FIRE FIRE!!!!

Mother Nature is at it again.  Wind, wind and more wind graced our presence yesterday, making it impossible to finish spraying the weeds in my corrals.  Apparently it also kept the landscape guy away, the one who was to replace the dead grass.  

And then I saw it.  Lights flashing at 5:00 am like there was a raid going on in the subdivision next door.  Beep beep beep told me the sad story.  They were pouring concrete on the empty lot directly behind me.  I will now be surrounded by houses.  I'm hoping it won't be two story, or I will have to get drapes and cover my big wall of windows that look directly at it.  For someone who was raised on a ranch a mile away from anyone, this is pretty traumatic.  We've already got TWO bad apples in the vicinity, and now the possibility of THREE.  

I'm not sure who could afford to build a house right now, since these are going for around $700,000.  This is part one .......

This is the rest of it with an additional 20' to the right, not even in the picture.  Compared to my house, this must be around 4,000 square feet.  It stretches from one property line to the other on a one acre lot.  How sad.  I love my house, I just hate the neighbors, and now I'm gun shy when it comes to looking ANYWHERE else.

Which by the way I have been doing every day.  Prescott $750,000, Cottonwood $600,000, Buckeye $600,000, Yuma ... cheaper, but who wants to live in Yuma!  Tucson $650,000.  Now is definitely not the time to be buying houses.

These cheered me up however.  Too bad they aren't in my yard, or in ANY yard around here!  Aren't they pretty?

By 9:00 I was out running the neighborhood for a little exercise.  Nancy has been too sedentary.  Being glued to the couch is not in my nature.  I mostly ran 2.5 miles, feeling pretty good the entire time, surprised that I can still do it.  It takes a mile to get your lungs working, but after that it isn't too bad.  I'm looking forward to being stiff as a board tomorrow morning!

Groceries were on the schedule also.  I'm just so shocked at the prices in the stores.  Who can afford to eat?  Each of those cans were $2.00-2.29.  That's 5 cans for $10.00.  Geeze you can't even afford to eat canned beans any more.  I only shopped sale items and did not get ANY meat.  Even the salads were $5.00 each.  There is $80 sitting there.  I guess I'm going back to the old ranch menu ... dried beans and potatoes.

SO ... let's make this day even better by trying to burn the house down.  Yes, it wasn't my best day.  Next up on the hello fresh menu (which price wise is about equal to hitting the grocery store) is crispy chicken and potatoes.  So what's that other stuff on the plate?  Fried corn.  I know ... who does that?  And then there was a package of cheddar cheese.  What the heck is that for?

My advice ... do NOT buy this one.  The corn is roasted in a frying pan, making it tough.  Two potatoes were rotten, so I called and got a $9.00 credit.  That was nice.  The chicken was an easy fry.  It was the gravy that killed it.  GARLIC gravy.  Anyone heard of that before?  That's because it's terrible.

So there I am, stirring the gravy, when some splashed on to the stove.  I grabbed a paper towel and began to wipe it up.  OOPS ... I got a little close to the flame and it caught fire.  FIRE!!!!!!!  Of course I blew on it to put it out, right?  It exploded in my hand.  Instead of dropping it in the gravy, which might have made it taste better, or on the fireproof stove, I dropped it on the floor and STOMPED on it!!!  

NOOOOO .... that broke it into TWO flaming pieces flying across the wood floor.  Good grief.  I picked up the two chunks still on fire and ran to the sink.  SAFE!!  No fire alarms were harmed in this incident and the floor survived without a scratch.  My fingers however, got a little scorched.  

I took a deep breath and went back to the gravy, whereupon I finally discovered where the cheddar cheese went.  On the GRAVY.  Really?  That's a new one on me.  I ate it ... most of it anyway, but definitely won't be ordering this again.  

That's when I noticed Jonathan was out of bird biscuits.  That's what two of the above cans were for.  Sweet potatoes for his biscuits.  Birds need orange things, which of course they don't exactly care for because it's good for them, so I sneak it into his food.  I'm sure that's why he has lived so long.  There was no fire involved here.

And so ended a long day of disappointment, smiles and screams ... the norm in my household.