It seems time I start writing about other people. God forbid a reader passing through here mistakes this blog for me and thinks I am self-absorbed.

Hahahahahahahah.

There are lots of people in my life. Besides T and Ta and all the lovely (LOVELY!) people at the office I have told you about, I have two brothers, two sisters, four brothers-in-law, four sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, a mother, a father, a father-in-law and his nasty-assed wife-- and that's just family! But I can't write about any of them. Not because they read this or even know of its existence (well, we all know my mom now knows but she'll never find it . . and btw, thanks for all the kind wishes-- turns out she had bronchitis and a terrible infection. I'll get an update tonight-- I'm hoping she is en route home as I type), but because that's what novels are for.

HAHAhahahahhahaha.

So let's talk about the neighbors, shall we? Voila my new series:

Desperate Housewives I Have Known

Part the first, Mrs. Anderson

Not sure if that should be spelled 'son' or 'sen' as I was a child when I knew her and never saw her name in print.

The Andersons lived one street over from us. Their street was a short, woodsy cul-de sac. In retrospect, it is fair to say this was a "bad chi" street. Dark, gloomy---a dead ringer for the set of The Ice Storm. I didn't have much cause to walk by Mrs. Anderson's house unless I was babysitting Patrick Hart. (Babysitting is not exactly the right word since I was too young to watch him-- rather, Mrs. Hart would pay me to take him in his stroller around the neighborhood so she could be free to call Dr. Hart (who had divorced her to marry his receptionist) and yell at him on the phone.

I liked walking Patrick up to the dead end street cause it had a good hill and when I let go of the stroller it would get going really fast before I had finished counting up to 5 to chase it down.

Did that image terrify you? It should. When I think back on that-- his little stroller rocketing down the street gaining more and more speed and how I would "save him" just in the nick before he had crashed. Well, it makes me quite ill. But that's the kind of kid I was. No one should EVER have put a child into my care. Especially when I was 7.

So, one day, as I chased Patrick's wildly careening stroller I saw Mrs. Anderson sitting in an upstairs window of her house. I know now that she was sitting in the sun to dry her hair, but at the time I freaked just a little thinking she was watching me and going to call Mrs. Hart and turn me in. But she didn't even see me on that empty street. She was staring out somewhere else.

Sometime later she came to our door in the middle of the day. She was very, very smiley. My mom kept asking her to come in but she said, no-- she had to go could she just borrow a bottle of vodka? Cause the store was closed. Now even I knew she was lying cause it was the middle of the day and the stores weren't closed at all. But my mom said we didn't have any vodka-- which was true. (Of course, too bad for Mrs. Anderson that she didn't ask for bourbon or whiskey cause then, damn, we could have delivered in spades).

I eavesdropped on my mother when she told my father about it and how Mrs. Anderson had gone up to the house next door and how embarrassing it was. "Poor dear." I could tell my mom wasn't criticizing her, but that she felt really sad for her. When I asked my mom why Mrs. Anderson always looked so sad she looked surprised. "Don't you remember Richie Anderson?" she asked me. But I didn't. I didn't remember at all. My mom had to tell me how her little boy had come home sick from school with a cold and then snuck out to the pond where we were all ice skating even though his mom had told him not to and cause he snuck out he didn't have his coat on and he died. Of pneumonia. At the age of 8.

Eventually Mr. Anderson took her away to a hospital because she had the same problem as my other next door neighboor (Mrs. Peterson, who was so drunk she drove her golf cart into a tree and needed 27 stitches on her shin)---what my mom would tell me is that they were sad and tired.

What I remember most about Mrs. Anderson is that Chrissie Anderson was in my Brownie Troop and we had some kind of event where the parents came. After, while the parents were standing around drinking coffee and eating cookies, Mrs. Anderson came up to me and put her hands on my cheeks. Her hands were small and smelled like roses. She must've told me something, but I don't remember what it was. I just remember how soft the skin of her hands was-- like she put hand cream on them everyday.

got 2 cents?