Maybe I Should Charge Rent

This past week we have had dozens of these inhabiting our porch.  We have to be careful not to let them fly indoors each time we open the door.

My husband made an attempt at snake-proofing our porch by stapling plastic mesh around it.  That way we can walk along the flagstones without worrying about something venomous or rabid jumping out and biting our ankles.



Within just a few hours, some

Ransacked

My son has been in training this summer with new-to-him coaches in Arizona. He's really happy with his experience and enjoys pole vaulting three evenings a week. I realized that he didn't have many days left of training, so I wanted to go watch him perform in a tournament and take some photos of all the vaulters in action. I love sports photography, and the warrior-like attitude of these

Extremes

It's time to compare weather patterns between Northern Nevada and Central Arizona.  When I first let people know I was moving to Arizona, they all said the same thing:  "You don't want to go there.  It's really hot there."

I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "And you think I don't know that?"

When you forfeit every penny you own to get out of Dodge, the last thing you want is people

On Watch

And Mikey was just saying in her comment that my posts were starting to sound like I'm more relaxed...

Why am I on watch? Weeeeeeeeell, my husband took the dogs outside on leash to just go to the end of our driveway to pick up the mail, and I heard a ruckus of dogs barking. My husband came running back in the house with the dogs just seconds later, all out of breath and said, "There's a

Lost and Confused

I went to the feed store today and was taken off guard by not only road construction, but cops posted in every intersection with their red and blue lights on. Drivers were confused by the flashing lights, and no one would go when the traffic light turned green. I suspect they were worried they would get a ticket if they made a left-hand turn from the right lane.

After getting stopped by the

The Revolving Door of Desert Wildlife

It seems that the wildlife around our new home in Arizona comes and goes in shifts. First, we had all the scorpions and coyotes, then we had all the bunnies and quail, then we had all the snakes, and now we have a new visitor to our porch at night. My husband heard a different noise outside and found two of these with the help of a flashlight...







It's a Sonoran Desert Toad or a Colorado

Interesting Weather Photos

A big wind blew in and our patio furniture began collapsing and blowing away.





The horses got enveloped in bursts of dust.





Dark clouds moved in, swirling at a rapid rate.




A haboob or dust storm moved northwest, ruining my son's pole vault tournament in the east valley of Phoenix.




A partial rainbow appeared above the horse paddock.




Dust was even blowing through the

What's at the End of Our Rainbow?

I was out taking pictures of a rainbow and both my husband and I had been sitting on the porch watching the sunset for a while.  Then my husband got up and walked over to the edge of the porch to check on the drip system.  I heard a loud, sudden explosion that was like a sprinkler going off and turned to see my husband running backwards.

While he had been checking out the drip system, he

Time to Get a Pitchfork

Believe it or not, I still haven't finished feeding the bales of alfalfa/grass mix to my horses that I trailered in from Nevada.  I've been alternating between feeding that and feeding the new Arizona grass and alfalfa to slowly acclimate the horses' digestive tracts to the change, even though they were eating a completely different Arizona alfalfa and grass bought from different suppliers at the

Just Pretend I'm Farting

Once it started feeling like the moving process was wrapping up, I
needed to take care of a few things with my family members, like get us caught up on our dental cleanings and cavity fillings (which are years overdue thanks
to us being ridiculously busy and me losing our good dental insurance along
with my job back in 2010), get up-to-date prescriptions for our glasses
and contact lenses so

More Weirdness

I guess it's just a weird day worthy of many posts. The majority of windows in my new house face the barn and horse paddock, so I have the privilege of being able to watch my horses from just about every room. I rely on them to alert me when someone or something is on our property. They have such good senses that they pick up little tiny animals way off in the distance that not even I can

Weirdness

I signed up for a recycling service at our new place, and the customer service representative told me that the recycling pickup is "every other week on the first and third Wednesday of each month."

Well, that comment baffled me, because it could be one or the other, but not both, because May had five Wednesdays in it, so if pickup is every other week, then by June it would no longer be the first

Who's the Dog Walker Now?

Remember how my dog walking neighbor in my old house drove me nuts with her constant presence on my property?  Well, I have become that woman.  Only I stay on my own property.  I probably walk my dogs ten times a day, and then my husband takes over walking them out at night to do their business.

We usually walk them in front of the house at night and in the mornings, and then walk them in back

Tying Up Looose Ends

After being in bed sick most of the weekend, I had a little more energy this morning.  My biggest problem is that I can't inhale deeply.  It's like someone dropped a brick in each lung while I wasn't looking.  Yogi Breathe Deep tea loosens things up a bit.

