so my site was down for a lil bit and its been a while since ive gotten the chance to post anything.

everythings been going pretty well.. its been hot as hell here; into the 110s. my pool is no longer nice and cooling, but more like a luke-warm bath. there is no such thing as a “cold shower” in arizona. all the pipes that carry the cold water are hot. a cold shower is a luke-warm-to-warm shower. so all of that is pretty annoying. my best bet has been to stay inside during the day and go out for night swims (that way i dont get sunburned either) and then once i get out its cooler at night and there is a gentle breeze and it feels cool.

im still slowly gaining a new wardrobe of clothes.  went out to khols the other day and picked up three new tops.  they were all ones that i had tried on before the trip to pa but didnt purchase because of the price ($46); they were now down to $8.80. so i couldnt pass that up.  i also picked up a lovely new black leather hobo bag. i absolutely love it. i just take it with me everywhere and constantly pet it. (its so soft!)

last saturday i went and cut my hair. i lost about 6in and my hair now barely brushes against my shoulders.  its so nice. i feel like a great big weight has been lifted from my head (well, i guess it has). it also perked the perm back up since it didnt have that weight pulling it down, so its short and curly/wavy. i’m constantly shaking my head ‘no’ just to feel the tips of my hair slap me in the face.  the best part is that it dries so quickly and doesnt get as knotted easily. its a snap to deal with.

my garden is still chugging along like the little engine that could.. my sunflowers have fallen over and my pumpkin leaves are starting to whither.  why? because of the heat and sun. our shade screen we had over them collapsed and just wouldnt come back up.  we went and bought a big umbrella and stand for it, but its not doing much good either.  i think we’re just going to have to go out and buy some 2×4s and create a top wooden box to attach the sunscreen more permanently to. my tomatoes are doing ok. i have my first tomato and its looking pretty healthy and round.  i have about 5-6 green peppers that are growing nicely.

right now im still on summer vacation. my days consist of mostly doing nothing and sleeping in. ive been watching a lot of documentaries on IFC and the Sundance channel. i’m also still reading a good bit, but not as voraciously as i was 1-2weeks ago.

im waiting patiently to hear back from the plastic surgeon.. we called the insurance company for something else and asked about that and they said it would be covered.. im just waiting for the letter of approval to go from the insurance company to the dr and for the dr to call me to schedule the appointment. im very excited about it.  its been hurting me a bit lately.
there was more that i wanted to talk about, but heck if i can remember what now.. i guess it will have to wait for next time.

first off.. bleh.

my pump died in my fish tank. my cucumbers died. my bamboo shrimp died. the other day, my guppie died. now one of my tetras died (but in all fairness, im not sure if it was because of something wrong with the tank or because my dempsy just ate it for fun and food). bleh. i dont know what im going to do about any of the above.

ive been meaning to write the past few days, but havent had a chance.

saturday night we went out with ppl jim worked with. i had too much to drink and was introduced to jagermeister and red bull. wow. ill leave it at that. lol on sunday we stayed in and replanted my cucumbers so that they could have more room to grow. we also went out and tried a new chinese place. it was kinda bad and i think it made me sick. ive been feeling more than a little bleck lately. on monday, i forgot to water we also mapled and got some take out from t&m. at some point we watched “dan in real life.” a friggen awesome movie. today i did work for school, jim had a meeting, and we went out with my mom to costco, target, and buffalo wild wings.

on monday we also did a hell of a lot of work. we cleaned up the house (i finally mopped!) and we called a guy about the ac. we tried turning it on sunday night and it wouldnt come on. it just made a nasty loud humming sound and blew warm air. it was on pure luck that we were able to get someone the next day.. a lot of the places we called said a 4+ day wait. (umm. yeah. i dont think so). one ad said “same day service” but jim thought it looked cheap and didnt want to go with them. when he finally called them, they were very professional and (the first we called to do so) asked what we were experiencing. the guy they sent out was friggen GREAT.

