It's Turdsday. Shit I've Learned about Divorce #5: A Gem from a Reader Comment

"When we mutually determined to divorce, we both agreed that we married in the best of intentions, so thus we also decided that if we must divorce, we must do so with the same spirit.."


That's humbling, this comment from one of my readers of a recent Thursday post.
It's all I have to say about divorce today.

I'd rather point out the way the morning light makes my dining room look like it's been dipped in gold after the man who loves me spends an evening here.


My heart has the same look, I'm pretty sure. 

Wilder than You Think

Wedged between some pots on my patio, I found this the other morning. 

It was tricky extricating it from its narrow berth, and I pulverized a three to four inch section of it as I lifted it out--so that means the snake that shed its silvery skin was about a foot long or a little more.

This is the sixth place I've lived since moving to L.A. in 1975. The wild thing about the duplex in Culver City was the neighbor's doberman--and the deranged roommates. On Manhattan Place in the Wilshire district a bank robber pushed me aside as he jumped over the back fence with a gun and a bag of money. In Silver Lake an expensive bike was stolen out of our garage as I walked back and forth between there and the house putting away Christmas decorations. In Los Feliz there were skunks and raccoons, avocado rustlers, and a housepainter who tried to infiltrate his way into the family. In Sierra Madre a scary drunk guy staggered into our driveway one night--and there were teenagers. Lots of teenagers. They're always wilder than you think, those teenagers. 

But I've never had a bear in my jacuzzi or a deer devour my garden or a coyote or a mountain lion stalk my children, as sometimes happens in certain neighborhoods in Los Angeles. And I've never seen a snake in L.A. except while hiking in the San Gabriel mountains.  I'm hoping this little guy is a baby boa constrictor and that it has an appetite for squirrel.

One of my Favorite Blogs

I am obsessed with books. I am always reading a book. When I finish it. I know what I will read next. I've written a book and want to see it published. I have a wall of books in my living room, another bookcase of them in my study, rows of them on my desk and in my bedroom.  I have a Kindle and an iPad--because what if the battery runs down and the e-book I'm reading is inaccessible? When I fly, I always have my iPad and a"real" book because the iPad must be powered down during take off and landing.

Well, enough about books and me.

Read THIS.

Squirrel Underpants or Now I Understand Everything

My patio wall is "nut highway." Which is not to say it is populated by religious zealots holding signs predicting the end of the world, or that goofy sect of Catholics promulgating their theory that Galileo was wrong after all. Squirrels. I'm talking about squirrels. It's rush hour on my patio wall all day long. Acorns being ferried south. Pecans being transported north. Chattering and posturing, up the towering grevalia trees and down, through my scraggly hibiscus hedge, up my denuded apricot tree and into the neighbors' flowering pear. Complete fucking squirrely nuttiness, and I am contemplating mayhem.

I have eaten exactly one apricot from my tree in the four years I've lived here. True, I travel a lot.  And I've done some STUPID THINGS. If I stayed home more often, I could tend things better. Next spring when the apricots appear, I hope to be here installing robotic owls or motion sensitive barking devices. Maybe I'll coat every branch of the tree with vaseline or chili pepper or encase each little green precursor of golden fruit into its own tiny wire cage.
                                                                          

Or maybe I'll buy a gross of these and wrestle the furry-tailed little shits into some tighty whiteys and hope for a reduced squirrel sperm count.

I know there are people who love squirrels. I apologize. But I love my paltry and petite urban garden. I want to pick bowls of blueberries and strawberries and stir them into my yogurt. I want apricots heaped into the fruit bowl on my kitchen counter. I want a handful of kumquats every damn day that they're in season. I don't want squirrels.




I used to eat squirrel when I was a kid. My dad hunted them and my mom served them up with gravy. My dad helped me tie the fluffy tails to my tricycle handles. I don't own a bike now, and I'm a vegetarian or maybe I could more actively solve this problem, you know what I mean?

My patio is also home to two kinds of geraniums, three rose bushes, two colors of kalanchoe, camellias, hydrangeas, impatiens, jasmine, bougainvillea, calla lilies, and several varieties of hibiscus. Can we talk about the hibiscus for a minute? The flowers are pretty enough although there's no scent, and they're not good for cutting. Which means that the only reason to keep battling the white fly that so dearly loves them is the flowers in situ. But I don't have a lot of flowers. Which, as I've said, is the whole point of hibiscus-ness. I should feed them more, I thought. Do a better job of keeping the whitefly off them. I should prune more--or prune less.

Today I understood everything.

If you see a squirrel in underpants, I'm responsible.

photo credit for "Squirrel Underpants": www.squirrelunderpants.com/ "Protect the world from squirrel nudity!"