Putting out Fires

In the spirit of seeing the positive in leaving my first home…  I give you exibit #537 why I’m not sad to leave my neighborhood:

That’s right folks, that is every heinous Halloweenie blow-up atrocity every made, IN ONE FRONT YARD. 

I had a great weekend.  Things didn’t quite go as planned, but it still was so much fun!  I was so proud of myself on Friday that I did everything I said I was going to do, all on my own.  After a great dinner at the Culinary school, I took myself to a bar in Scottsdale called City Hall to meet some of my guy friends from work.  I’d like to share with you at this point that this bar was voted Best Bar for find a MILF in Phoenix.  I was, by far, the youngest woman in the bar.  I also was the only one in jeans, and the only one who didn’t get my lips ‘plumped’ in preparation for the evening out.  I then met my brother at Chasers in Scottsdale, where I was by far the OLDEST person.  I was also the only girl in there not dressed in a totally slutty Halloween outfit. 

Saturday I spent a lot of the day laying in the backyard in the peace and quiet enjoying the fact that I FINALLY triumphed over the next door neighbors and their freak-ass dogs.  Guess that little note from the police on their door finally did the trick.  HEY!  I did the neighborly thing and asked them nicely.  Like a million times.  Still, I can’t help but feel a little smug when I hear her yelling at those dogs as soon as they muster up the first howl.  Its about time that she dealt with it instead of me.

And today I had breakfast with africankelli, then made a few meals for my mommy-to-be friend for this exciting week.  The three of us went and saw Prime, which is rent-worthy in my opinion.  In the middle of all this I had a little accident in my house because I’m the klutz of the world, but it gave me a good excuse to go see Ryan:  free paramedic consultation.  I think I’ll live, but I’m going to be happy when my elbow looks and feels normal again.  Bags of frozen peas make excellent ice packs for injuries.

This evening I single-armedly made my favorite dessert to ring in the holiday season.  Pumpkin crunch cake!  Its for the guys at my work tomorrow, but my house now officially smells like fall. 

Happy Halloween to you all!  Hope you get something Tricky.  Or Treaty.  Whatever your pleasure.  Love ya!

I can’t even believe all the plans I’ve got for this weekend!  Tonight my real estate agent (otherwise known as my friend Mini) and I are going to the Scottsdale Culinary School for dinner.  Mmmm.  After that I’m meeting two old friends for drinks, and then I’m meeting up with my brother at a dive bar to see his friends’ band.  Tomorrow I’m going as africankelli’s date to a Halloween wedding, then to a Halloween party, then to another party with my bro.  And Sunday I’m going to a movie with my soon-to-not-be-pregnant friend Shayla, then I plan on packing and ordering myself a large Barros pizza.  Hamburger meat and black olive.  With a Pacifico.  mmmm again.

So, if you can’t beat the situation, take advantage of it, eh? 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we get attached to things.  I think that’s one of the reasons why I loath garage sales so much.  Yeah, yeah, I’m a certified packrat, but I also get emotionally attached to things (don’t all girls?).  Like for instance, the stupid Ouija board.  At the garage sale someone picked it up and offered me fifty cents for it.  FIFTY CENTS?!  My mind immediately flew back to girls’ slumber parties and crazy nights in dorm rooms.  How could I give up a memory like that for fifty cents?  And how about all my panda bears?  True, I’ve kept a whole lot of my panda things, and 27 years-old is a little too old for stuffed animals, but every one of those came from someone who saw it and thought of me.  How could I sell them?

But my house…  I really have had a hard time with my house.  I was looking at pictures the other day and it is amazing how many memories I have attached to this first house of mine.  I got married while living in this house.  We’ve had 4 years of holidays and birthdays in this house.  We’ve had all kinds of parties and get-togethers.  Ryan and I carefully fixed this house to fit us. 

And that is why I’ve decided to announce, in front of the blogosphere, my new found love and devotion for the dogs from hell next door.  Thank you for barking until 8am-5pm without stopping.  Thank you for making it impossible to relax in my own beautiful backyard during the very nicest part of the year.  Thank you for hanging over my wall howling at me as I do yard work.  Thank you for barking so loud that I can’t even hear my own thoughts INSIDE THE HOUSE.  For all these things, I thank you.  You have made it a joy and a pleasure to give up my first home.  And for that, I’m forever grateful.

