Ramblings of a Wayward Goddess

So, yesterday I posted about the house next door and it being the Portal To Hell. I mentioned in the poast how the neighbors have no qualms letting thier dog run amuck and that I had called Animal Control to come out and give them a warning. Well, it appears they are now calling my bluff. The kids were outside playing. Kids are a natural attractant* for dogs. They let thier dog out. Just opened the door and out she went. Time to break out the camera, looks like this whole thing might blow up.

*yes, I did just make up the word attractant.

My 11 yr old son, just took the trash out

Without! being! Asked!

I think I need to go lie down. This is just too much to process.

I hate my neighborhood. I hate living 30 ft from the house next door. I hate that this whole neighborhood is turning into rentals. I have nothing against renters, I used to be one. But, anyone who has ever had a rental home can tell you the horror stories about tenants that thought nothing of pulling out all the plumbing.
The house right next door to me (my view as I sit here typing) is the portal to hell. Otherwise normal people move into that house and become Neighbors From Hell. The stories I could tell could be turned into a whole new blog. I love when the lease is up and the tenants move. Everything is just so nice and peaceful. My husband hates it because he thinks it’s hard to sell a house with an empty house next door, and we are wanting to sell and move next summer. I understand his thinking, but honestly, he’s not here.
So, we got new neighbors recently. At first they seemed really nice and I thought maybe the portal had closed and we could have a nice peaceful co-existence. And for the most part they are ok. There’s no pot smoking on the front porch, no bucket of feces on the back porch, my kids haven’t been cussed out while they played on their swing set in the back yard. Things have been rather calm. With the exception of their dog.
The day they moved in their dog was running loose. I let it go that time. Just moving in and all. I figured they would eventually settle in and it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s a problem. The dog runs loose all day. They leave their back door open so the dog can come and go at will. I would have to say that 4-5 days out of the week, I go outside and this dog comes running at me. It’s s puppy, so it’s not like the dog is attacking me or anything, but it is an annoyance. I have been getting stuff out of my car and the dog run up behind and hit the back of my knees just right to knock me down. The kids have been bitten (playfully) and scratched countless times. I can’t get groceries in the house without having to chase the dog out of my house. It’s a nuisances.
We have asked that they please do something to keep the dog in their yard. I even offered them my old dog tie and they said they didn’t believe in tying up a dog. Yesterday I reached my limit. I came home and the dog was in my yard, digging holes. No one was even home at the house next door. I came in and called Animal Control. I hated to do it. I don’t like tension between neighbors, but I just can’t do this anymore. Animal Control was supposed to come out today and give them a verbal warning. After that, if I call again, they get a $50 fine. If they fight it and it goes to court, I have to testify as a witness that the dog has been out. Wonderful.

I think upping our moving timetable might need to be considered.

I am still dead.
Only now I have two sick kids to care for as well.
Happy spring break!

I have died.

Yes, it’s true.

I’m not really typing, because I am in fact…dead.

I have been up since 3:50am

That was after going to bed at 12:30am.

I hope my oldest has fun on his school trip.

I’ll be back when I have returned to life.

One of the companies my husband sent his resume out to, called him today. They scheduled a phone interview for tommorrow. If they like what they hear on the phone they will schedule a face to face.

My very first digital camera was 6 yrs ago. I got it right after my youngest was born. I was able to justify it the day I came home from picking up the pictures of his brith and first few days. Every single picture looked like a beautiful sunset, instead of a baby.

My first was a 1.3 mega pixel Fuji point and shoot. i was very happy with that camera for a long time. Years of wear and use and kids dropping it and it was eventual to the point of being duct taped together. Eventually I got a Canon A70. I still have that one today and it works great for on the go photography. I wanted the Nikon D70 though. Wow, it that a camera or what.

I’m weird about money, though. I control it in this house, even though I don’t make any of it. It’s actually kind of amusing to have my husband call from work to ask if he can take $20 out of the ATM.

But anyway,I have no problem spending money. Kids need $400 for a DC trip with a school, sure. Need another $130 for another trip, here ya go. Oh, you need hiking boots for this trip, well let’s go to the store.

When it comes to me though….nothing. I just went through my dresser and none of my clothes fit. I actually figured that I would just rotate the 2 pairs of jeans I have that fit and be ok with that. What! Buy new clothes? That’s insane. I can’t afford that. Actually, I can, I just don’t want to spend any money on myself.

I did end up with a cool camera. Not the Nikon, but a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. We didn’t pay for it though. My husband travels for work and is a member of all the hotel clubs. We saved points for a year and got it that way.

