Kuchen

I’m sitting around lazily drinking coffee, mucking on the computer, listening to muziks (Oliver's current passions are The Bottom 99, Dead Meadow, Black Mountain, Black Keys and The Espers so there’s been alot of those) and eating coffee cake (boughten - not my amazing, fabulous, sour cream pistachio one).

Suddenly I really think, not passing thinking, focused thinking, remembering how my Mom always liked to have a coffee cake ritual on Sunday mornings. I think by the time I was the only one left home she knew it was a safe bet because traditionally I didn’t like coffee cake. Good thing she never discovered Entemann’s that might have changed the safety factor.
I never understood her fascination with the tea ring style, pecan or almond dotted drizzle glazed, flaky style, coffee cake. Until now. Now I can get a decent one down on the corner and it’s just packed full of things that are just bad. And it’s really fun to eat one too many pieces of it, buttered, with a cup ‘o’ devil joe liberally laced with half & half. It’s downright petit-bourg-ie and decadent.

So as I sit and savour my sorta, suburban style, indulgences I watch the squatter couple from around the corner walk into town, if l'm any judge (and there’s reason to think I am) to make a couple bucks of her butt, to support the habit I am also relatively sure is a factor keeping them spiraling in the squatter nebulae. I feel really weird having drawn police attention to them on occasion, but then again when footprints in the snow indicate someone from that direction has been peering in my and my neighbors windows, as well as a rash of petty thefts from cars parked near their back door have occurred, other than engaging with them face to face, it seems like the most likely way to make sure they know that we know they are there and are keeping an eye out.
But jeez all this ”us” and “them” talk. It’s frustrating to have to be on the creeped out side of that. I really couldn’t have cared less until the funky shit started happening. And the thrice nightly trips past our house to the dope house are also weirdly disconcerting. The police have been singularly unhelpful and I can see why. But it really feels like one of those powder keg situations, we’ll get a reaction when it’s actually a chain reaction and I’m betting it won’t be pretty.