Title:  The Dog Next Door Does its Part While the Police Listen Out Front

Ah yes, Mexico…  In short the weather was perfect, the water temp was perfect, the company was perfect, our condo was perfect.  It just was a good weekend.  And did I mention that we drank?  Oh did we drink…  Someone passed out by 8pm (don’t worry, I’m not outting you!), someone made out with a random girl (I AM outting you, KEVIN), and someone got so drunk that they decided that they should sell flowers on the street with the little Mexican boys.  Here’s some pics of our weekend away (and to give credit where its due, one of these is Shad’s, the awesome pic of the firework is Mini’s, and the rest are mine):

(honest, no one is drunk in this picture)

Kevin and his crazies lighting fireworks on the beach.  Thanks Min!

I took this sexy boy home from the bar that night. 

View from the fish market.  Puerto Penasco is known for its HUGE shrimp.

This weekend was also the first time our poor puppies were stuck in a kennel.  When I dropped them off, I made the mistake of looking back at them staring sadly after me.  I bawled.  And of course, when we got them back Mika was a shell of her poor little self.  She was sick all night.  And when I let them out to go to the bathroom, the both immediately jumped up on their lounge chairs and passed out. 

Now that we’re back Ryan’s got about 2 weeks where he’ll not be around very much.  Its going to be a stressful few weeks.  But I do have one funny story to share that’s house-related.  The inspection was completed on our new house yesterday.  The current owners of the house wrote an email that got to my agent complaining about, among other things, the fact that after the electricity was checked, nobody reset their alarm clock.  Oh, and the person buying my house?  One of his biggest concerns about our house is the following:  “Fans in both bathrooms are noisy”. 

If you can believe it:

Besides that, I have just now discovered that scraping termite tubes from under a house is up there on my list of creepy crawly tasks that I hope never to do again.

Well, I’m off to Mexico tomorrow!  Ryan and I reserved these condos over a year ago so we’ve definitely been looking forward to it for a long time.  I was thinking earlier today how hard it is to get excited just now with the work stress, the house stress, and general stress over who’s coming and who’s not on this trip.  But the good thing is that the people who are going (including my real estate agent, and you know we could both benefit from drinking heavily right now) are going to be a ton of fun.  Oh!  And the other good thing is that I’ve got all kinds of ideas about fun things to buy in Mexico to decorate our new house! 

Speaking of, did I mention that our offer was accepted?  This is such great news because now everything’s all settled and I don’t have to worry about strangers trampling through my house while I’m out of the country.  And now we can concentrate on packing instead of making our house presentable on a daily basis.  Which if you know me, this is almost nearly impossible.

OH!  Another good thing about Mexico:  beer.  And speaking of beer, I’m out.  As we all know that it is Thursday Night Drinking Night in our house, this is unacceptable.  I’ll have to remedy that…  hmmm  One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor….  ADIOS!  ¡Hasta el lunes!

I know I said last week that we were going to look at houses and that we were thinking about moving.  Here’s my life since Friday:

Friday:  drive home from Flagstaff.  Prepare for my least favorite day of the year.

Saturday:  Neighborhood garage sale (AAAAAHHHHH!)  Ryan gets stuck with mandatory (third week in a row, but don’t get me started) so its me and the ‘rents at my least favorite activity EVER.  Note me behind the camera hiding from hagglers.  And yard-spitter-oners.  And my crazy brother posing in the background.

Saturday afternoon:  house shopping without Ryan.  Murphy’s law:  on the one day you’re house shopping without your husband, you find THE house.

Sunday:  stress about buying a house your husband hasn’t seen.

Monday noon:  take husband to see house; one o’clock:  make offer; 1:30 your own house goes up on MLS; 3pm people start stalking the house even though there’s not a sign up yet;  4:30 house is in shambles from packing (and drinking), so of course your agent calls to say people are coming;  5pm people come to see the house;  5:02 people leave without fully appreciating your home and its gorgeous backyard.

Tuesday morning:  our offer for the new house is rejected, but we receive an offer on ours!  Tues afternoon:  redo our offer, drive to BFE to get hubby’s signatures, arm wrestle a fax machine.  Tues evening:  accept offer on our house.  But ALSO show the house to another couple and get a call on an offer from them too.  So let’s review:  we have no house to move into, but we could sell our house 10 times over.

