Josh and Korey

It’s Wednesday night at 9:15 p.m. I am in bed, exhausted, and trying to fall asleep. (Don’t judge me for being in bed this early…I’m tired.) My next-door neighbor’s sliding glass door screeches the awful metal-on-metal sound as it opens and he lumbers out. I hear him yell to his wife, she yells back. As they are both mostly deaf, I can’t understand a word they are saying, but they are loud. He opens his creaking gate [right under our bedroom window] and starts up a loud truck. He seems to be backing the truck into his yard, next to our fence [also right under window]. He has turned a floodlight on under the roofline of his tall backyard…garage? It is tall enough to house a motorhome. The light fills our dark bedroom. Then, he starts up a generator. Or a snowblower. SERIOUSLY?! Of course I can’t see a thing with my glasses on the nightstand, so I just stare at the orange light blindly and shake my head.

It’s 4:40 a.m. and I hear the unmistakable sound of a cat screaming. Don’t hate me for saying this, but I wish it was the sound of a cat being eaten by a predator. It wasn’t. Another cat joins it. I am getting very used to this sound. They continue for about 10 minutes. It sets off the horrible chihuahua that lives behind me. He barks until 5:30.

Once the sun is up, I call animal control. They tell me that I can trap the feral cats and they will come pick them up. Out of curiosity I google the cost of buying or renting traps. I would also have to provide water (and presumably food to entice them into the traps) for these animals. I know the shelter will euthanize them, but now that they are reproducing…

I don’t believe, generally, in killing things. I know it has to be done at times, but typically I’d like to stay out of the process. I don’t think it’s my place. However, it is decidedly more cruel to allow the cats to reproduce and create feral kittens. My next-door neighbor feeds the feral cats. That is why they always mate under my window. I don’t think he intends to be cruel, but he is. Feeding them is not in their best interest. They just create more homeless pets. The responsible thing to do, if you enjoy the company of wild cats, is to trap them, bring them in to animal control for spaying, and then return them to “the wild’ and continue feeding them. But he is not. Instead, I have the option of trapping them myself? No.

My solution?

I’m thinking a bee bee gun.

While I was in Palm Springs, I read Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls.

Ms. Walls also penned The Glass Castle which is a fantastic read; I recommend it often.
This book, while not a sequel by any means (Glass Castle is the author’s autobiography) is the story of the author’s grandmother’s life. I say “story” because I’m not anywhere near certain that it contains facts, which is the case in most biographies anyway. 😉

Walls writes her grandmother’s life story with an admiration of the American Southwest and its beautiful but harsh landscape, which I loved to read about. Times are rough-and-tumble, and Lily, our heroine, is up to the challenge. At first I really loved her pluck and determination. After a while, I started to think that she really thought a bit too highly of herself, and that her stubbornness was less than endearing… One problem I knew I’d have going in is that Lily is the mother of the awful Rosemary who “raised” Jeannette (the author). In reading  The Glass Castle, you come to hate Rosemary, and while I was admiring Lily’s courage, I found myself wondering how she would someday go so wrong with her daughter. Lily (in Jeannette’s words) does try to explain her shortcomings where Rosemary is concerned, but mostly I felt it was a cop-out. That’s when I started to think that Lily was a lot of talk and less action, and her character seemed more stubborn than courageous.

Aside from my criticism of the narrator’s personality, the book is an inviting, addictive read. It’s so fascinating to get a taste of the Southwest at the end of its most interesting era. She also ventures to Chicago in the height of industrialization, and it’s so interesting to travel back with her. Ms. Walls does an incredible job of setting each scene with painstaking precision, so that you can picture it perfectly as you read the story. It’s a very American tale of rags-to-riches (and back to rags, and back to riches, perhaps) and reads easily. Not as great as Castle, but I didn’t expect the author to capture the life of a woman she hardly knew as adeptly as her own, and I’m fine with that.

Welcome to the new blog.

I wanted something simple (and easier to navigate to) and I was craving more functionality, so I’ve made a big move and I hope you will enjoy it!

Also, I’ve really been working on blogging more often, with more dynamic content. I hope you’ve been enjoying it if you were previously a reader of East of Eden. I have a LOT to share with you, dear readers!

Are you new? Well THANK YOU for clicking on over here. I hope you’ll return.

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