ok, backstory. last year our ac was acting up. wasnt blowing that cold and was blowing all of the time. some came to the door one afternoon and i let him in the backyard to fix it.. yeah.. well. i thought my mom had finally scheduled someone to come out and had forgotten to tell me. turned out the guy was just at the wrong house. paid him a lot of money. he left. two day later the ac goes COMPLETELY out. yeah. i had jimmy get us a night at a hotel in eloy because it was just too friggen hot to sleep. i was in the pool every two hours to cool down and was just exhausted from no sleep. (yes, we took poochies with us so they could sleep cool too for a night). my mom did have to call the insurance ppl and they sent someone out. they replaced the motor for the nominal charge of the insurance price and everything was pretty ok after that until sunday when we tried to turn the ac on.

now back to this weekend. fri-sun me and my mom had been snippy at each other, mainly about whos responsibility it is to do what. because of all of this, me and jim opted to call in ac repair from some one out of the phonebook instead of me arguing more with her and waiting th week+ that the insurance would take to find and call someone out.

well, the guy we called out said that the ppl the insurance ppl had out last summer had put in a crappy motor. he said it was so crappy that his own company stopped carrying it awhile ago because its total crap. the problem with it? they’re notoriously known for going out after a year (2 if you’re *extremely* lucky). in other words our insurance was going with a company that was ripping them (and us) off and using super-cheap parts. since it was under a year the old motor was still under waranty and we could call insurance company, argue, wait a week, have them send the ppl out from last year, get another crappy motor replacement, or just have the guy who was here then replace it for like $350. yeah. we chose the latter. so.. yeah.. jimmy got a great back-rub for being such a great provider on monday and will probably get a few more before the week is out. my parents offered to split it and pay jimmy back half(+), but he has declined. (we did get dinner on my mom tonight, so thats a plus lol)

on monday we also called some window repair ppl. it seems as thought a little doggy might have fallen on the back of the couch and into the window (or perhaps they just jumped on it) and there is now a crack going right across it. we’re not really sure when it happened. murphy really likes that window and he stares out of it all of the time (so does rusty, to a lesser extent). jimmy is worried that someone might push against it and have it break and come shattering down and hurt them. so hopefully be the weekend someone will come out and change it out. someone was suppose to come out yesterday or today to measure it. they said they would have to order the glass and should have it in in about 3day or so.

we’ve also been talking about what to do with the front and side yard. it just so happened that we had a huge magnet (we got it from the place where we rent our storage unit from; they had a stack of them and i took one) that had local contact numbers for fire, emergency, and poison control and such. well, along the side of it it has about 4-6 advertisements from local businesses. one of them is a temp agency and it states 4hours for $55 or 8hours for $110. theyll provide ppl to do anything from packing, cleaning, moving, to landscaping and yard work. we want to take out a few trees and a few stumps and cut back some bushes. we also wanna look into putting down some type of edging between the landscaping rocks and the sidewalk.

our neighbor just completely redid her front lawn (put in grass in a kidney-shaped area with this wonderful edging around it, new red landscaping rocks, begonias, and a few citrus trees) with the help of another neighbor. the “another neighbor” is new to the neighborhood. they’re an older retired couple and as nice as peach pie. we went out one day to find that our alley had been cleaned up and our bushes along the side of the house (along side the outside edge of our wall (we dont have fences out here, we have walls) and often forgotten about) had been pruned. we had no idea what happened. then we met the neighbor-man and he said that he hopped that we didnt mind and that he had done. i guess he is newly retired and has been trying to keep busy. well.. he’s just infectious i guess.. the other neighbor lady redid her front yard with his help and now we’re thinking of redoing ours.. especially so if we can get work done for $110/day. i would love to put some citrus trees in, but we have some decorative olive trees in now and they’re just a pain in the ass with the mess that they make.

