Views from my back yard:

So I'm dusting off this blog to brag about leaving that terminally fucked up town called Deseert Hot Springs.  There's a smattering of good people I left behind in DHS, but that's all -- a smattering it.  The place is still run like a grifter camp.  The police is way overpaid and still corrupt as it's every been; the new mayor doesn't stand a chance against the huge debt the last mayor and scumbag city manager left behind, that is if the new mayor even really wants to keep campaign promises

At this point all that matters to me is that I can jog, hike, run, without fearing random stray pitbulls or srauy tweaking hobos.  Or high school security guards that step in front of you on your track lane after sunset yelling at you to get off the track or face arrest.  Fuck that noise, and need I say that I LOOOOOVE PALM SPRINGS!  Missed my true home town so much!

Oh yeah -- and realizing this "constant desire" to move came after some intense chanting.  It solves a lot more than my need to run safely:  my step-kids are now in better schools and away from kids who swing from bible-thumping zealotry in between bouts of slutting and drugging.  Palm Springs of course has it's share of all that like any other town, but not anything like DHS, where the average resident, at least below Mission Boulevard, is a burn-out with kids that take care of them through welfare, not the other way around.  So much to say to document that, but not today.  Today, this afternoon, I am just so happy, so blissed out, with my new home still mostly packed, sofa cushions willy nilly everywhere.  Just barely put the Butsudan together.  Went on a long wonderful walk with Stevie our dog this morning.  This glorious 80-something Fahrenheit morning.  OK, going to check on the deviled eggs my stepdaughter is prepping now.  Later.

MY FACEBOOK STATUS TONIGHT:

You know what I'm NOT thankful for this Thanksgiving month? I'm not thankful for that jelly-bellied security guard wanna-be cop who got IN FRONT OF MY LANE & I nearly lost my balance trying to avoid crashing into tonight on the DHS high school track at 5 p.m. because his wobbly ass wanted me off "PRIVATE PROPERTY." WHAT IN THE FOOOOCK? Anyway, I guess he first ran off the only other runner out there, a guy, but then waited for me, I guess lurking behind the bleachers, for me to go ahead and run TWO MORE LANES while it got dark (right around sunset at the time) so he could step in front of me less then a few feet from him as he stretched his arms as if he was going to tackle me! By then I had already ripped off my headset & was trying to get ready to dial 911 as he was yelling at me. So I ask him what the hell he means by private property and that the track gates were open when me and the other citizen runner got there. He said, STILL TRYING TO GET IN FRONT OF ME as I dodged him but backs off when I am again going to dial 911. /excuse the typo mess but still on fricking anger and running adrenaline! So he says something about this NOT being public property and at the top of his lung "LEAVE NOW!" So I ask him where through as I'm going around him and he points to the walkway behind the main bleachers -- the only gate that he's left open now, I guess. So I head off cussing & fussing and mofo hops on his rent-a-cop car and FOLLOWS BEHIND ME LIKE A CREEPER!!! So I run out the opposite way of my usual route and do like I'm going to the gated community across the street and then his car squeals off in the opposite directions. I get on the phone with Will until I reach the police station and report this idiot; maybe they'll talk to his ass about jumping in front of women on a track alone after you've run off the only other person/witness. EFF THIS TOWN. I'm now thoroughly convinced it's a crime to stay fit in Desert Hot Springs. I've never had this problem running on the Palm Springs high school track and I've run in the morning and the afternoon and up until 7 p.m. Everything's cool there as long as you don't interfere with other runners or there's no track meets or games going on. Hell I've even ran while there's soccer games going on. OY! So yeah, going to start packing my running gear & hit the PSHS track again after work./end rant

"Come to think about it, my life is just on yet another spiral, and I need to honor it. I need to do all those things I want to do, without over-scheduling myself to the point when I hate doing each and every one of them, even if I started them exactly because I love them. When running needs to come - it will come back, it always did, on its own terms."  - Olga, Run More Talk Less

I've been feeling this quote from one of my favorite bloggers.  Especially the last two weeks, because after running more often on the track after I went on work hiatus, I have suddenly been inundated again by work and also by random family and menstrual interruptions that have put me back on barely getting in one track run this week and the week before that two track runs and huffing on my elliptical the rest of the time.  AND I've been pretty plain, old-fashioned lazy.  And today my little red pal surprised me; no cramps, just unusually insurmountable sluggishness this week to herald little red's monthly visit.

Anyway, about my previous DHS comments, I have to say that the town has gotten exponentially more livable the past four years, especially in the last two, mostly because of county, state and federal funds that improved busted roads and got a Boys & Girls Club and "wellness center" and small gym (also funded through the generous funding of a rich guy whose name I can't recall right now).  The influx of more and more regular people has also helped.  By "regular" I mean people without a meth habit, usually without recent felonies, and mostly with jobs to keep and who move here because it's where housing is most affordable, not because it's where their LA or San Bernardino parole officers told them to go so as to lighten those counties' burdens.

What else is new?  Oh yeah, I'm getting back to regular chanting, and that has focused me more the last three days and got me to a place where I can stop beating myself up over letting go of that 4-day-per-week track running momentum I had going in the beginning of the month.  It also helped to put to work the suggestion by one of the speakers at the October monthly "World Peace Prayer" meeting to focus on my heart when I chant, and also on what's weighing most on my mind, or as she put it, "Focus on what keeps you awake, or makes you weep at night."  The heart thing I imagined as having the sound of the chanting coming through my heart.  And that immediately brings me back from random mental distractions to the present and to the sound of my voice coming from my throat and mouth and out through my heart, too.

So I got this all out finally, after almost forgetting about this blog since I last procrastinated about it.

Yay me.

Full moon rising over Desert Hot Springs, earlier tonight, hand a bit shaky from the run back from the track:

The DHS high school track, two days ago:

I jogged on the track tonight, this time a little later so there weren't too many people loitering on the lanes -- mostly football player girlfriends, random kids, random parents and/or football coaching staff that appear to be surprised when someone off the street wants to run voluntarily on the track.  Something that is very popular in Palm Springs but that raises eyebrows in DHS, tweaky, paranoid, rather skanky DHS.

Too bad I pussed out of clicking a cell pic of the stray pit bull that was loitering by the concession stand two Sundays ago.  As I lifted the cell and centered the cam on him, he raised his big head up looking at me warily.  He'd been nibbling on a paw that I hope wasn't injured.  I would have had to use the flash because it was a enough past sunset to be too dark without it.  Anyway, would have been pictorial proof of the random strays or neglected dogs that just chill all over town and on the school campuses after hours.  So no, I'm not out of line when I call this town skanky.  

The end to the most unassuming first post ever.