More opportunity to practice acceptance

For those who may not know, I live in an inexpensive apartment (that means its kind of a dump) and it does me well enough. I don't require external niceties...which is good, considering my situation. The area is full of crack heads, drugs, prostitution...everything that goes with poverty. There were two empty apts for several months. They have now been rented.

I talked to one of the new neighbors. Actually, she talked to me and I just nodded my head. She was stoked...couldn't stand still at all and just running her mouth lickity split. Obviously speeding. She looked old, but that doesn't mean she is...it just means a hard life.

Turns out she was one of the people who asked me for a cigarette several months back. She hit me when I was in a bitchy mood and I told her in no uncertain terms to never ever ask me for a cigarette again. (She had come running across the street from where she was waiting for a bus the moment she saw me come out to the porch. She said she was the neice of the guy in the apt. next to mine...like that was suppose to make it okay.) I did give her the cigarette I was going to smoke however...but she knows not to ever ask me again. She said she remembered that.

If that sounds harsh, please understand that I'm post-menopausal and dangerous. Plus the fact that I'm asked over and over and over and over again for cigarettes... almost to the point of feeling like a prisoner in my own home. I don't have money to supply the community with smokes... I barely have enough for myself.

But now I have the opportunity to be accepting... up to a point. I have the feeling she might not be here long. I've heard that crack has a unique odor when being smoked, but I don't know what it is... last night I kept smelling wafts of something like heated plastic and wondered if it was drugs. (I know what weed smells like and this wasn't it.)

On a different subject: Today when I came to post here I no longer had several format options....I wonder what happened to them. For example, I didn't have the "thingy" to make the text yellow for ease of reading against the black background. There's a way to manually put it in, I think. Hopefully I'll find the code for it.

(later) I had this great html instruction site that I checked out. I found codes for changing the text color. I don't know if it will affect how hot links display if I try to make the entire text field a color. I'll test later.

PS Sexual offenders should never ever be let out of prison. Another murdered child was just mentioned on the news.