The other shoe

So, as many of you know, the other shoe did drop, earlier this week. On Halloween, to be exact. I wonder how many people had eviction notices taped to their front doors on Halloween this year. With the help of my wonderful attorney niece, we are attempting to fight the eviction (by convincing the bank's attorneys that we are legal renters of this house, in which case we get 90 more days). Sometimes I think this will work, sometimes I think it won't.

I keep reminding myself that we're really not in bad shape here, it's not like losing a house you own (sort of) to foreclosure. But I'm still pretty stressed.

This is what happens when you leave pomegranates on the tree for one day too long: they POP, and then these odd, slow-moving bugs climb into them. This is what happens in Ridgecrest in the fall.

We also lost a tortoise this week -- she seems to have wandered away. I feel that this is almost entirely the fault of DEUTSCHE BANK, because if we could have left her in her pen to hibernate normally this wouldn't have happened. Of course, I suppose it's really the fault of our former landlord, for not paying the mortgage, or maybe it's even our fault for not moving out as soon as we knew we were going to have to. Hmm.

Anyway, she's gone. We've put "Lost Tortoise" signs up around the neighborhood, but no one in the tortoise club seems too concerned -- apparently this happens a lot with desert tortoises. It happened with both of my family's desert tortoises when I was growing up. They just wander away -- into someone else's yard or maybe back into the wild. The wild is just about a block away from our house, so maybe that's where she is.

I think we're going to let the other tortoise go to someone else's house where she can burrow down for the winter, rather than risk losing her too.

Also there was an earthquake this week, about half a mile from Rocket Boy's office.

Despite the eviction notice, Halloween was nice. Here's a photo of the boos trick-or-treating:

At each house I would say to them "Remember to say trick-or-treat" and they would say, obediently, "Trick-or-treat!" -- except that the door wasn't open yet. When the door opened, they would stand there staring at the person holding a bag of candy. After they got their candy, I would hiss at them, "Say thank you! Say thank you! Say thank you!" but mostly they didn't. It was very sweet.

And now it is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I'm trying to find the oomph to write another novel. Not so easy -- I'm a little lacking in oomph.

Someday this will all be over.