30 June 2006.10:35 am two in one day! the neighbors on the corner are moving. i'm not friends with them but they've had a couple garage sales, both of which didn't have much, but the stuff they had was tailor fit to me: zombie movies on vhs, statues of jesus & the infant of prague, a plush marionette cow, etc etc. for the past few weeks theyve had a permanent box of free shit that theyre constantly adding to, and every other morning i shamble on down to the corner and dig through it, because i figure, if they had nice crap at garage sales, their free crap might be decent. and free. now, take into account its around 9am, my hair is in a messy ponytail, i have my sunglasses on, im wearing the shirt i slept in, a skirt i picked up off the floor, and my favorite pair of walking around the house shoes. i'm walking down to the corner: i'll put a bra on, but i'm not dressing up to walk 50 feet to look at my neighbors' crap. this morning i'm going through a box of fabric they put out and a car drives past, and then backs up. i glance and its an older fat lady with a bunch of kids in the car. i nod because i figure, fellow scavenger! and she rolls down her window and asks me a question. initially i thought she was asking for directions, which would have been the dumbest move ever on her part since i have no sense of direction and don't pay attention to street names. it was hard to hear her so she had to repeat herself several times. eventually i catch on that she's asking me about bread, and apparently i'm a stoner hippie because i thought she was asking me for cash. then she holds up a loaf of bakery bread and tells me its free. although i am tempted by free stuff, i am also not interested in taking food from a stranger in a mazda, so i decline. she shrugs her shoulders and i go back to perusing the boxes when it hits me: SHE HELLA THOUGHT I WAS HOMELESS. god. i never thought my style would be hobo chic. not that this is going to stop me from scavenging. i'm just going to hope that next time she gives me money.