Neighbor News

I like my neighbors...they are both nice and quirky, which is just perfect for a neighborhood, in my opinion. My neighbors to the northeast have been raising baby possums the last few weeks. It has been a little disconcerting seeing one of them walking around with a possum crawling all over their body, given my childhood traumatic memory of a possum killing all of my bunnies and leaving their body parts strewn about the lawn. A few days ago, they accidently left the cage unlocked, and suprisingly, the possums left(those ungrateful beasts!). The mother is very worried and asked my neighbor to the East: "What do you think they are eating?" Mmmmmm, luckily there are plenty of other possums around, so the good news is that there is plenty of possum food to keep those suckers alive.

My neighbor to the West has a yard that looks like it was hit with a bomb. He had a giant yard sale about 6 months ago, and when nothing sold, he just sort of left it all outside. This yard houses about 3 feral adult cats and 6 feral kittens, which I have been taming and hoping to move off the streets(yes, I admit this is my own particular quirkiness). Anyway, I brave his yard about every other day to go say hello to the cats. The other morning, I ran into him sitting on his front porch, bare-chested, having a morning smoke. Although I found it somewhat awkward to conduct a conversation with a shirtless, smoking man, I politely began to give him an update about the cat situation. Unfortunately, at that moment, our neighbor across the street turned on his very loud leaf-blower, thereby reducing our already awkward conversation to a loud shouting match. The good news is, of course, the whole neighborhood probably received the cat update, so maybe they will feel inclined to help. The bad news is, of course, that they were probably thinking: "Who are those two fruit loops?"

Rain: the milk of heaven

In a surprising twist, a freak thunderstorm just arose, complete with lightening, thunder, and heavy rain! I watched it come over the San Gabriel's-- first with the flashes of silent lightening, then as it got closer, the accompanying rumbles of thunder. When the rain started I just went outside and inhaled long, deep breaths of the fresh air, marveling that this experience could be so soul-satisfying. My favorite part was that when I went outside, I could hear screams of joy from kids all over the neighborhood-running around and enjoying the novel experience of the rain.