Woof

There are four dogs living in the house behind me, or three dogs and one puppy. Initially there were two dogs there, then suddenly a third appeared and now, after Christmas, a puppy has appeared. They are normally good dogs, but for some reason the third dog has been barking like crazy every time they go outside and he gets the others all riled up. It's kind of annoying when we're out in the hot tub at night and this dog won't shut up. If we yell at the dog, he (she?) just barks more. B is threatening to send the owner a letter, but I'm hoping the dogs will settle down before that happens. I remember they went through a phase maybe 6 months ago when it was just the two dogs and they were barking a lot, but that only lasted a few weeks. I don't know what was going on with them then and I don't know what's going on now.

My dad called this morning to tell me that he's snowed in and probably won't be going anywhere for several days because he shoveled his driveway and there's thick ice under the snow. I bet all the kids in the area are excited about being off school. In the meantime, I'm here on the other side of the country and it's been mostly sunny with highs in the 50s and 60s. When it's not windy, it's pretty nice outside. We've been trying to take walks every day, but my back has been hurting me and B's ankle has been hurting him. We're falling apart here.

Right after I got a couple books from W@l-mart a few weeks ago, B wanted to get some more books for himself because he burned through the books I got him for Christmas. So we went to the bookstore together and I ended up getting 5 more books; a couple more Stephen King novels, a couple by authors I'd never heard of and a used biography of Madonna. B actually found the Madonna bio and suggested it to me, so I added that to the pile at the last minute and that's what I'm reading now.

I finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle in about a week and that was pretty good. There were a lot of descriptions about dog-related stuff, which I was only kind of interested in, and the ending surprised me. After that I read Lisey's Story by Stephen King and that was pretty good, too. I decided I needed some lighter fare after reading those two kind of heavy novels, so that's why I'm reading the Madonna bio now. I'm finding out she was a real meanie, IMO. B has been watching a lot recorded football games, so I've had a lot of time to read lately.

Speaking of football, our home team is in the Superbowl this year! Whoo hoo! Pretty exciting, being our first year in Arizona. In fact, we are quickly approaching the one-year mark. We'll have been here a year in March. I don't remember exactly which day we moved in, but I know our house in NC closed on February 29th and we left NC on the 25th (I think).

Last weekend I kind of stole a little treelet from the foreclosed house next door. I noticed a little tree had sprouted in the front corner of the yard, very close to our yard, so I dug it up and then we replanted it in our yard. I hope it survives. I would've left it there to grow where it sprouted except every so often someone comes to that house to clean up the yard and I know they would've pulled it up and gotten rid of it, so really I did them a favor, right? I don't know what kind of tree it is, but we think it's the same kind of tree that's growing in the yard next door, which is not a very big tree. It has fragrant purple blossoms in the summer with tons of moths flying around it and the branches are kind of willowy. I suppose if it survives and gets bigger, we'll get to see if it's the same kind of tree or not.

I hope to get some Joshua trees for the front yard at some point. They don't grow in this area naturally, but they will grow if planted and taken care of because I've seen them in people's yards around here. We saw tons of naturally-occurring Joshua trees when we drove through Searchlight, Nevada on our way to Vegas in December.

We moved our bird feeders out into the yard so we won't have bird seed all over the front porch any more and they seem to have attracted a new bird; the Cactus Wren:


This is the Arizona state bird. It's a little too big to sit on the bird feeders, so it stays on the ground and picks up seeds that the finches drop. I've only seen one out there at a time, so I assume it's the same bird each time. We also get quail and sometimes doves and pigeons out there, but mostly little finches. Some of them are looking pretty fat and I wonder if they'll be laying eggs soon. I wonder how tiny the finch babies must be, since the grown finches are so tiny themsevles! I'm looking forward to seeing more quail babies and bunny babies this spring and I hope to get some pictures of them.

We've been trying our hardest to make sure our rose bushes out front don't die. We've covered them up several times when we had really cold nights and they seem to be hanging in there, even showing some new growth in places. I really hope they survive because we busted our butts (and almost broke our backs) planting them last year in this hard-as-rock soil.

I'm so excited that Lost and American Idol are finally back on, especially Lost. Last night was a real kicker, finding out that Charles Widmore is one of the Others. So that explains why he thinks he has a right to the island. I imagine he and Ben have been rivals for a long time, though it seems Ben is quite a bit younger than him. I wonder if Ben was alive in 1954 when Locke visited with Richard Alpert in last night's episode? And is Locke really dead now? Will the island bring him back to life somehow??