PHEW!  I’m almost glad its gone so fast because I was verging on a full emotional break-down yesterday.  This is MY house.  It used to be orange with red trim outside, pink carpet, dirt in the backyard….  Now it is a gorgeous home.  My home.  And strangers are walking through it.  Judging.  Commenting. 

So now I’m going to spend the next month soaking up my first house.  And my gorgeous backyard.  Today, after a much needed (and quickly drank) glass of wine I sat in the backyard to watch the sunset.  I always wish that I had photography training, but no more so than when its sunset.  But what I do know is, I can photograph the puppies and I almost always love how the pictures come out because I love those pups as if they were my kids.  And if a sunset happens to sneak into the background….

Just in the last week my blog has uncovered:  a needed conversation with my in-laws (I LOVE you guys reading here!  even if it means i edit comments about my “toys”  hehe), a long lost friend of my husband’s (how in the world does that happen?), a blogodox where a blogger I semi-stalk found me though another blog, and I found out that my friends’ parents read this blog.  Who knew?  But seriously, I love it. 

I made it back safely from Flag.  Sadly, I totally missed out on the changing leaves because I really, honestly, did go up there for work.  I swear!  Boondoggle or not, I really did some good work.  And M, yes, Northern Arizona University uses hands on applications and actively asks students for their opinions on the curriculum.  I’m a lucky girl to have that place on my resume, but I’m biased.

And GUESS WHAT!  I know it sounds like nothing to you, but today THE DOGS NEXT DOOR DIDN’T BARK AT ALL!  I don’t know what did it, but I don’t care.  This just makes it that much easier to sell this place.  Speaking of, I’m flying solo on house hunting this week.  Poor Ryan is stuck on mandatory (72 hours in row) for THE THIRD WEEK.

Next weekend I’ll be lying on the beach in Mexico and all my heinous work problems, dog problems, house problems, etc will all melt away, just like the ice in my frozen margarita.  I know, lame analogy, but seriously, MARGARITAAAAASSSSSS….  mmmmmm  (and really, who holds on to a margarita long enough to let the ice melt?!)

Below are random photos.  I’m not going to title them, but you should understand what they are.  Love ya!

OH WAIT!  I forgot!  I don’t have a USB cable.  Hmmmm 

I’m in Flagstaff right now.  Gorgeous, peace-loving, friendly, good food, stellar music, autumn leaves Flagstaff.

I am currently taking notes for a meeting with the students of the Mechanical Engineering department.  I get to meet with the students twice a year to see if they feel the University is doing a good job teaching them.  And I get paid to do it.  It is the best part of my job!

The great thing about a University is that someone nearby always has a wireless connection to mooch off of. 

I’ll be up here sucking in the mountain air until tomorrow and the Internet connection at my hotel is miserable, so I’ll catch up with you more this weekend! 

Mika has been so good about being out of the crate.  Until last week.  After the incident with the beer bottle, the chicken, and the scissors, we took that girl to the vet for advice.  They told us that she had separation anxiety.  I’m not surprised.  I was gone all summer and Ryan’s been working a lot of 72hr shifts lately.  The vet suggested that we distract her when we leave the house, as most dog destruction happens in the first 20 minutes of their humans being gone.  So every morning I’ve been shoving peanut butter in a shin bone to keep her busy.

Well today I used my camera to take an artsy picture that I’m really proud of.  It is entitled The Wrath of Mika, Oct 12th 2005.  I would show you this picture were it not for the fact that the thing destroyed today was THE FREAKING USB CABLE FOR MY CAMERA!  That’s right folks, instead of ingesting glass, this week she’s chosen to ingest pieces of metal wire.  Now I’m on 24-hr no food, vomit watch.  *sigh* 

In other dog news:  this afternoon I was sitting at my desk fuming about the barking dogs next door.  So I called animal control.  Evidently in our city its against the law to have a dog causing a barking disturbance ANY time of day.  With a very viable Plan B in my pocket, I decided to first try another conversation with them.  So I took our portable phone, walked into my backyard, and left a message on their answering machine about the dog barking.  I have a feeling they’ll get the point because their dogs were barking so loud in the background, I’m sure they could barely understand my message.  I got home after learning to knit (laugh if you will) tonight to find a message from the neighbors saying that they’re seriously considering a bark collar.  A pig just flew by the window. 

