Spring has (kind of) Sprung

We had two 100 degree days, followed by some not so great days and now it's cold out. Mother Nature obviously thinks she's funny.

In preparation for spring The Hubby slapped this together:

We've yet to get the soil to add to it, but we do have green beans ready to be planted, as well as these cucumbers that were gifted to us:We live in the "Salad Bowl of the World", and even though neither one of us works in the produce industry almost everyone else does. This leads to things like getting free plants, free bags organic dried cranberries, loads of lettuce- including some custom stuff you can't get in the specialty stores yet, and watching everybody jump on their Blackberry's at the same time while camping in the middle of nowhere because of a contamination scare (last year it was tomatoes, the year before was spinach). I now know more about produce and the produce industry than I ever cared to.

Speaking of killing things, I thought our poor little lemon tree was doomed by the end of winter, but amazing things happen when you actually start taking care of things. Ya know, like giving it water and taking it out of the container it's been in for a year:

The nice thing is that pretty much anything grows in this damn hard soil we have. We also had some flowers gifted to us that we've yet to plant- let's hope I don't kill those before we can manage to get them in the ground. Why did my mother not pass on her green thumb? Mine is sort-of a faint green-ish, but usually only when in-doors.

Bonus Picture:

This is Innocent M's kid when she went shopping for hats with us before Drag Queen Bingo. We're training her to be fabulous, obviously.

You Dirty, Dirty Girl.

Another weekend gone by- and none of it spent cleaning my house. Really, the place is a mess. Of course since I'm a neat freak a crazy gross mess to me is easily overlooked by most. How I can work at Faire and come home with unwashed hair and dirty feet but still not be able to tolerate dirty clothes strewn about my bedroom and anything old in the fridge is beyond me. I wash my hands 80 times a day and dust like it's going out of style. In my house everything has a place, and there's really no reason for it to be elsewhere.

Our neighbors have commented many times about how clean our house always is, and I sometimes I get the feeling that that they may think I care if they invite us over and their house is unkempt. They even said we could stay at their house to watch their dogs on Thursday so they don't mess up anything of ours. Really, they only live right next door. It makes me think I come off more anal retentive than I really am.

Am I anal retentive?

I am over-organized, yes. I keep everything clean, and apologise if you show up and I think it's not, but I honestly don't mind a mess. I don't care if something is spilled on the carpet or if my crystal gets broken. What's the point of having it if I'm not going to use it? And it's not like I iron T-Shirts and sheets, or scrub anything with a toothbrush (cleaning grout doesn't count, of course. How else is it going to come clean?). You bet your ass I'll randomly spot clean everything with my trusty Simple Green though.

Now that I'm thinking of it, Boobs was laughing at me yesterday because I folded everything in my tent and organized it all before I left, just so I can come back Friday night and unpack it all again for the weekend. Why? *Sigh* Why not? At least I'm not bringing a little hand-held vacuum out there- that would be anal retentive.

Let's just first start off by saying that I don't care if you smoke pot. Really, I don't. It means nothing to me.

Except, of course, when you keep parking across from my house and my neighbors house hot-boxing your vehicle. Often. In broad daylight. Which is also in front of a park...That many children play at.

When the kids first started this some 7 months ago, we and our neighbors took a laid back approach to the young kids, and my 6'2'' 250lbs. Italian neighbor told them he didn't care that they did it, just don't do it in front of these few houses. (Yeah, how about some of the mountains or thousands of acres of farm land, assholes?). At first The Hubby just shrugged it off, and I was the mean one. We came out one morning to get ready to go to the lake, and they were out there- before 8AM. Really? You can't wake-n-bake in your own house? I hadn't even had my coffee yet. I was pissed off and just stood their on my front porch and stared at them. When two got up to walk in the corner house (they park just out of window sight from it), I walked up to them- which they seemed a bit startled about- and told them it was disrespectful that Italian Neighbor asked them not to and they did it again. When I asked that they not do it again they just nodded and said "yeah, that's cool". At this point I'm even angrier, and the grandpa from the house came out to talk to us, which is when I kindly told him how I felt and mentioned that since we were nice before and his grand kids didn't care, we would call the cops next time.

Low and behold, after we and Italian Neighbors return from a long weekend, we find them out there again. We all walk out onto our lawns and stare at them, while SouthAF (Italian Neighbor's new wifey) calls the cops. Italian Neighbors gets in to a confrontation with the 5'5'' 130lbs. 18year old. And the only reason I know he's 18 is that he told IN that he was 18 and was a man and didn't have to involve any adult in the house. As he's in his tippy toes, of course.
We haven't had much of a problem since then. Which bring me to why I thought of all this again since it was months ago. I drive home from work, happy that I only worked 8 hours and not 10 again, and when I pull up to get my mail there are two young boys in a car, windows up, packing a bowl. There are kids playing at the park. Should I mention that I live in a nice neighborhood? If I was going to take my kid(s) to the park, and I saw 2-5 guys getting fucked up, would I feel comfortable to always come to that park. Nope. And the fact that it's in front of my house?

I talked to our little police department and asked them to cruise by when they can, just to make their presence known.

I mean c'mon, doesn't one of them have a friend with a parent that doesn't care if you do it at their house, or even just do it with you?
I'm getting old.

Busy Bee

Obviously I've started my new job.

It rocks. On a foggy morning, this is what I see on my way to work:




I'll take fog covered mountains and vineyards over a freeway any day- that and it takes about 12 minutes to get there from my house.

Speaking of my house, another reason I've been rather MIA from blogging recently is due to the fact that The Hubby is amazingly awesome and built the cabinet and bookshelf that I wanted for our office. I helped, (and by this I clearly mean holding something in place, observing as he used the nail gun, and giving wonderful advice), and it came out fantastic. Here's before we started:

What the hell would you do with this space? If we were to have the builders do their built-in cabinet and desk thingy it would have cost us over $1,500.00. Insane, especially since The Hubby is so damn handy. This is the result:

This pic was taken from my iPhone so it's not the greatest, but didn't he do an amazing job? It was his first cabinet and book case. The only thing missing is the handle, which we have but we need longer screws.

And that's all. I'll be trying not to go so long in between posts this time.