Observant? No.

Friday, August 4, 2023

I have lived within a block of these two cars for over 30 years. I think. I know I have lived within a block of this house for that long, and for as long as I can remember, two (actually, for most of the time there were three) old cars have been sitting in the driveway. I walked up and down the street for literally YEARS before it occurred to me that the cars never moved. Like twenty years. I moved to Woodbury and walked down the street. I saw old cars. My brain said, “Oh look, there are old cars. The person who lives there is going to be fixing up those old cars.”

And then I never noticed that the cars never moved and didn’t change. I never thought, “Oh, look, there are old cars that never move and never change. The person who lives there just likes to have those old cars and is not fixing them up.” I still thought they were getting fixed up. I never wondered how the person from that house got around. Did he drive one of the old cars, because he couldn’t have a not old car in the garage because it would have been stuck in there. Maybe he parked on the street and I never noticed. But you can’t park on the street in the winter, because winter. Maybe he never leaves his house. I have never seen him. I don’t know that he is a man. He could be a woman. They could be non-binary. I have no idea. Thirty years – never seen a person.

Today I went walking (still doing 15,000 steps. It’s so much easier, but I am still veerrrryyy slow) and I saw the two cars were out of the driveway! I was excited. Something was happening. There were men working on the windows on the second floor. I wondered it the second floor had always had windows. I thought about it. It probably had always had windows. But had it had big windows like the ones that were there now? Mmmm? Probably. But…I don’t know. I never noticed. It’s a theme with me. I walked on. They seemed to have torn off the siding from the back of the house. New siding!

We drove past on our way to meet Alexander for dinner (at his favorite Thai restaurant, King’s Thai, in Fridley. It was very good. We ordered tons of food. We have enough for another meal tomorrow). The house had a brick front now! Huh. They put up brick. I wondered if it was actual brick or if it was siding brick. Was siding brick a thing? I think we had siding brick on an apartment we lived in 35 years ago, that was built many years before that. I do not think siding brick is a thing now. But maybe, because now this house had brick.

Then I started writing this and looked at the picture I took this morning. The brick was already there.

I am really, really not observant.