The heat of the past several days broke and it is finally a night worth having all the windows open for in order to sleep comfortably.
Fans are blowing, bringing in the cool night air and giving the welcome hum that blends every night noise together to white noise.
I stayed up a little later than I'd intended tonight in order to watch the NFL pre-season Hall of Fame Game because none other than the Pittsburgh Steelers were playing. God, I cannot wait for football season to be in full swing. I'm sick of all the Barry Bonds hype that is going on, and so don't care about baseball like I did in 1978...
I think I went to bed at about 11:30, read Harry book the second for a little while, and fell asleep quickly because my body is sore. More on that below.
Lo, at around 12:30 or 12:45, the dogs decided to go apeshit over something outside. This happens once a week or so. My heart jumped into my throat, and my brain was shocked to pure wide awakeness.
For about an hour now I've tried to fall back asleep, and I know better. I should just get up, read, or blog... and then go back and lie down. Luckily, this happened early in the night instead of at 4am, when it usually does and I find myself just plain up for the day at about 6am when I haven't yet fallen back asleep. So there is a chance by about an hour from now I'll be back in bed, back asleep, and not be a trainwreck tomorrow morning.
I do think I will poke and prod all three of these beasts, who now sleep at my feet and back deeply and soundly, before I head back to bed.
We had an interesting weekend. A little bit of yard work got done on Saturday and we didn't go anywhere or do anything other than a trip to Sam's Club for provisions. We're starting to plan for the visit of the German Exchange Student (henceforth, she is known only as GES in the blog here...) in about a month, so Doug's got wheels in motion for thoughts and plans and some of those included stuff to buy at Sam's Club...
(sidenote, Jess will be sleeping in this room while the GES is here, so I'm hoping that the dogs don't pull this bark and wake my ass up crap for about a month. Wish us luck...)
Anyway, we had looked over into our neighbor across the street's house. They were foreclosed on back in May. Before he left, and while he still owned the house, neighbor guy told us to help ourselves to the landscaping. He offered all the lilies on the side of the house but I didn't feel right digging them up when they were just about to bloom. He offered the hot tub and anything else we could possibly want.
I thanked him and told Doug, who said that he wouldn't mind the hot tub but we honestly couldn't take it across the road with ease and it would be more trouble than it could possibly be worth.
Plus, we didn't have our patio down yet.
Readers will remember back in November and December we had doors replaced on the back of the house, resulting in the removal of our deck. The plan has been to put down pavers for a patio. Well, intentions were good but finances didn't lean to our doing so. The door project turned out to be about two thousand dollars more than what we really thought it would be due to problems with the sill under the doors being all messed up. So we've been looking at dust and dirt and crud for several months. The dogs track in dirt and I feel like I'm constantly sweeping. It's annoying.
Well, the house across the way just had its septic inspected, and they tore up the patio, stacking the pavers up in the yard and just leaving them there. We called the realtor, who told initially told us he'd have to check with the bank, because the bank owns the house. He said he should have an answer for us by mid week. We were pretty stoked.
After an hour or so the phone rang again and it was the Realtor, who told us to go ahead and take them. He said that if he asks the bank, the bank will hem and haw and argue... and since I didn't KNOW that the neighborman didn't actually own the house and the bank did, my agreement with the neighborman stands... if he told me to take what I wanted, go ahead. Just don't trip in the yard, fall, break a leg and sue... we were to go over of our own free will and responsibility, and have at it.
So... we got 31 huge pavers now in our yard sitting on the side patio. We have to plan out where they are going and what we are going to do. The area needs to be raked and leveled, and then we need to get dirt to pour on top to go in between, and some moss or grass or something to plant between. It'll hopefully be all done in the next two weeks... prior to the arrival of the GES.
I told the Realtor guy that since he was being really kind to us, we'd pay it forward as best we can. Money's been a little tight since Doug changed jobs... but we just saved a couple hundred bucks so I'm going to make sure the Shakespeare Camp gets a little extra money to the scholarship fund as soon as I can. Keri brought in a ton of kids from a local city who are attending for free this second session... so they can really use the money. I'll pass that onward.
We took the dogs for a huge hike today. We didn't geocache, we just hiked. It felt good to get out but man am I sore. I haven't been on a real hike in weeks, and my back and thighs hate me right now.
I should have no problem falling back asleep now... I'm starting to feel the tired creeping back in on me. So ... on that note. Time to tease the dogs and wake THEM up for a change, and head back to bed.
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