ShellyKing.com

OMVNA Newsletter

Occassionally, I write pieces for the community newsletter.

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Cats and the City
(”Sex and the Kitty” was my first choice:-)

You may have this image of me as this cool, hip kind of modern single gal, Mountain View’s own Carrie Bradshaw, strolling down Castro Street in overly-priced, uncomfortable shoes, stopping for a brightly-colored cocktail with my gal pals, and dismissing perfectly nice men from my life for reasons that make sense only in my neurotic mind. Well, friends, I wear Clarks, drink bourbon, and one of the main reasons I stopped seeing the last guy I dated was because he refused to come to Mountain View from SF. And yet, images of cool-single-gal-ness may still linger. But I am about to destroy all remnants of that image with four little words: I have a cat. more>>>

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Looking for Officer Y

About a year ago, there was an incident at my apartment community that caused one of my neighbors to call the Mountain View Police. Though the incident was gossip-worthy, the resulting neighborly chatter was not so much about the incident itself but the officer who responded to the call (let’s call him Officer Y). I should say nearly all the chatter was among the single women. You get the picture. more>>>

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Wiggling My Toes in the Grass

Whenever I stroll downtown, I always take a slight detour through Pioneer Park to enjoy its weaving pathways, lush knolls, and proud trees. Once this lovely park was a cemetery, the resting place for the pioneers of Mountain View. Now it’s a gem for apartment dwellers like me, where we can take our shoes off and wiggle our toes in the grass. It’s like a friend’s backyard that’s open for you any time you’d like to visit. more>>>

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Love Among the Stacks

In college I worked in the stacks, those towering shelves of books in the library that, as I found out, held more than just the answers to Dr. Drake’s midterm exam. Three nights a week, I worked the 7:00-11:00 shift, shelving books. Every night shift without fail I’d come across a pair of lovers in one form of embrace or another. Some times it was simply leaning into each other against a wall while reading or catching a nap and sometimes it was heavy necking among the graduate students’ kiosks. One couple’s encounter was so well broadcast across the floor that, when they finally emerged, they were greeted with applause from those studying near by. more>>>

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My Road to OMV

I first moved to the Bay Area in late 1994, a refugee from the South (Carolina, not California). Finding a charming apartment in a small Southern town is no great secret. All you do is get to church early on Sunday morning and ask the minister to make an announcement during the service. “Dear friends, we have a young lady here in need of an apartment, preferably living next to a good Christian family with a son or nephew about her age because goodness knows she cooks pretty good and ain’t too hard to look at, and pushing 30, doesn’t have too many good years left. Short-term leases only, please, because with heavenly intervention she’ll be getting married soon.” I never was much of a church-goer, but it was better than craigslist.com for finding a place to live. And while their methods seem a bit nosey and intrusive, it’s just people’s way of saying they care about your well-being. more>>>