My husband called tonight. He is still being very cautious because you really never know what this company is going to do. It’s very possible they are blowing smoke up everyone’s ass because they still have a couple jobs that are half done that need to be finished. However, what they are telling the guys is that they want to move them from a install position to more of a Field Services. It sounds like a fancy name change for the same thing, but they want to make it more part of the sales team. Basically the guys would teach the sales team about the equipment they are selling making them better able to sell it. Also they would do all the trouble shooting for all the manufacturing plants in New Jersey, China, and Ireland. It all sounds good, but like I said, they could be blowing smoke. They did just tell the guys to go buy new cell phones that had speaker phone and cameras in them. They authorized them to spend up to $150 per phone. So it does seem like if they were looking to fire them in 2 mths, they wouldn’t have told them to go get new phones. But, really, they have done crazier things so you really just never know.

So, the Friday meeting at my husband’s job has come and gone. I didn’t get a phone call asking me to meet him at the airport, so I’m assuming that he still has a job, for another week anyway. Although he did freak me out one day last week by calling me from an office phone so my caller ID came up with that instead of his cell phone. The first thing I said was “What’s wrong?”. I don’t think he realized how much that simply thing made my heart drop.

The kids have started their Spring intersession. They have the next 2-weeks off from school. Next week my oldest is going on an overnight trip. It’s a camping type place on top of a mountain. There will be lots of hiking and camping and living as a pioneer in the year 1820. Sounds like so much fun (not really, I love my modern day conveinces). He has to be at the school at 4:30 in the morning. I’m thinking of just leaving him at the school the night before and letting him get a jump start on the camping trip. Oy! I’m so not a morning person.
My daughter’s enrichment will be a cooking class at the high school. She’s very excited about that. Me too, maybe she can start doing the cooking around here.

So that’s it. The next two weeks should be a fun-filled adventure.

(I’m trying to see how many times I can get the word adventure into this blog)
(Also, how funny is it that ‘blog’ comes up as misspelled under bloggers spellcheck?)

My current vehicle is a 1998 Ford Explorer. I bought it from my neighbors who were the original owners of it. I love this truck. It’s a 5-speed, which is a rarity in today’s automatic world. In fact, when my neighbors got a new car and were selling this one, they actually went to get a new explorer. They wanted to order one with a standard transmission and were told that Ford doesn’t make them anymore. They were pretty disappointed
My husband had a Mazda pickup truck that he drove for a little bit, but with his job and having a company work van, it pretty much just sat in the driveway. We just sold it to his cousin. Then the job fiasco hit (which we still have no news about). So the question then becomes what do we do 1) if he looses his job and 2) if the new one doesn’t provide a company vehicle. Obviously, he needs a new car.
The thing about that is, My Explorer, though I LOVE IT, isn’t really practical for a family of 5. Sure we can all squeeze in there, and when it’s just the kids and me it’s fine, but practicality is telling me, I need a bigger car. I’m having trouble letting go on my truck though. One thought is to buy me something new and bigger and let him have my Explorer. With the seats all folded down and only him in it, it would be a great work truck. Since it’s older, he really wouldn’t be worried about putting miles on it or getting it scratched like he would a new car (it already has 195,000 miles on it and is still kicking)

This reminds me of the last time we bought from a dealership. It was quite the adventure.
We went in the first place looking to get a Town and Country minivan. It would have been an upgrade from the one we had. The woman ended up showing us a Durango instead. I really liked the Durango, but still wanted to look at a T&C. I drove both and was deciding which one to go with. They ran all the numbers and although the Durango was a bit more than we had planned to spend, it was do-able, so that was the one we choose. By the time we had decided it was too late to do anything that day (banks closed). We already knew that we were pre-approved for a certain amount, but the Durango was a bit over that amount so we had to go through the process again. So we went home with plans to come back the next day.

The next day we go back and for some reason the nice woman I had spoken to the day before had turned into a monster. I have no idea what her problem was, but she was downright rude. First, they broke the key to my van off in the door when they were pulling it around to look at it for trade-in. She tells me “I hope you have a spare key”. WHAT?? Nooooo, you guys broke it, you guys need to replace it. It took an hour to get the key replaced because we kept having to argue the point with her. She didn’t understand why my husband didn’t just call a cab to go home and get the spare key. By this time we were both thinking we just wanted to get out of there and go somewhere else. Finally we get the key made and tell them we have changed our minds. That is when the woman’s head started spinning and pea soup shot from her mouth. She started yelling profanities at us in the showroom. Telling us we were white trash and would never be able to buy a nice car, just look at the POS we were driving now, etc etc. Keep in mind my kids were with us. I was furious.

Two days later I was driving by our Honda dealership and saw a Suburban sitting in the lot. I stopped to look at it. The salesman came out, helped me load all three car seats into the Suburban, let me take it on a test drive, then told me to “drive it a couple days and see how you like it’. I “test drove” it for over a week before they so much as ran a credit check on me. The only thing I had done was given my license and insurance info to them and they gave me a $30,000 car to drive for a week. We ended up buying that truck and got an EXCELLENT deal on it. The day I signed the paperwork I got home to a message on my machine from the General manager of the original place apologizing for the sales woman’s behavior and asking if I would reconsider buying the Durango. I told him I had just bought a Suburban and it was too bad they didn’t get THAT commission.

**The story of why I no longer have the Suburban is left for another day