Well, not really the top – but close enough.

When I lived in LA I moved – a lot.  I used to say, instead of spring cleaning – I moved.

For a while, I lived in Silverlake.  Over by the stadium – in fact the stadium was just on the other side of the hill we lived on.  We lived 150+ steps up from the bottom (I want to say 152, but I just am not sure anymore – all I can say it was a fuck of a lot of stairs to get up to that house).

It was such a weird little house.  The bedroom I had was clearly an add-on because the wall shared with the house was siding. 

Yup, they didn’t even bother to take off the siding when they slapped that room on.

And there was no heat in that room.  None, nada, zip. 

Contrary to popular belief, it does get cold in California – in the winter – at night. 

So rather than freeze to death in that bedroom – when it got cold, I slept in the living room. 

I slept in the living room on a bed that rolled out from the wall – not a pull-down – there was a cubby hole in the wall where the bed lived when I wasn’t in it. 

The bathroom had a claw-foot tub. 

My roommate slept in what was basically a side porch – but at least it was part of the house, so he didn’t freeze at night. 

It was cute as a button – and I came to hate that little house. 

Who the fuck wants to live 150 some steps up a hill?  That’s a lot of steps when you are hauling groceries and laundry. 

Hell, that’s a lot of steps if you are empty handed.

You had to park on the street at the bottom of the hill – and the cars were often broken into, because they knew the people who owned the cars were somewhere up on the hill and were unlikely (or unable) to be watching their cars. 

My roommate took a fall and ended up with a serious head injury with a brain bleed.  He was hospitalized for some time and when they finally let him go home, he was stuck 150 some steps away from help. 

His first day home, I left for work, telling him to not get up unless he absolutely had to (he was dizzy and seeing double). 

I forgot something, and had to go back up (those fucking stairs) to the house and I found him on the floor having a seizure. 

He had gotten up, felt dizzy reached for the (faux) mantlepiece (that’s where the bed was stored), was seeing double and tried to steady himself on the mantlepiece that wasn’t there – falling and hitting his head – right where he had had brain surgery on the real mantlepiece.

I called 911, who sent an ambulance.  The ambulance drivers refused to transport my roommate to the hospital – claiming it wasn’t a real emergency! (I would love to see what they considered a real emergency – if a man seizing on the floor after hitting the hole in his head where he had had brain surgery did not constitute an emergency.)

Fortunately, I convinced them to at least (at very fucking least) to get him to the bottom of the hill so I could take him to the hospital.  Which I did.  And he stayed in the hospital for a few more weeks because of that non-emergency fall.

And then, the house got broken into! 

That was enough.  We found another house to rent – at the bottom of that very same hill.

Some people never learn. 

And I am truly some people.