While I was out eating sushi the other day, I saw a car that belonged to one of my neighbors from two apartment buildings ago.

She was the one who, when my cat would catch a mouse, would knock on my door and say angrily, “Katrina’s caught a MOUSE.”
“Of course she did, she’s a cat.”
“Well, you need to train her or something.”
“How am I supposed to do that? She’s a cat. She eats mice.”
“Well, she’s torturing it. . .playing with it and teasing it.”
“They all do that. I cant train that out of her, it’s cat nature.”

or this:
(knock knock knock) “Katrina’s caught a BIRD.”
“Oh, good for her. . .she doesn’t have any claws.”
“. . .”
“I’d rather she didn’t do that, but I can’t really stop her.”
“Well, maybe you could TRY.”
“OK. (lol) I’ll try.”

Yeah, so I wasn’t looking forward to seeing her today. Luckily I didn’t have to.

That was a great apartment, too, by the way. 1915 Tudor-style building with French doors, 11-foot high arched ceilings, and hardwood floors; nice courtyard where we’d all sit outside drinking wine and talking until late into the night. . .such a nice place. Sure was a shame when some of the original people moved out and were replaced by older, slightly more neurotic people.

Like the lady who would shift every conversation into one about rats. More specifically, HER rats. You could be talking about the AIDS epidemic in Africa and she’d say, “Oh yeah, and I heard that too and it reminded me of something the rats did. Rats are very susceptible to disease, and if you feed them blahblahRATSblahblah–” You’d just want to strangle her. You may think I’m exaggerating, but she would really turn sentences around that fast.

Anyway. . .that was about five years ago, and it feels like a completely different life ago. I wasn’t playing in a band or anything, I had ONE crappy guitar, ONE crappy little amp, and a couple of cheap keyboards. Every time I’d play one of my songs for someone, they’d kinda go, “Enh. . .” And I’d say, “Yeah, the sounds suck, but the melody sure is nice. What about that? And y’know, I played everything on there. I was thinking of this French movie I saw recently. . .” “Yeah, well, it’s not really my thing or whatever.”
So after a while I’d just stopped sharing that stuff with people. I had my little regular job, and just was going about my life. And if you’d asked me, I’d have told you I was happy.

Until one day, I made a new friend who would turn everything upside down and change things for the better. . .