A quick walkabout

I've just been BESET with requests to see the house I live in (meaning my parents have asked a couple of times).  So, M&D, here you go - 

1. This is the bike collective that is on the first floor, under our back deck.  People can learn how to take care of a bike, volunteer, and then take home a bike of their own. 

 2. This is our garden, just past the stairs up from the bike collective.  It looks sort of scraggly right now because we are preparing the ground to put in some raised beds.  And also because it rained a bunch in the last couple of days - first time I've seen real rain for several months!

 3.  This is a gueiskill (pronounced "whis-keel").  It's a type of vining plant, like a squash, I guess?  Don Petronilo planted it, and he is very proud of it's progress.  Personally, I think the fruits look like testicles.

 4.  This is the back porch - the blue tarp awning is new.  Those are the steps I run up and down when I'm refilling the mop bucket.

 5. This is the side porch.  It's actually a very pleasant place - a good place to watch the traffic during the day, and at night, watch prostitutes solicit customers.  We keep some boxes of potatoes and onions for the house on this porch, and a few random extra things.

6. This is the daytime view from the side porch. 

 7.  This is the mop and mop bucket.  I hate them.

 8.  This is the car wash.  It rained this morning, so they weren't open as early as usual.  They play loud music (although not so much lately) and smoke a lot of pot.  It makes our downstairs smell bad.  The red van in the picture belongs to us.  I have to drive it on the Interstate, and merge into traffic, and parallel park, all of which are a lot scarier when they're in a van rather than a regular car.

 9.  Two Jesuses and the Virgin Mary watch over us while we eat at the table.

 10.  I've seen several pictures of Dorothy Day, and I don't think she's smiling in any of them...

 11. This is the first of 3 fridges.  We get a lot of donated cakes, pastries, and breads from Whole Foods, so that's why there are so many donuts (VEGAN) on the shelf.  We also snagged about 45 dozen eggs from the Food Back a couple weeks ago, so we still have some left.  How long are eggs good for, anyway...?

12. This is fridge number 2.  It is almost always full of cakes and pies and weird little pastry things from Whole Foods.  

 13.  This is the second-floor bathroom. It looks wider than it actually is, but in reality, the tub/shower is just out of the picture on the left.

 14.  This is the view from the toilet.

 15.  THE POPE IS WATCHING YOU AS YOU EXIT.  This was literally the first thing I noticed about the house - the Pope.  And the pink stairs.  Evidently the archbishop guy in the picture under the pope was arrested for a DUI right about the same time as I came to Oakland.  It was scandalous, I guess.

 16.  I swear, all these cabinet doors were closed when I picked up my camera.  When I turned around to take a picture, they were open again!  If you are in my family, you will understand this.  If not, this is just a picture of my kitchen.

 17.  This is a bag of random desserts/breakfast items that Whole Foods employees throw willy-nilly into a bag.  When they crumble into bits, all the calories leak out, which is how I justify eating so many of them.

 18.  This is the first of 2 pantries.  It is constantly re-organized.  If we have a bunch of volunteers and not enough stuff for them to do, we have the re-organize the pantry.  It has been redone at least 3 times in the two months I've been here.  No.  Wait.  Four.  At least four.  As a result, I can never find anything.

 19.  This is part of the second pantry.  We really do not need all those boxes of StoveTop stuffing.

 20.  This is the back porch towards the garden, from the dining room. 

So there you have it.  Not pictured is an office full of filing cabinets, another room full of random junk that doesn't have a home anywhere else in the house, my room (because it is messy and I don't want to clean it just for a photo op), the living room downstairs (crammed with 2 stacked TVs, a coffee table and 3 sofas) and the downstairs bathroom, which contains a toilet and 3 showers.