jimmy said he would be willing to pay for it, but he’d want to get a lot of things taken out and really get his money’s worth lol my mom said it would also be something she would like to do.. however all four of us have trips planned to go back to pa (my mother in father in early may and me and jim in mid to late may).. so it would probably have to wait until we come back and after we get our tax money. it should be really nice though. i cant wait.

ive still been really amazingly happy and high on life lately. today after my shower i just burried my face in a towel and smiled at how fresh it smelled and how great it felt against my skin.

ive really been thinking lately that i want to get published. im working on a creative writing class and im doing really well in it. my teacher has been raving about two short stories in particular. i would like to work on them more, develop them into novels, and submit them to some literary agents. is it too late to change my new years resolution? : finish a novel. get an agent.

four more of my pumpkins are starting to come up! i have no idea what i’m going to do with all of these plants.  me and jim went to biglots the other day and picked up some plastic storage tubs; the short, flat kind.  i plan on drilling some holes in the bottom of them and using them as a movable garden.  my parents are still rolling their eyes and saying that it wont last once it reached the 110s. i just say: hey. we were just at a pumpkin patch in october. if they can do it, we can do it! :D  so hopefully i can at least grow some pumpkins.

so my garden is coming up *beautifully.*  i have another pumpkin coming up and about 43 lil cucumber pants. i have about 7 lil tomato plants sprouting up as well.  my peppers are growing great and are now getting their second set of leaves in.  tomorrow me and roo plan on looking around the yard and trying to figure out where to put our next garden. yay!

i was listening to the new madonna song, 4minutes, and i absolutely hate it from the very beginning. in the version that i saw and the lyrics that i read to confirm (of course now that i go and look everything says differently, but it did say this two-three days ago) was timbaland singing something to the likes of “i’m outta time. i’ve only got 4 minutes.”  …..    ….  …..   ok…. yeah… umm… 4minutes is a unit of time.. so if you have 4minutes, you have time; you’re not out of it -grrr- i hate silly things like that.   (and i did refind those lyrics here).

for some reason, ive been waking up incredibly early. i forgot that i use to like to be a morning person. ive been getting up around 7 - 7.30am. a week ago i was going to bed at 5.30am. lol so i’m really proud of myself.

today, i’m absolutely loving my husband (just like everyday, but just a pinch more today).  we went out with my mom and went up to chandler.  we stopped at black angus and had an *excellent* lunch/dinner. money’s been a lil tight for my parents, so bunny paid.  i thought that was so nice of him.  then we had to go to costco and pick up a few things. the doggies (as always) made out like bandits. jimmy bought them some duck jerky and some honey biscuit cookies and my mom picked them up some chicken jerky (they love the jerkies) and a package of bones.  jimmy also got us this really great doggy training book that i cant wait to start reading tomorrow. its really detailed and has some great instructions in it.

after that we went over to walmart and picked up almost one of everything. we also stopped and showed my mom the bikes we were looking at last time and thinking about getting. they didnt have the one that i liked in the color that i liked (they had it in white and hot pink; a lil too girly for me). we kept looking and found two matching ones that we liked and were cheaper than the others. jimmy surprised me and got them for us. they’re both the old, 50s-type cruisers. hes is red and mine’s blue.  we had to struggle getting everything into the car, but we managed to do it.  after we got in and put away our groceries and things, me and jimmyroo went for a bike ride around the block. it was dark, so we didnt want to go too far and, really, we just wanted to test them out.  i haven’t ridden a bike in 4-5years.  i know its been even longer since jimmy did.  it was loads of fun. :)  jimmy wants us to get helmets.  i know they’re good, but i dont really want to.  so we will see.  tomorrow we’re gunna go for another ride around the neighborhood.  i’m sure its going to be great again
for some reason we’ve just been assaulted with mosquitoes lately. :(  some, i swear, are as big as the palm of my hand. i call them the prehistoric mosquitoes. i’m waiting for one of them to fly off with walter.  it just dawned on me the other day that they have to be coming from standing water, and most likely from someone’s nasty, uncared for pool. i dont know what to do. :(  we can call the city and complain, but they’ll come spray and with rooroo’s healthy, that worries me a lot. he’s just such a fragile little dog with his allergies that i worry a lot about him. i’m sure the extra poisons in the air wouldnt be good for him.
speaking of poisons.. i need to find some organic gardening pest-control stuff.

