It’s pretty cloudy out there now with a few rumbles of thunder, but like usual, I doubt it’ll storm. The prairie dogs are out, so they don’t think it’ll storm anytime soon. They’re so cute. They look a lot like squirrels only without the bushy tails. Their tails sort of remind me of pipe cleaners.

Saw Scot first thing in the morning. He still can’t get used to us being out so early, so he says, and naturally, since he didn’t do so last time, he had to bring up the time. “You’ll be able to celebrate next Halloween,” he said.

More like the Halloween after that. I need a good solid year of not having those damn freeloaders pop back into my life yet again for the zillionth time before I really feel like it’s okay to kick back and celebrate.

Later…

A loud thunderclap rang out, followed by a good, hard steady rain, though it ended as quickly as it began and the prairie dogs came back out of hiding. It rained the hardest it’s rained in a year. We had to shout to hear one another as it pummeled down on the skylight. Tom said it could rain on and off over the next few days. I just hope I can get caught up on my sleep. I only got 5 hours of sleep last night and that’s like 3 hours for me. I’m sure I’ll sleep 10-11 hours the next time I crash. I felt like napping a few times throughout this seemingly long, drawn-out day, but I was unable to.

Anyway, if I see Scot before the 19th I’m not going to be too happy, though I’d still prefer to deal with him on my turf than his. Here there can’t be any chatty people holding me up. He’s also a lot less chatty himself when he comes here, too.

Yesterday I typed up a total of 30 pages of Mary’s stuff. I’ve got a 27-page draft I’m working on now and am on page 11.

Little Buddy had some of my treats like he usually does, jumping up on my lap as soon as I hit the floor for a piece of my sugar donut. He was okay with that, but ice cream is definitely his favorite.

So far it appears my suspicions are correct about Tom. Good. Now we can get on with life as platonic soul mates, which we both want.

Later…

It’s raining on us again. It’s funny, though, cuz there’s a huge wall of dust towards the east, but it’s sunny as can be in the west. Looks like it’s going to stop as quickly as it started, once again, but we now have some standing water. The tire ruts made by the well rig have water in them.

Tom got an addition that you add to the MP3 player we use that’s supposed to filter out the vocals from songs, but it doesn’t do a great job. It filters out too much of the music, too.

Later…

Here’s the third bout of rainfall. Not much thunder or lightning, though. Now it’s hitting the front. Good. It’ll clean the windows. Only the north side’s still dry. Now the rain’s turned itself off again.

There’s some weird-looking pickup behind the rental with red and blue lights on top. State and county vehicles don’t have trucks, but tribal cops do, so it’s either that or a utility vehicle of some kind. Someone there may be connected to the fire department after they had that old fire truck there for a few days, and now this. The navy SUV’s been history for a while now. The two usual vehicles these days are the white van, which they’ve always had, and a lime green truck.