The dogs have settled in for another night of barking. Last night was the worst dog-barking night since we’ve been here. It began as the sun was setting, as usual, and continued on till around midnight. Some of the dogs sounded close enough to be loose and on our property, but we didn’t find any tracks. Maybe some were coming from next door. Having them live two football fields away isn’t always helpful when you’ve got nothing in between to buffer sounds, but we’ll get a wall up of some kind. At least it’s only for a few hours a day, and it sure beats noisy blacks and Mexicans with their fucking ball games and music blaring a few feet away.

No more Friday night stress! Normally, I’d be so stressed out at this time, knowing their company had to be mine too, but no more!

I hope these Mexicans are really dumping their shit on those greedy fucks that bought our house. They did send Hilda a bill, after all. The moochers wanted more than $250, but Hilda let them know that’s all they’re getting. I made Tom promise not to give them one more dime if they try to weasel more money out of us in a few months from now and to drive me to that house to deal with them in person. He agreed. He said he’s only giving them the money to avoid the hassle of having to go to court even though we know damn well we’d win cuz they never set up a final walk-through.

Well, they’ll hear from me one last time and that’s my promise. It just may not be for a while.

We think one of the reasons so many dogs suddenly start going off at sundown is cuz of the coyotes. Coyotes get more active and start howling when it gets dark. We were outside earlier and heard about three of them howling and it sounded so cool.

I’ve seen some wild horses in some of the really deserted pieces of land.

Tom says that the land in front of us isn’t part of this subdivision. It’s not part of an Indian reservation, but it could be some kind of government land. We’ll have to see if we can find out who owns the land in front and to our right and what their plans are.

It’ll be a shame when they tear down “psycho soldier’s” house. This is an abandoned single-wide trailer a few miles from here with military camouflage on it.

It’s a surprise just how many deserted houses there are out here. Also, there’s such a huge mix of nice houses and rundown ones. Mostly rundown ones, though, that are pretty old.

Tom said Maricopa must be a bit of a depressing town filled with broken dreams. This subdivision was somebody’s failed dream. The four or so acres of dead trees in the center of town are obviously someone’s dead dream. We’re not sure what the trees were and what they were supposed to do with them, though.

Speaking of my dream, which is to get moved into that house for once and for all, I’m finding little things I’m not too thrilled with, but I understand that nothing and no one’s perfect. The stupid Mexican left a globe off one of the lights. Also, Tom says he thinks Brian’s done a good job, but I feel like he’s been cutting corners and weaseling out of jobs like putting door handles on all the doors. We agreed we’d do these little things ourselves so we can get in there faster, like cover some of the wall board’s staples that are showing, but we shouldn’t have to. This should’ve been done already.

At least Brian’s leaving us some goodies. Wall strips, caulking, and odds and ends like that.

I marked my vibes on the calendar with Tom yesterday and some of them aren’t great. I vibe the carpet layer coming Monday and the electricity being taken care of by next Wednesday, but that fucking well, among other things, like inspections, could take longer than we’d like. Tom still thinks we can get in the house between the 20th-24th, before Thanksgiving, but I don’t think we’ll be in there till the 29th or 30th. Maybe even not till the first week of December, even though we have papers guaranteeing us that we’ll be in by December 1st.