Another day of roughing it out in the desert! It sure beats living with blacks, Mexicans and noisy kids.

I jogged around the property at sunset. I’ve been jogging around the property a lot to release all my energy that gets bottled up due to sitting in the car all day while we run errands.

The view is just as beautiful at night as it is in the daytime. At night the mountains form really neat silhouette shapes around most of the area, but in a little corner of the property, you can see city lights miles away in the distance.

Besides seeing lots of lizards and quails, we saw a coyote! It was neat to finally see one, but it wasn’t here that we saw it. We were still on the freeway about a half-hour from here when we saw one dart across the road. It was so cute. Looked a lot like a fox.

I can’t wait to get into the house, set it up, and have use of the computer again! There’s just no room to set it up in the trailer.

So far, the only thing around here that could be annoying would be if next door’s dog were to bark a long time while we were outdoors. You wouldn’t really hear it, though, in a regular house.

When our house is set up, our house will be about 400’ from next door. That sure beats 3’, huh?

As I said, they subdivided these lots in ‘58, and we read up on some of their rules out here.

You can’t build closer than 50’ to the front of your property (I assume the same goes for the back) and no closer than 25’ to the sides.

You can’t have more than one house per acre. If our land were in the city, there’d be 60 houses on it!

Ain’t it ironic how we whites stole the Indian’s land, yet they’re protecting our land? Yes, the AK-Chin reservation goes through Maricopa, so it buffers it and protects us from the expanding cities. Cities like Phoenix, Chandler, Mesa, and Scottsdale are really growing fast, but due to the way the reservation borders near where we are, we won’t have to worry.

Between that, and the fact that yes, my lungs are actually better. Boy, do I fear compensation!

We’ll have to check out the new casino on the Gila River Indian reservation soon, but we did spontaneously pop in AK-Chin’s Harrah’s casino, which we’ve been in before, and we each lost about $20. It was fun, even though my vibes always told me we were never destined to win anything big.

Maricopa’s a nice, but weird town. You get the impression it’s a separate town - us and its central street. We go through its main street to get here, and you also get the impression it’s a one-street town. Its side streets are sort of hidden.

As of tomorrow, this trailer becomes a weekend retreat. Tom wants to stay in a hotel, a real hotel with more than 2 floors, so he can have access to a shower he’s not so cramped in and that doesn’t have wimpy pressure.

There may be no comparison in noise (although I’m sure I’ll hear doors slamming), and it may be more comfortable and roomier, but I’ll miss being out here. Still, it’ll be nice to plug in a fan and my portable CD player, so it won’t all be bad.

Haven’t done any reading since we got here, which has been nearly a week, so I think I’ll read soon. I want to write a bit more first.

Amazingly, I’ve written nearly 40 pages so far. It’ll be much easier typing this up, cuz of its spiral binder.

I still want to describe this trailer and our land, but first I’ll cover today’s errands.

First we ate at Denny’s, stopped to pick up our mail, then went to the apartment to get a load of stuff. All that’s left will fill only half of the car. It was amazingly quiet while we were there, but weekdays tend to be quieter till those animals get in around 4:30. Although they’re not peaceful, they really did quiet down in the end, but I guess they’ve figured out that we’re hardly there lately, cuz they were wild when we were there a few days ago. I’m sure it’ll be rocking this weekend too, but at least we’re checking out!

We also went on a wild goose chase trying to find all the doll supplies Jamie listed for me.

Got another state coin today. They’re quarters. We’ve got Georgia, Delaware, Maryland, and Connecticut. I think. We may have New Jersey, too. I can’t remember what we have for sure until I unpack.

Anyway, I called Jamie from the apartment to ask about Jade’s dress, but it won’t be ready for a few weeks. Oh. I thought it’d be ready in a few days, but there’s no hurry.

After looking in four different craft stores, as well as Wal-Mart, we got the white tacky glue, what’ll hopefully be long enough needles (although we’d have preferred upholstery needles), silicon, 18-gauge wire, batting, and I think that’s it, cuz we couldn’t find the putty we needed.

