ah squeenta, the garage is done

The word squeenta has been an inside joke amongst my friends for at least 20 years now. It has something to do with squirrels and something to do with the Spanish pronunciation of China (chee-na) and then maybe the extra “T” was thrown in for fun? Who knows how we arrived there. It is the name we all call each other at this point with variations like “Cheens” “Squeens” “Squanto” “Jeans” and “Squirrelina.”

Anyhow, Squeenta, the garage is done. Three solid days of cleaning and organizing. I’m thrilled. Today for the first time in 9 months I had a proper work out. Not a deeply compromised garage work out with three random weights and some hastily sourced elastic bands. Nope, a full on for real bench and rack with weights and already I’m in a much better mood. I’ve used exercise since the big freak out of 2005 to regulate my mood. The pandemic resulted in my gym being shut down. I’d switched to bicycling but then stopped that because we had for a while a 9 hour wait for emergency room access due to them all being full of Covid patients. The last thing medical workers needed was my dumb ass showing up because I went over my handlebars on Sunset Blvd. I’ve been a complete cranky pants for at least the last six months.

I did not expect to find as many mouse turds in our garage as I did. There’s a good sized gap around the garage door and really Los Angeles homes are like semi permanent tents in terms of weather tightness. There were also these palm berries? I’m not sure what they’re called but berries from palm trees that I guess the rats brought in with them when they were nesting in the garage. We have crazy rat problems in L.A. What’s even worse is our rats are smart. They know all the usual traps and are incredibly hard to catch. I don’t have qualms about lethal traps but I won’t use poison because of the dog and also we have a lot of falcons that live in the area. However, I haven’t found a lethal trap they’ll go near no matter how tempting the bait. Instead I’ve been using a catch and release trap that works really well. After I catch them I go and set them free on the banks of the LA river in a remote/rural part of the city. Do rats migrate miles and miles? I have to imagine not. My cleaning lady was scandalized when I explained my non lethal trap to her. In El Salvador there’s no second chances for Los Ratones. She’s a funny one. She isn’t so much scandalized by the fact that I’m a dude, married to a dude – no me importa she likes to say. However the thing that blows her mind is he’s Catholic and I’m Protestant. I don’t have the heart to tell her that we’re really, really terrible at our respective religions. I mean Dean’s mom only baptized him for the swag at the after party. They haven’t set foot in a church since. My mom stopped going to church probably 15 years ago when her local franchise in Ft. Lauderdale started getting all anti-gay and anti-women. She’d worked all her life, and was really good at it — so when they started in on “women need to stay home and be submissive” she peaced-out pretty quickly. It’s a lack of self reflection that’s leading to the shrinking numbers in the pews. Fine with me, TBH. The church can’t figure out why they’re losing members faster than AOL circa 2000 and haven’t noticed the all-the-bigotry-you-care-to-eat buffet has turned off a size-able portion of the population. I know, I know the reasons why they won’t re-evaluate. The Bible is a dead document and one that can’t change to serve populations born after 1611. Cool beans, Cheens! All I’m saying is even the Mormon elders have convenient “visions” from time to time when necessary. Nobody ever claimed the Bible was the 100% error free word of God until the 19th century. Maybe those 19th century dudes were wrong?