Forgotten Bottom. A story of my awesome.
Yesterday was the kind of day that required a glass of wine at 3:30pm. The Spawn was in rare form and I refused to let that stop me from scrubbing the house and running some errands. I had earned that glass of wine, but that is not my point.
Miss Tricky HQ is now located in a little neighborhood in South Philly called ‘Forgotten Bottom’. I’ll give you a moment to enjoy that…….it’s so good, right? Anyhoo, it’s a little pocket of streets surrounded by a larger, “ghetto-light” neighborhood. We are just over that invisible line that cities put down to mark where it’s cool to live and where it isn’t. The joke is clearly on the yuppies because this place is great. Our immediate surroundings are filled with blue-collar folks who grew up here because their parents did and have no plans on leaving. Everyone knows everyone and you can’t walk out your door without being warmly greeted by a least 3 generations of locals. Mr. President has been here for a while now and has become a fixture in the community as well as at the club across the street. Ahhh the club! It’s Cheers if Cheers had been filmed in someone’s rec room with a makeshift bar plopped in the middle. The crowd of regulars sits around the bar every night drinking the same beer and tossing insults around like it’s their job. It is shit talking at its highest level. I love it there.
It is also the kind of place that when you walk in barefoot on a Tuesday night because your child has locked everyone into the back yard and out of the house at least 3 people try to buy you a beer while someone else goes for a ladder, but I’ll get back to that…
Our little house has a little backyard that’s really more a patio surrounded by a very tall chain link fence. We were all out back enjoying a post-work but pre-dinner snack and cocktail when Spawn started playing with the door.
“Do you have the key on you honey? Because if you don’t you probably should.”
“No, do you? Wait. Did he just lock that?”
Umm yes, he surely did. Okay, nobody panic. Mr. President tries the window only to find that he had locked it when he closed up to put on the AC that morning. We both believe that the front windows are unlocked and Mr. President thinks he may have left the door unlocked when he came home even! Hurrah! Now it’s just a quick, barefoot shimmy up and over a fence followed by a (still barefoot) drop into an alley and around to open the door or wiggle through a window at the very worst.
“You can’t climb that fence.”
“Listen bubo, I don’t know what kind of girl you think I am but I have climbed a few chain-link fences in my day! Now get over here and hold that garbage can steady.”
We argued a bit longer about my agility and then my darling boyfriend pointed out that I am a bit older than I choose to think I am. I shot him the necessary look and he quietly held the garbage can for me. Up and over like a champion I went, because that is indeed how I roll. Sadly, in his fervor to shut the god-awful humidity out earlier that day he had locked EVERY GODDAMN FIRST FLOOR WINDOW IN THE HOUSE. Ahem. Which brings me back to walking in the club barefoot on a Tuesday night hoping for a rescue…
Lucky for us Johnny Fix It had a ladder in the back of the club and it took all of about 4 minutes to retrieve it, carry it to the house and for me to scurry up and in through an unlocked bedroom window. How’s that for older than I think I am? Hmpf.
Know what makes me even more awesome? I sent the Prez to the club to buy the required thank-you beers, bathed the child and put him to bed AND made us some yummy, fucking pasta. I rule.