Got a 17” super thin vinyl doll to practice making clothes on. I want to learn how to do patterns. Anyway, for a cheap vinyl doll that costs $6 or $7, she’s nice. I don’t know if she’s supposed to be a white doll with a tan or a Latin doll, but she has a pleasant enough face with nice curly brown long hair.

We went to a drugstore and were unable to find fly strips, but we got the nail clippers we needed, cup holders, a tarp for the generator, more plastic silverware, trash and freezer bags, and the best thing of all - a personal mister. I love it! I wish I got it as soon as I came to Arizona. It’ll make tanning a lot easier. It’ll run steadily for 20 minutes. The water goes in a sports bottle and you can strap it over your shoulder, around your neck, or set it down somewhere. The part where the mist comes from has a clip on it, so you can clip it to your shirt if you want or to whatever. They had black, blue, green and purple. I got purple.

I forgot to say that we’ll still be coming to the trailer daily to feed the animals. How I wish they didn’t exist just till we got into the house! We should’ve tried to have them boarded at a pet store or somewhere, even though I’d miss them.

I stopped for Chinese take-out on our way back here, then he got a hot dog at our closest Circle K in Maricopa 20 minutes away, and I got my favorite new coffee - English toffee cappuccino. It’s great and you don’t need to add cream or sugar.

Still haven’t heard from the people who bought our house. Who knows if they’ll take our offer and who knows if they’re living there yet or if they’re remodeling? We drove by there the other day and saw no people or cars there. As for the Mexicans - all we saw was the van. No cream pickup, other vehicles, or people. I’ll be mailing that fat bitch’s mail out the day I see Mel, next Monday, so she should get it Wednesday or Thursday. Less than a week, Deb!

Let me break, then I’ll get into land/trailer descriptions.

Later...

You’d think it was a streetlight, but it’s actually the moon that’s glowing out there. It’s nearly full. I can’t wait for a moonless night out here so I can see all the stars. We talked about getting a telescope.

Tammy’s considered remote where her house is, and it is for being in New England, but this is remote. It takes about 20 minutes just to get to our nearest stores, like a gas station, convenience store, and Dairy Queen. There are a few other things there too, like a school and a church. The nearest grocery store, though, is about 40 minutes away. We’ll probably try to do biweekly grocery runs, rather than weekly, and throughout most of the year, we’ll need a cooler or else our frozen stuff will spoil before we can get it here.

Anyway, although the land lacks saguaros, prickly pears, Joshua trees, and ocotillos, it sure is gorgeous. Besides, we can plant those kinds of cactuses and some palm trees. There are no organ pipes, either. Just lots of sage, Palo Verde trees, a few barrel cactuses, and lots of gopher, ant, and maybe even snake holes.

There are up to four washes running through here, but two definite main washes. We plan to put the house just behind the front one where we have a couple of pretty tall trees. Although most of our trees are shorter than me, these are at least 10-12 feet high. We’ll make some sort of bridge to get across the wash, what’ll be neat; having a little river run through here when it rains. Although I suppose it’d be more appropriate to call it a stream or a brook. There are a lot of “bald spots,” just open, bare patches of hard-packed dirt (I wish I had my roller-skates) which really helped us when it came to driving the trailer in here. We went out and got shovels and rakes, just in case we had to clear a path. This was before we were as familiar with our land as we are now, although there’s still more to explore and learn.

The 27’ trailer is what I’d describe as being simple. They certainly have nicer, newer, bigger trailers than Dennis’, but it’s no little piece of shit, either. You walk into the living room/kitchen area with its 2 beds (we use the one on top for storage), a table we don’t bother to use, and its kitchen with cabinets, an oven, and a refrigerator. There are 4 main windows in this area. There are a total of 3 ceiling windows too, which we crank open. In the back, or close to it, is a bed (this is where I sleep. He sleeps in front), more cabinets, and a little counter. In the very back is the bathroom. I’m amazed that it’s got a tub. I thought it’d be just a shower stall.

All in all, this thing has pretty good cabinet and drawer space, but we sure could use triple this amount!

There are 2 windows in the back bedroom and one in the bathroom.