i am very happy.  jimmy’s coming home today and should be home in a few short hours. yay!

my garden is growing BEAUTIFULLY! my strawberries are blooming, the tomatoes are coming up, the peppers are growing in their second set of leaves.  i noticed yesterday that one of the pumpkins is coming up its looking like the other ones might be duds though. but the one that is coming up has these gorgeous big leaves.   i have something like 33 lil cucumber plants sprouting up from the ground. my sunflowers are also starting to come in nicely.. this weekend me and jimmaroo are gunna have to go out and look for a place to start a new garden, big garden. i really did plant too many things    my parents keep saying that its going to get too hot this summer for them and that a lot of them will die i hope not.  i’m hoping my peppers will be ok. they like the heat.. and hey, shouldnt sunflowers like the sun?

for some reason, murphy hasnt been eating :(  ive been having to point at his food dish and tell him to “go eat.”  i havent seen him eat voluntarily on his own in at least a week. last night, after some coaxing, murphy ate a whole plate of food like a starving little puppy. jim is wondering if maybe he’s sad because his daddy’s gone. i dont know whats wrong. :(  i’m worried about him.

i watched a show last night on ID (investigative discovery). it was a documentary of countries in south america.  i think they were in like hondorus when i caught it.. a woman translator/guide was showing the host around. they were at a garbage dump and 1,000 families (not people, but whole families)  were living off of the dump. trucks caring 4tons of garbage would arrive every 15-20mins.  a guy would climb into the back, on top of it all, and rake the garbage down to the ground where people and children would dig through it. they even found their food from the dump. the children were looking for cans and toys. one child became very excited when he has eighteen cents worth in cans. there was a woman there with two children. she looked very old and at first i thought she was the children’s grandmother; she was their mother. she walked up to the translator, a young woman in her late 20s to mid 30s, and asked her to take her two daughters.  the mother said she couldn’t support them and wanted them to have better.  i just started crying right along with the translator/guide woman.
i was reading CNN today and stumbled across a news video of a 70yo first-grader.  he was born in the 1930s and promised his mother he would learn to read.  so there he is now, an elderly man, sitting in chairs with 6yos around him and learning to read. the teacher recalled a time when the man  came up to her and asked her if she knew that in grocery stores they had signs above the aisles that say what is in them so you dont have to go up and down them all.   my heart just broke!

i’m so lucky to have been born here. i’m lucky that every night i have a soft bed with a gluttony of pillows and blankets to sleep on, a tubby dog who snuggles me and keeps me warm, clean disease-free food in my own tummy, and no fear of where my next meal will come from. anything i need, anything i want, i get.  today i’m feeling really lucky and really blessed.

so once again jimmy’s gone and i’m home alone.  he left a lil after 9ish this morning to go to a conference in new mexico.  he’s suppose to be home thursday evening.

i went out this evening to water the garden and i noticed that my cucumbers are coming up. i noticed yesterday that the sunflowers are popping up. yaaay garden growing!

i went into the pool tonight. i’m not sure if its getting warmer or if i’m just getting use to the cold. tonight was the longest ive been in it this year, like 20mins or so, and it felt really good.

i need to go buy some doggy food tomorrow at petsmart.  i might go and pick up a crab while i’m there too. i miss my crab.

