Tom thinks he found the problem. Something he did messed up the whole network after all. Good, then instead of having to stop and be set back by having to play fix-it all day on my computer after setting up the new satellite system, he can clean his damn office which is trashed as usual.

Since bombing, the spiders have been non-existent inside the house which is nice. It’s still unknown where they were coming from. The drains? The vents? I only know I hope it was the drains because there’s no way anything that might’ve been living in there could still be alive at this point.

Later…

Tom fixed the network and will soon be working on the TV. The thing that was supposed to take less than an hour ended up taking 3.5 hours because as our luck would have it, we were sent someone who didn’t know what they were doing. I know I sound like the biggest sexist in the world, but fucking cocks! I swear 99% of them are so stupid. We need more women doing more things. They’re more patient and not so quick to cut corners and do such half-assed jobs. At least it’s done, though, and we didn’t get ripped off. It’s one thing to have people’s stupidity consume our time and another to have them eat up our money.

Our goodies came today. When I first saw the size of the box, I figured things were on backorder, but nope, they squeezed everything we ordered in.

The pink, rose-scented roses are in the big bath and the mauve, fleece-lined slippers will be great for next winter. This winter seems to have exited practically overnight. It got up to 81° inside the house. We’re getting really close to needing the AC.

The tool he got to clean my ear with seems to work great so far so long as I soften things up with oil first.

Got the blind cleaners, which certainly do seem like they’ll make cleaning blinds a lot easier and more effective and the state map with its state coin holders. In 1999, they issued Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut. I’ve only got Georgia. I’ve got all of 2000 coins which are Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia. The states issued in 2001 are New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Kentucky. I’m missing Rhode Island. For 2002, the coins are Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi. I’m missing Louisiana. I have no 2003 coins yet, but it’s only March. Arizona won’t be minted till 2008 as it’s the 48th state.

The filters are now in the vents too, and since they do a better job of sealing than the screens, I removed most of the screens.

The stuff came with some offers, one of which consists of a bunch of beauty stuff you can get for next to nothing. If you order $12 of stuff, you get free shipping and with $16 of stuff, you get a free 3-piece travel set and 10 free lipsticks. I got just under $20 of mascara, Ming Shu perfumed lotion, and 6 bath gels – peach, rose, blackberry, vanilla, lilac and lavender.

The pedals are terrible. Another $10 wasted. They’re of a better design, but they move all around when I use them. The things can’t weigh more than a pound or two. Unless we decide to strap them to the floor, I’ll just keep on jogging. Besides, I’m not trying to lose weight anymore but just stay the same. I don’t need to jog that long, on top of the other stuff I do, to stay the same weight as long as I don’t make a pig of myself. Who knows, though, maybe we could mount them to a heavy piece of wood or something.

At least the saw’s working. He got a chainsaw for clearing away brush. It’d make no sense to put up the corner posts and try to run string from post to post with brush in the way. The string, as I might’ve said earlier, will be our guide, keeping the fence installation in a straight line. We’re probably going to have a 30’ buffer on each side. The last thing we want to do is chance putting fences too close to easements or out of the property lines. Tomorrow he’s going to look for one of the back corner markers, but it’s likely to have gotten washed out over time.

I fed Shiny, the big black cat that hangs out here, some chicken today. He’s all black and shiny like the Phoenix Shiny was. I can’t let him inside, though, with the rodents and breakables. I don’t know if this cat’s fixed or if it belongs to anyone or not. I doubt it, though. I think he was dumped and left to fend for himself like most cats and dogs out here seem to be.

Also amongst the offers that were enclosed with our stuff was a landscaping brochure that looks quite promising, as well as a great value. Their Siberian elm hedges are said to grow to 45’ and as it is, we’re going to have to replace one of the bougainvilleas, though everything else is doing fine. It shocked so bad that we’re pretty sure it’s going to die, and gee, it’s quite a coincidence that it’s the one right in line with the renter’s little deck, the place I can see them the easiest. It’s like something’s saying, “You can run, but you can’t hide from society.”

Yeah, but I’m still going to try.

Anyway, Tom’s going to look into the landscaping’s website more thoroughly before we decide on anything for sure. The cool thing about it is that it tells you how many plants you’d need to make a wall of whatever feet wide. The elms are boring looking but with the way they could block the sun and give us privacy at that height, I don’t care. I only hope we won’t have to be dead for a century or two before they reach that height. All we need, though, is a good 10’-15’ to block out the renters. What we’ll need to do is find out how fast things grow and if they can live in Arizona. The site didn’t say much about the plants themselves, just the sizes and prices. Fortunately, though, Tom says elms will grow pretty much anywhere.

My God, though, I never thought I’d be buying trees! Not the girl with the food stamps from the inner-city projects amid the drug dealers and the rundown buildings littered with graffiti. Yes, I’ve certainly seen all financial levels. I was a rich kid who became a poor young adult who’s now a very comfortable middle-aged person. As I told Tom, though, we’d probably have a better chance of getting rich by suing one of the many people who fuck us over than by this property.

Because it’d cost many hundreds of dollars, speaking of money, to get a water softener/filter so we could drink our tap water, we decided to get a water dispenser. It’ll end up a lot cheaper than buying the 2½-gallon jugs we’ve been getting. For $100, we can get a dispenser with a 5-gallon jug. It has 3 controls on it. One for room temperature water like I usually prefer, one for cold, and one for hot. There’s a place here in town that dispenses water so we can fill the jugs up there for a lot less than buying these jugs from the grocery store. It’d cut down on the recyclables a lot, too.

Got 4 envelopes from Mary today. She asked if I could help her find a publisher in Florida, but like I told her, I couldn’t even find one for myself if I tried. Besides, I don’t want to be doing any more than typing for her and I already told her this. I have a full enough plate with my own stuff. I had no idea that the home improvements would steal so much of our lives, but it does. Then I have my usual responsibilities and my own writing projects. I can’t do it all for her anyway, and I’m not going to be like most people and tell her I’ll do stuff I don’t want to do.

Anyway, she sent me 62 pages of drafts and said she might be there for a month or two more, but even so, I’ll probably hold off again on the mail to her after the letter that’s going out tomorrow. I caught her up to date on things and enclosed some pictures for her. A couple of doll pictures and a few of our land and palms.

She also says she’s alone now and tickled pink to be enjoying the added peace and privacy.