The neighbors - pieces of work - that live behind me have suddenly acquired 2 dogs.  They deposited those dogs onto the property that does not have a house on it.  Unbeknownst to me until an hour ago, one of them is a pitbull.  The other thing I did not know until an hour ago is that that dog actually busted it's head through 2 of the wood planks on my fence, head sticking through barking at my dogs and trying to get at them.

Mark tells me this nonchalantly as if it were nothing.  WTFreak?  Why didn't you call me?  Why didn't you call the police? He's like, well I didn't want to bother you.  ??? I'm like dude, what if that dog had gotten through the fence? What is going to stop it from eventually carrying out it's mission?  Call the police! It's a pitbull and it's also destruction of my property and a vicious dog! I do NOT like Pitbulls, they have a reputation for a good reason and I can tell you right now, if I had been here when that happened? I would bashed that dog over the head with a club!

I was not so slightly irritated that his answer to the situation was - basically nothing.  Just fix the damage and that's that. How does this address the problem?  This does not bode well, in my thinking, for not selling off this house even if it has to be a short sale versus leaving them in charge. If they can't deal with something that simple, I will need to rethink all of this.  Gonna have to have a serious sit down and talk cause' I will short sale this house before I leave it in the hands of people that are incapable of dealing with the crap that occurs in this neighborhood.

Meanwhile...spent the entire day with m'lady - of course.  We went and had a coffee and frittata at a local coffee shop.

But on the way there? I pull up to a stop light and I notice a truck come cranking over several lanes behind me and the driver of the vehicle throwing his hands up in the air, apparently agitated about something? But I did not cut this truck off, I have NO clue. I pull into the driveway of the strip mall with the coffee shop, this guy goes down the side road and then sees me from a driveway that goes to that street, pulls in there, gets out of his truck and throws his hands up in the air again?!! I'm like, call 911 and get my gun ready? What is the deal with this person. He gets up to my car and I look at him and finally recognize him - a high school buddy that I used to hang out with ALL the time! Hadn't seen him in what?  31 years?  Talked for a while and then got to moving.


After the coffee shop, onto one of today's agendas: she has been wanting to buy me a pair of cowboy boots. Went to the Boot Barn and checked out all the boots there in my size, nothing struck either one of us so the salesman advised us to go to Sheplers.  Why is this salesman advising us to go to a competitor?  He must not make a commission off the sales of boots, apparently.  So, off to Sheplers, which the pastor's wife had recommended we go to anyway.  After looking at and trying on several pairs of boots,  I was down to 2 pair.  But after looking at the price tag of one pair, I said, uhhh, no, that's WAY too expensive!  She didn't care and thought they looked better on me than the other pair I was looking at.

Wow, and nice!  Thank you baby!

We got out to the car and realized it was still too early to go to my mom's place so we went to a place called the Container Store instead.  There isn't one in the area she lives in so we walked around and looked at - everything - in the entire store.  After that I called mom, she said okay, we headed over there.  Spent  over 4 hours visiting with her - she is a good cook and makes the best food - and then headed out yet again after a very good visit.

She wanted to see if she could find the house she lived in when she lived here, in the Phoenix area, decades ago.  We kinda went around in circles but found the place she thought it was.  After that, I figured to take her to the Cheesecake Factory - she alluded to the idea of going there before she even got here so I decided to surprise her with it.

Came back to my house, hung out watching a movie for a couple of hours, talking the entire day about everything under the sun and then took her back to the pastor's house for the night.

Good day with her.  Tomorrow last full day with her.  She leaves Monday at 5 pm on a flight back, but I have to work.  I will take her to the airport after I get off of work, but I cannot take another day off.  I continue to tell her that I cannot just keep taking alot of time off, there will be nothing left and I will have nothing left to deal with that's coming up later on this year: Marriage and moving out to Texas.  She wants me to come out there or her come to me every month, but this simply isn't realistic.  So I told her the next trip I would be taking 2 days off and then add weekend to it and that would be it.

She was obviously not liking that idea but that is all that I can do.  Her coming out her doesn't change the fact that I have to take time off work to spend it with her.  It's only February and I am down to 57 hours left of vacation time.  If I were to go out there next month and take 2 days off, add another 10 hours since I get 10 hours added every month, back up to 67 hours but take off 16 hours for 2 days off and now I am down to 51 hours. So unfortunately, it is going to have to have a couple month lapse in visits.  I just can't keep using up all my vacation time and have nothing left by the middle of summer.  I do have 3 floating holidays and 3 personal days I can take, but that has to be saved for the move out there.

I just don't want to get to Christmastime or whatever and have nothing left or very little.

Well whatever.  It's getting late and I need to get to bed.

ben