I was too weak yesterday to attack the messes that Midge made during her thunderstorm freakouts.  Even the local newscasters were talking

Now I Know

Now I know why all the houses are built up high on plateaus in my new neighborhood.  We had gray-out conditions this afternoon.  The thunderclouds sat so low on the ground that the visibility was very low and rain was blowing in at a horizontal angle.  I took these pictures during a clearing of the clouds, because otherwise everything just would have been gray.



Temperatures dropped from

A Welcome Visitor

Apparently, wishes do come true -- at least for my husband.  When we started seeing rattlesnakes and evidence of rattlesnakes around our back porch, my husband said he wished he could find himself a king snake and give it control of the domain.  So, this evening I was feeding the horses and heard my husband yelling something.  I ran up to where he was standing, expecting something terrible, which

My Little Pony -- Think of the Colors!

My son came home with a fresh haircut and coloring, created by his girlfriend.  I'm sure glad she took over giving him haircuts, because there's no way I could make him look this good.  I'm guilty of giving him bowl cuts throughout his childhood.  The colors and shine reminded me of "My Little Pony".



I'm driving my son crazy because we've discovered that he has quite a talent for cooking. 

Regional Pronunciations

When I lived in Nevada, we could always tell the "outsiders" (otherwise known as tourists, newbies, or transplants) from the "insiders" (otherwise known as locals or natives to the area) by the way they pronounced Nevada and Genoa.

Outsider pronunciations:
Nevada = Second syllable rhymes with "ha ha". Broken up like Nev-ah-dah. (Politicians, CNN and other national news stations pronounced it

The Aftermath

Note:  Sorry for the long post.  It started being about my dog, and then I wanted to add in the rattlesnake story, by then I had to vent about my lousy real estate agent, and then I got a phone call that turned my life upside down, and then my daughter delivered some upsetting news, and it just kind of ended up being a really crazy day.  Could we have a do over, please?

MIDGE AND THE BOOM BOOMS:

Gabbrielle Learns Nice-Nice

Long-time readers may recall that when my gelding Bombay was young, he used to bite.  He'd bite the hand that feeds him and chomp down on my husband's belly if it was in the vicinity.  So, I somehow taught him to lick instead of bite by saying the command, "Nice-Nice".  I think it was a situation where he licked me once and I gave him all kinds of praise, so he kept licking and I kept saying, "

Lucky

I hit the jackpot with my new farrier.  I talked to every horse owner I met about farriers in the area, studied local horse magazine ads for farriers, and collected business cards off feed store bulletin boards.  If someone had a website, I visited it and researched his or her philosophy.  One thing I knew was that I did not want a farrier who was going to force me to shoe my horses on every

Going Without

I can deal with microwaves, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators breaking down, but the two things I absolutely cannot go without are the septic system and well water.  Ever since I started living in rural communities, my homes have been on septic and private wells.  Each time one of them fails, it's beyond just being a short-term inconvenience.  It throws us into survival

Here We Go Again

We finally got below triple-digit temperatures with a monsoon on the way, so my daughter and I decided to do a little geocaching just to get out of the house.  We drove to our first destination, and the batteries in our GPS died.  Sigh.



This is one of the reasons why I prefer letterboxing over geocaching -- no batteries required, but there aren't many letterboxes in my neighborhood and I'm

Bombay Teases Me

Here are the kids waiting for breakfast after I hollered at Gabbrielle for banging the water trough as soon as the first light cracked on the horizon this Independence Day holiday.  They are like prisoners who bang metal trays against the bars when they want something.

It's really difficult to sleep in on a weekend or holiday around here because of the horse's banging and kicking, and because

Accounting for Advice

Many readers have been giving me advice on various issues over the years, and I don't always follow up to let people know if I heeded that advice and if it worked.  So, I wanted to take a few minutes to describe the results of trying out some recent advice.  I don't recall who told me to do what, sometimes several people said the same thing, and sometimes the advice came from readers while other

I Spy Mischief

The horses didn't need their fly masks for the first three days they were at their new home, because there was not much manure attracting the flies.  But today I did see them rubbing their eyes to get the flies off, so I attached their freshly washed face masks to their heads.  (Cut-N-Jump's custom fly masks made it through the delicate cycle in the washing machine just fine, and then I hung them