so three days ago me and jimmyroo made a garden.. and then we packed it FULL of plants. my parents laughed. said that my garden was big enough just for the strawberry plant and our whole back yard is probably big enough for everything else i planted in the garden. our garden now contains: 1 strawberry plant, 2 blueberry plants, 45 bell pepper plants, 24 tomato plants, 20 sunflower plants, 16 cucumber plants, and 8 giant pumpkin plants.

when you put it like that, it is a hella lot of plants -l- only the first 3 are true “plants” with roots, stems, and leaves.. all the rest i’m hoping will be plants and are just the seedling peat-pots that i’ve planted.. so some of the pots have more than one seed in them and might give me more than one plant. i wanted to go and just get the sunflowers started and then transplant them to along side the fence wall. i’m thinking i might need to take over flowerbed beside the house to hold bigger plants.

that night we made the garden i started researching genealogy stuff. i pulled my mom and jim into it biiiig time. me and jim have started a family tree on Geni.com (i LOVE it btw) and my mom signed up for a trial membership at ancestry.com. we love it and plan on keeping it for a while. jimmy managed to find someone he’s related to who’s worked on their tree.. that person had researched it to like jim’s great great great great great grandparents (give or take a great, but seriously that far out).  so jimmy is really excited. he didnt think he would be able to find that much and he ended up finding a ton.  he’s found stuff further back that me and mom have.. we’re stuck on my great-grandparents.

so i started my garden last night.

the first thing i have to do is clean up the area. there was a big bushy like weed that had grown up around the fence gate. so yesterday evening before it got dark i went out and clipped it down.

i went out again today and started hoeing up the little weeds, cacti, and grass that had started sprouting up in the area. i have the garden area pretty much cleared now.

i still want to clean out and weed out the rest of the area though.

next step is deconstructing the box and using its wood to make the edges of the garden.

so jimmy leaves in the morning for boston.  he has training in pylmouth and wont be home until thursday. :(  its going to be the longest and furthest that we’ve been apart. it makes me sad.
i cleaned jimmy’s car up while he laid down. hopefully i did ok. there is some gum, candy or maybe a dog treat that’s gummy and stuck to the floor. i just cant get it out. i’m gunna go a lil later and start packing some things up for him. i’m going to be so worried about him. i think ill send bunny along too.

i’ve been trying to save up little projects for me to do and keep myself busy with so i’m not that sad and lonely. i need to clean the bathroom, clean the bedroom, and wash our blankets and bed sheets.  i might even just hang them up on the line so they can be all fresh. i bought some bathroom stuff today at walmart and plan on having a girly night.. just a good long soak in the tub with a book, shave, lotion, re-paint my toe nails. just more busy work..

my biggest project is a garden. a couple of weeks ago i bought some bell pepper seeds and a little starting tray and planted my seeds. they started coming up about a week or so ago. i was stumbling online last night and came upon some plans to build a square foot garden. i absolutely love the idea of it. i have a spot in my yard thats blocked off from the dogs. we have some wood back there from our attempt at building a doggy house. i’m going to use the 2×4s from it to make a box, place the box on some landscaping plastic/fabric, fill it with dirt, and place a string/twine grid on it. you then plant inside each grid. the design and setup is suppose to be more efficient, letting you use more of the garden area and use less water.

while we went out today, i picked up two bags of dirt, some more dirt disks/pods (for my starter/seedling tray), and some tomato seeds. i would like to go back out (maybe tomorrow with my mom or after work this week) and pick up some herb plants in front and maybe some tomato plants on the opposite side from the peppers. i know i’m not suppose to grow the two together, but i’m hoping it will be ok since they are sweet peppers and not hot peppers. from the garden section i also picked up a little bag near the rosebushes that had two small blackberry saplings in them. we also have some lattice in the back and i plan on putting it in the back of the box and allow the blackberry’s to grow up it.

i’m excited about it.

i just read that the peppers like magnesium and its good to put some upside-down matches in the dirt to dissolve for them. i need to pick up some matches.
i’m really going to miss jim. -sighs-