To the comments about our move from this house:  yeah, I can see how it would sound insane that we’d move because of barking dogs, but YOU DON’T KNOW.  Our house is no longer peaceful, we can’t be in our own awesome backyard, I can’t lay out in the afternoon…  But besides all that we’ve been planning to move for a while, this was just the last straw.  Ahhhh, to be in a neighborhood where people pull their weeds, don’t have tinfoil in their front windows, and don’t have a set of high school lockers in their front yard for 2 years.  On that:  this weekend is my neighborhood’s annual community yard sale.  (trashy people selling trash, yeah I said it)  Ryan and I have decided to sneak over to the locker house the night before and put up a huge sign saying, “LOCKERS, FREE TO A GOOD HOME”. 

The end.

Look, I consider myself to be someone who is understanding of the fact that people have different beliefs than I do.  I would never dream of attempting to change someone’s way of thinking.  Trying to force someone to your way of thinking is the most self righteous thing someone can do.  I would hope that everyone respects people by respecting their beliefs, but I find too often that people feel the need to try to fix me, or to show me the right way.

It is for this reason that I have a serious issue with door-knockers.  Not 2 months goes by without Mormon missionaries stopping by to try to convert us.  Neighborhood churches come by often to try to get us to go to a service on Sunday.  And just last night a young man came to our door saying he was ‘working on a scholarship’.  He then proceeded to try to convince us to take religious literature.  But tonight takes the cake. 

Can you tell what this horribly dark and blurry picture shows?

That’s right, that’s a BUS parked in front of my house.  If I haven’t made it clear yet, my neighborhood is not the best, so when a stranger knocks on our door at 8pm in pitch dark, Ryan is quickly on the defensive.  When he opened the door they immediately started in with their pitch and Ryan was so angry that he was actually slightly rude to them, which is unlike him.

I took the picture from behind a pillar in front of our house because these people had engulfed our neighborhood and were at almost every door.  Like a religious invasion.

Here’s the deal:  most people are reasonably intellegent and capable of making smart, well-informed descisions which are appropriate to them.  What makes people think that scaring me half to death late at night is going to convince me to change beliefs that I’ve had for most of my life?  Anyone? 

So this past Friday we got invited to a party by Ryan’s ff friend Trace.  We’ve been to raging parties at his house before, so imagine my surprise when I walked in to find that it was an intimate couples party.  There were only 5 couples, all around our age.  And we were the only ones who didn’t bring a carload of kids.  1300 sq ft of running, screaming kids.  But the kids weren’t the worst part.  Evidently at these family parties the men congregate in the kitchen around the munchies talking about football, while the women settle in the living room to talk about, you guessed it, children.  Can you see where I fit in at this party? Yep, that’s right, with the kids.  So I spent Friday night hearing about how I look like Carrie someone-or-other from American Idol, and trying on fake jewelry.  Sadly, its one of the more fun parties I’ve been to.

Here’s one of the little girls with my shoes and a fire hat on.  Too cute.

Last Friday was also the birthday of my favorite woman.  My mom.  I won’t tell you how old she is, and even if I did you wouldn’t believe me.  Look at this gorgeous lady (with my bro).

This weekend we also did yard work.  Karma helped. 

And then she slept.

The big news of the week is that the new dogs next door have finally done it.  They’ve driven us past the outer realm of sanity to a place that’s not pretty.  Much spying to see when neighbors left and spraying of hoses and water guns happened this weekend.  The barking.  Oh the barking!  Its not just occasionally, its ALL THE TIME.  5:30 am when I let the dogs out?  Barking.  When I bring my good friend Erin over to enjoy our Arizona weather by the pool.  Barking.  Yard work.  Barking.  Sleeping.  Barking.  Us doing NOTHING AT ALL TO ANTAGONIZE THEM.  Oh yeah, they bark then too.  So, we’ve had it.  Had it with being audibly attacked every single freaking time we go in our own backyard.  So we’re moving.  Today we went with our realtor and looked at about 6 houses.  One was in the ghetto and fully had a PLANT growing into one of the rooms in the house.  One was absolutely full of cobwebs and the yard hadn’t been mowed in ages.  Two agents lied about the specs on their houses.  Two agents didn’t even bother leaving a KEY for us to get in.  Hmmmm, amazing that people can sell houses these days (plug:  this is why if you’re in AZ and want to sell, you should TOTALLY use my friend Elizabeth.)  Anywho, one of the houses without a key looks to be pretty close to exactly what we want, so there’s hope! 

I hope you’re all having a lovely day today.  Its just the start of the week, but I have a good feeling about this one!  Take care.