I am in Minneapolis. I am engaged to my wonderful fiance, Tory. We are very excited about this recent step in our lives and plan to be married by late summer. Instead of a wedding blog, I decided to pick up my old blog again and update it about whatever seems to be relevant to continuing our life together. Tory is living in our new home in North Minneapolis and I'm there often so we have been encountering all kinds of new adventures that come with home-owning and living in a diverse neighborhood that has traditionally been marginalized.
Wherever I go, or rather, wherever I am directly determines what people and experiences I will encounter. These in turn shape my understanding of the world, it's people, and it's needs.
If you put yourself in certain locations, life can be monotonous and uninteresting unless you make it otherwise. So far it seems as though if you put yourself in North Minneapolis, monotony isn't even an option.
Firstly, what I didn't realize was a problem in America: spring feral cat population explosion. Our neighbor feeds them all from a huge bucket and it's attracting and feeding and sustaining anywhere from 12-30 now teenage cats who I'm terrified are about to unleash a few litters each. Our plan is to catch them, take them to Animal Ark to get neutered and release them again to live happy, non-reproductive lives. We caught one, who is now living in our garage and set the live trap again before we left to get coffee in what is now being referred to as the North Loop. Since it was warm out, I suggested biking and we took our first bike ride two convenient miles down Broadway into downtown.
We discovered that Java J's has $1 pbr's on Friday nights and began wedding planning. VERY EXCITING. We stayed past 1am and got on our bikes only to discover that my slowness was (partially) due to a flat back tire. We stopped at the Beehive gas station for a spot of air, which cost a dollar and was probably not usually used for bikes so Tory, in his banana-yellow hoodie went to the line in front of the bulletproof window to ask for change. 3/4 customers ordered a pack of 'swisher sweets,' (the relevance of which had to be explained to me) and since no one would talk to him, much less agree to get him change for a dollar, he waited in line and returned to me laughing. When we continued on, Tory the speedy biker breezed through red lights when the roads were clear and to his impatience, I hesitantly waited them out. On one such light, as Tory biked on, I waited for a car in the distance to pass by and heard a deep voice over my shoulder say, "THAT WAS A GOOD DECISION YOUNG LADY." Then as the light turned green, I watched a cop car pull Tory over on his bicycle. Then an officer got out and made Tory put his hands on the hood and frisked him, for what, I don't know. Another cop got out of the car too and to my initial confusion, they let an older random guy help himself out of the back of the car. I now know what an undercover cop looks like. He is virtually indistinguishable from a layperson.

When I pulled up, this is the conversation I heard:

-Do you know where you are?
-Yeah, I'm on Broadway!
-Does that mean anything to you?
-It means I'm on my way home!
-You live around here?
-Yeah, I live a few blocks past here.
-Is there a reason you ran that light?
-Just trying to keep moving I guess...
-Okay, I believe you.
(To me)-You should teach him a few biking lessons!

Then they let us bike away and we laughed together.

When we got back to the house, we looked in the trap and laughed even harder. A fat possum gave us a look that said, "It's not my fault I'm the kind of animal that is not meant to be seen in the light of day!"

His demeanor was just that of Fantastic Mr. Fox's friend. We opened the trap and he stood there for a while before slowly wandering away. I'm a little afraid he was so indifferent that he'll try to get another free meal sometime.