Monday, June 2nd, 2003 - The Honeysuckle Murders Most of you know how much I love my little secret garden in front of the house. The street we live on is pretty nasty sometimes, but it'd been bearable because our house is set back from the street, surrounded by a trellis fence with a lovely honeysuckle-covered gate that keeps out the noise and give the yard a sense of privacy that other front yards on our street lack. Plus it's damned pretty and it smells heavenly everytime you walk through it. When I moved in five years ago, the honeysuckle bushes were fairly new. In the intervening years, I've nurtured those plants, trimmed them back, braided the vines and trained them to go up and over the archway of the gate. When they finally met I was so proud, and I often stopped to smell the honeysuckle when it was in bloom. Friday morning I noticed it was staring to bloom again. I tore off a little blossom and wore it proudly in my buttonhole on my way to work. I kept it on my desk all day long, periodically sniffing it to calm down. I love honeysuckle season! I love picking the little stamens out and sucking the drop of honeysweetness on the end. Honeysuckle is one of my very favorite smells in the world. I've always wanted to live in a house that had a honeysuckle-covered gate, and it was one of the best things about this tiny little house in Oakland (that and the cheap rent and the garden in general). You can see where this is going, of course. Friday night I noticed that someone had done a horrible job of trimming the dead bits of the honeysuckle underneath the healthy parts. I've had a very busy spring, and was behind on the trimming, but I commented to Tim that I wished Jennifer (the landlady) had hired someone competent to trim it or had asked me to do it. She has no problem nudging us when the yard needs mowing. Saturday afternoon, Tim and I went to see the Matrix. When we came back, the honeysuckle was gone. All the work of the last five years has been ripped out. Actually, it was almost all gone. Luther, Jennifer's roommate (they live in the hosue immediately behind us; it's a little close for comfort sometimes) was still in the process of tearing it out (but he'd cut enough it was too late to save). I came through the gate, my mouth open in horror. "I know" he said, "your sister told me you wouldn't like it." I burst into tears. I cried for another half an hour, at least. It's murder, plain and simple. Luther just told me that Jennifer wanted it done. When I talked to her later (the coward wasn't home while the bushes were being murdered) . . . well, she was unapologetic. First of all, she called me by my sister's name (I've been living there for five years; Holly's been there just over a year). She said she heard I wasn't happy. I told her that I was insulted -- that I'd lived there for five years, and while she owns the house and can do anything she wants, I was insulted that she didn't even tell me that she was going to do this -- didn't even warn me, let alone ask my opinion! "We live in this house and you didn't even check to see how we felt about our privacy being torn out like that. We're exposed to the street -- the noise from the street is much louder now in the house. The wonderful secret garden feel of that yard is gone -- GONE! and there's nothing I can do about it. I feel violated. I'm devastated!" etc. When I burst into tears she harumphed and said, "Well, we'll talk about this later." and rode off on her little bicycle (sing it with me: da-dun da-dun da-duh-dun! da-dun da-dun da-duh-dun!). Hell no, we're not talking about it again. I don't want to talk to her any more than I absolutely have to, or I'm going to say something that'll get us evicted. She can "put something up for privacy" if she wants to (her offer when I mentioned the privacy issue), I don't fucking care anymore. Nothing will bring those wonderfully wild, gorgeous plants back. I never really thought she was mean before, but I am furious with her now and I do not trust her. Ok, so I didn't trust her before this, either but now it's really bad. In my mind, it's murder, pure and simple. It was cruel. I hate it hate it hate it. I guess I should stop now. It's all I can talk about, and it ruined my otherwise lovely weekend and fucked with my sleep (drifting off, I think of the honeysuckle and start to cry). Everytime I come home or leave the house I growl and tense up and get very, very sad and angry. The serenity of my little home has been fucked with, and I am livid. This is what it looked like when I moved in. All that work, gone. They smelled so good, and they kept the crack addicts out of the front yard, too.

Exercise Log: Aikido class yesterday. An hour and a half of mostly falling on the ground and either standing right back up or rolling over on my poor shoulder and standing right back up. Very cool, though, and I'm by far the most flexible person in the class (which doesn't mean all that much, really). I'm limping around today, but it feels goooood. Aikido seems to be really good exercise! Writing log: Getting back to work on the YA Novel. Words written since last entry: Current Publications: "Famishing" in Strange Horizons. My first pro sale! "Wetting the Bed" and a collab with Tim Pratt, "A Serious Case of Fairies" in Floodwater "How to Suck" reprinted in From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates the Erotic Mind Currently Reading: Trampoline ed. by Kelly Link The Journal of Pulse Pounding Narratives etc. Donate money to my teeth, my grad school application fees, our writerly projects (Floodwater and Flytrap!). Every little bit helps!

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