It's witchcraft.

In my latest attempt to put off unpacking, I strip the wallpaper in my dollhouse. The dolls deserve a brand new start too. My stepfather fished the 1962 Barbie comb and brush set out of my printer so I can print my own wallpaper now, but I want to see what Paper Source has. Without ever going in one I've deemed them expensive and yuppie, but I've noticed there is one close by so it's a reason to get outside with Isabel and explore our neighborhood.

I don't walk on 23rd Ave., the main drag, because Paper Source closes at 8pm and Isabel draws too much attention and would slow us down. I walk on 24th and see a couple small apartment complexes designed to blend with the Victorian houses and then the Victorian houses themselves. Almost every street in my neighborhood is pretty.

"WITCH'S PARKING ONLY. All others will be TOAD"

I take my iPhone out to get a picture of the sign on this garage (see picture above) when a jet of water shoots from some bushes, barely missing me and Isabel. Next, the witch herself steps out. “I'm taking a picture of your garage sign”, I say.

"Isn't it wonderful?", she says, "Would you like one?”

“I don’t even have parking”, I tell her, leaving out that I don't even have a car.

"Oh good", she says, "I've had it 30 years and I don't remember where I got it". When she speaks I detect an English accent and a trace of alcohol. "If your dog would like water there's a bowl in front of my house", she says. I thank her but tell her we've brought our own. I'm going to freak if she offers me or Isabel an apple.

I admire the duck decoy on the curb in front of her house. "Isn't he handsome?", she says, "Have you met the virgins?” I have met virgins. Leif was one when I married him (he married the first girl he slept with), but I say no as I'm pretty sure that's not what she means. She pushes aside some foliage and says, "Here, these virgins". There are 2 bookend-like metal statues of mud flap girls standing in the grass and one is pregnant. "That's before and after", she says.

Mud flap virgins, after and before.

I try to work in that I need to get to Paper Source before it closes. She says, "Oh, I'm going that way". She puts down her hose and starts to walk with me. I detect the alcohol again, but she looks sane in her English bowl cut and gardening apron over summery attire. I can't shake her, so I make conversation. I tell her, in an attempt to be odd enough for her, that I'm going to buy wallpaper for my dollhouse. "My mother had a dollhouse", she says. It's fortunate that she doesn't say she herself now has it or I truly would follow her into her home and disappear.

We walk into a beam of sunlight and she does the ‘bat’ shadow-show thing with her hands, linking her thumbs and spreading out her fingers. "It's an eagle", she says.

"It's a bat ", I tell her.

"But the wings are spread like an eagle's”, she says, "I don't imagine they taste very good". I don't look at her funny. I just don't have a rejoinder besides the obvious ‘tastes like chicken’, and I don't want to make this cliché joke. "Oh don't mind me”, she says, "We English have a funny sense of humor".

We have arrived at 23rd Ave., the busy shopping street, and a toddler immediately fixates on Isabel. My witch companion stops and arranges me and Isabel and the parent and child into various photo ops for the toddler's adoring father. "I'm a little concerned about time", I tell her.

"Oh, and I'm not helping". She veers right, into a tiny food mart that I imagine sells liquor and possibly bat wings. "Goodbye dear", she says as she waves to me and heads in. I'm not sure if I'm glad I shook her or disappointed I didn’t make a new friend. I walk up a couple more alphabet letters, hindered by tattooed folks and more elderly folk in summery attire who want to fawn on Isabel.

Paper Source is still open, but it’s a bust. It is a Mecca for high end scrap-bookers, handmade-card-makers and otherwise comfortably off but bored women. I was one till a couple months ago, though not quite as bored.

I spot in the gifty irrelevant-to-paper section of the shop the dread ‘Boo’, specifically a toy effigy of the Pomeranian staking claim as the cutest dog on Facebook or perhaps the world. Note, his mother is a Facebook employee. Zuckerberg probably makes 30 cents off every Boo doll that sells.

Isabel and I are not friends of Boo, anymore than we are of Bill W., but I see a Boo that’s Isabel’s size and am overwhelmed with temptation. I put both Isabel and stuffed animal Boo on the counter, with the sales person's permission (I ask once she notices what I'm doing), and take this lovely picture with my iPhone 3G. Isabel is the one on the left.

Isabel and Boo, respectively.