Wow! Who knew starting a blog would be this difficult. As you may have noticed, I wrote three or four blog posts that say introduction or hello World! I even said I started this blog to track my business journey in travel, but I started the blog Three months before my travel business started. I’ve been all over the place, dazed and confused apparently.

Today I couldn’t even remember how to get to this service where I write blog posts! It had been so long.

Yet here I am. Anxious to share a few experiences as it has been an interesting week and it is only Thursday.

It started on Monday night, well Tuesday morning about 1:30 AM. My dog woke me as usual to let him out and I think I laid back down and awoke again to the sound of him barking unusually, as if someone was outside. I went to the back door to find flashlights in the dark at my neighbors and someone yelling “it’s the police.“ Now I’m at rge back door shouting “what’s going on?” Thinking if they’re in the backyard in the middle of the night I must be in danger. I yell “Why are you back here?” and they simply say “ There was an incident, but everything‘s all right now.”

The next morning, I heard my deck flood cam in my Ring camera system announce a presence in my backyard, but I assumed it was a squirrel or a cat or something. When I looked at the video later, I noticed the police had been in my yard around 6:30 AM looking for something. They never rang my doorbell.

I reached out to another neighbor who lives next to the house where I saw the flashlights with a text message that said “hey are you guys OK over there?“ and heard back that there had been a shooting of a woman next door at the house in question … she called the neighboring homeowner “Chemati” which didn’t ring a bell. It wasn’t until later in the day I realized “Chemati” was actually “Kimonte” a woman I shared a back to back yard with, whom I didn’t see very often. She lived there with her husband and no kids when we first moved here 11 years ago then I remember her having a baby whom I saw maybe once on the swing with her on their little playground that mirrors ours. I remember her, stopping me in the backyard and introducing herself one day after she had her baby asking if I could stop my free roaming dog from pooping in her yard with the baby in and around the yard now. She was very pleasant about it and I agreed. Fast-forward many years later two of her kids would come and knock on my back door to play with my dog, just earlier this year , but I didn’t see them very often and they, as kids do, told me they split their time between their mom’s house here and their dad so apparently they got divorced at some point in time I didn’t even notice. Anyhow, getting to the point it turns out vua the Glendale press release and the news that “Kamonti” (her actual name) had been critically injured by a gunshot by someone who knew her on her front lawn. She passed away later that day.

Before I learned of her passing, on Tuesday morning after dropping my daughter at school, I had been walking to the track where my dog and I typically walk daily and came across what appeared to be a teen girl maybe walking to her bus stop with her backpack. Since my dog is off leash, he ran over to her, and she started engaging and petting him. As I got closer, I realized she was distraught and started talking about how sad she felt that day so I did the only thing I knew to do which was to ask her “would you like a hug?” She practically fell into my arms and had a good cry and proceeded to tell me about her life. I won’t mention her name here but she’s a junior at a nearby high school but not the one my daughter attends. She said she had missed her bus due to what was going on at home with her mom and mom’s boyfriend who was apparently not so nice, so I offered her a ride to school she gladly accepted. Apparently just a day before she had given away her city bus pass to someone at school that needed it more that she did. That was the second weird thing that happened this week.

Then yesterday wasn’t really weird, just interesting abd emptionally impactful. I met up with a old friend from a program in my college days who I ran into at a tea shop a couple months back. We had arranged to meet up and just catch up. I learned that she was actually the daughter of a woman who had been influential in my adult professional life that I didn’t know about when we were in college. She had proposed we meet up at a trail in the city I knew of, but had never walked. And we had an amazing walk and talk. I returned to that trail at a different entry point near my home today I had another longer than usual walk with my pup.

That is all for today. Just wanted to capture those things in writing so I can return to them someday. I’m keeping the family of Kamonti in my prayers. I’m keeping the teen girl in my prayers. And I’m keeping my friend who’s about to move to North Carolina just as we got reconnected in my prayers as well. And you! 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