Addendum to cats, casts and cactus

Sometimes I show Nicky my stories before I hit “send” and sometimes I hand him a printed copy after the fact. This last was after the fact. And after he read it, he exclaimed that no one would ever want to come and visit on that basis of the themes of that story. Mountain lions in the neighborhood, broken bones, Cast Days and thorny agave boo-boos. I feel like I should add a resounding, “…Oh My” to the litany – familiar to any fan of the Tin Man, the Straw Man, and Dorothy on their way to see the Wiz.

So I’ll add two fun facts about Silver City and a funny.

How is Silver City like Washington DC?

• It has just about every spring-blooming ornamental tree that you see in DC, all of which have come into glorious bloom. I mentioned this before, but didn’t realize just how many familiar varieties of blooming trees there are here. Nick and I are busily pointing out the best to each other, just as we often did driving around home.
• It has a street named for every state in the Union, just like DC. Although many of Silver’s streets are much shorter and far less grand. One state-named street we found yesterday only had 3 houses and 4 pickups.

And here’s why no one needs a 2700 square foot house. Especially coming from a house of a size that you always knew where the other one was. A couple of nights ago, about bedtime, I was finishing up reading the newspaper in the kitchen, while Nicky had already gone into the bedroom, Nutmeg following along. I took the paper and some other recyclables into the garage, turning on the light from the house-side of the door, and letting the door close behind me. I dropped the recyclables into their proper boxes, and turned back to the door to go into the house, only to find – you might have seen where this was going – the door was locked! I knocked – Nutmeg barked a time or two. I knocked harder and Nutmeg barked a little more. But no Ses-a-me opened the door. I knocked, graduated to pounding, then on to kicking the door! Nutmeg did her best to help by coming to the other side of the door and barking furiously. Finally, I heard this faint voice with a huge question mark ”…Sonnie???” Nicky didn’t know I had stepped into the garage and he went around checking doors before going in to bed for good. What impeccable timing that he came to lock the door just as it had closed completely, and turned the lock in the 30 seconds I was inside before I turned back to the door knob. He thought my knocking was coming from the kitchen. God knows why he thought Nutmeg was barking so, but that’s what finally got his attention. Not before I started thinking about how uncomfortable I’d be spending the night in the garage.

So is this better? Not so worrisome? Maybe you’ll come now, if all you have to do is worry about getting locked in the garage. At least there, you’ll be safe from mountain lions. Meow….