If You Ever Need Furniture, Visit a College Town When School Is Out for the Year

This is how we are spending the day today.

Basically collapsing on the floor because it is too hot to do much of anything else.

(The days have been hot here the last few weeks. Not as extreme as in Portland and Seattle, but still warmer than usual. Also, and maybe the worst thing?  It’s not cooling down at night like it “normally” does. Our typical low this time of year is 57 degrees. Tonight, it’s not supposed to drop below 70. Next week, my annoying weather app is predicting that it will not get below 84 degrees at night. I’m not sure what we will do then. That’s a little too hot for comfortable sleep when you live in a home without air conditioning because, well, hardly anyone has air conditioning in these parts, because you don’t need it, because it always cools down to the 50s at night. Except when it doesn’t. Which is happening more and more often. Which I am finding very depressing.)

But all in all, it was a good week, in spite of the heat.

We drove to Los Angeles Monday to help my daughter move from the apartment where she lived for the school year (even though all her classes were online, she wanted to be close to her university) to her summer sublet. Since her original six roommates didn’t want to stay in town for the summer, she had to find a new place. She exercised high level adulting skills and scored space in a luxurious building with a pool and hot tub and a lovely fifth floor sort of roof top flower garden with chairs where you can relax and enjoy the sunshine. The apartment also has a washer and dryer. This is college student heaven, I think.

On the downside? One of her new roommates unplugged my daughter’s charging cord from the roommate’s power strip and placed it back on my daughter’s bed without talking with her about it. Apparently, in this apartment, they have a “no sharing power strips” or outlets policy. My daughter apparently is supposed to use the outlet outside the room for her charging needs. I am hoping this is not a sign of things to come. Because if it is, even with the pool and hot tub, it could be a long couple of months for her.)

She just started work at a nearby fancy donut shop where the cheapest dozen donuts costs $24, while fancier ones can go for as much as $30. (Wait. What? $30 for donuts?) Her new managers emphasized at her training that she should not be fooled by anyone who asks for a “Baker’s Dozen”.  If you order a dozen donuts, you get a dozen donuts, and that’s all.

I’m not sure why my daughter loves Los Angeles so much (Well. Except now that she has access to a pool and hot tub and all the donuts she can eat, maybe I have a better idea). Perhaps when you have lived most of your teen years in the forest, there’s something special about being able to walk a few minutes and end up at Trader Joe’s or Target,  and it must be nice to be able to buy Boba or a falafel wrap or a Korean style corn dog basically whenever you want.

It is such a city of contrasts, though, the Los Angeles. There is Hollywood, and movie stars, and Beverly Hills, which is only about three miles  from where she’s living.  And there are thousands of homeless people, hundreds of them just a stone’s throw away from her new summer place, in the park next to the Veteran’s Cemetery, living in tents and under tarps.

Just up the street from the park and cemetery, and a bit closer to campus, the end of school year “moving out and moving on” ritual has begun. There are piles of furniture and trash in front of just about every apartment building, including the one that my daughter was vacating. And there are lots of apartment buildings here.

 

I’m not sure how the disposal workers manage the onslaught. The Westwood trash trucks don’t seem special at all. And the weight and bulk of what is left on the street is enormous.  There are couches and tables, desks and end chairs, bookcases and futons. I spotted at least one entrepreneurial fellow driving around the neighborhood, stopping to pick up furniture that still looked useable (Most of it still had life left in it). I’m hoping he was able to make some money reselling it. The majority, though, was collected by the trash trucks.

Something about all this just made me sad: that students would dump their unwanted furniture on the curb for someone else to deal with, while there are homeless people a few blocks away who could use the furniture, who would probably love the furniture (heck, some of it seemed nicer than what I’ve owned over the years), but who have nowhere to put it.  And all this just a morning’s jog away from some of the most expensive real estate in the country.

Is that the best we can do?

We made the drive back home to Northern California yesterday. Google Maps is wrong when it says it’s a six hour and thirty minute trek. That sounds so doable, so pleasant! It is not six hours and thirty minutes. We have never made it in less than eight. It’s good to be home now, though. My daughter just called me from the hot tub at her new place. She spent the day at the beach in Santa Monica with friends. She has a shift at the donut shop in the morning.

I am typing away in the dark. It’s time for me to head to bed. I have work in the morning, too.

On an entirely different note:

I noticed a lot of star thistle this evening on the area where I did a clearing the other day. New shoots, tall and flowering. I pulled up as many as I could with the time that I had.  I am pretending that it was most of them, maybe? But probably not. There will be more again and again and again. Truthfully, I don’t know if I am making a difference.

This was my week, my ordinary and my holy.