Home (Not Always So) Sweet Home!

For someone in my position financially here in SoCal, my li'l less than 450 sq. ft. shackette-in-the-fields is a castle.  So, really, I shouldn't even write this post.  But I will anyway.

Recently I complained about the rats, so y'all know how I hate THOSE.  It's like having a bunch of frat hunks living up above me.  And for some reason, 4:15 a.m. is their "playtime."

When they die (not often enough) inbetween the walls, the stench lives on for months. 

Then, there're the greedy gophers and ground squirrels, who (along with the hares, altho I have a soft spot for those, LOL!) ruined my li'l veggie nursery attempt 3 years ago (I was hoping to grow a few humble peppers, radishes, cherry maters and lettuce to try to offset the prohibitive inflation here in GoldRushLand). 

If I'm gone for even 4-5 days visiting my mom or dogsitting, the spiders---inveterate squatters!!!---think it's EOHousing season 4 them.  I come back to rooms all "decorated" with what their creatresses think of as "gauze." 

The driveway's not paved, not even a layer of gravel, so whenever something falls out of the car (not infrequent), it gets filthy from the dust.  Ditto for the car:  I can spray it off today, and by tomorrow evening, it will look as tho I never had. 

The rolling-in-moula landlady's too chintzy to let me water the trees adequately in this prolonged Sahara kiln weather.  She leaves me with a broken toilet for 3-4 days on end, "permitting" me to use a bucket (or, in the old days, before the trees got "chemo hair," I'd squat under them---YES!  I kid you not!  That's how derelict she is in her landlordian duties!  She knows I can't afford to move, either financially, or in terms of packing, bec. of my FM). 

Those are just a sampling of what galls me here to no end (9 years of it now).

On the other hand, what I love?  Hundreds of stars @ night, strewn across the celestial canopy.  Owls holding animated conversations with each other (before the 2003 Conflagration, only between Oct. and December, but since then, any time of the year).  Roadrunners.  Coyotes (rare since the Conflagration, sniff).  Bluebirds.  Looney lizards on the porch, sometimes in the house (found a dead one in the living room shortly after I first moved in:  he was the size of a baby gator!), and often on the patio roof slats (where only some toes will give them away, LOL!)  Cows with their calves (the last one constantly got loose, providing me with lots of chuckles---and one night, a huge scare, bec. I thought there was a vagrant predator in my backyard!). Solitude.  Silence (fratrats not withstanding:  I have no immediate nearby traffic by my house, and the freeway noise from down the hill...well, when it starts up in the early a.m., I turn on my fan, and the rest of the time, I don't really notice it).  Autonomy.  Privacy.

If I just keep up my 9-year long discipline of focusing only on the good pts., I guess I could handle another 9 years here. :)