The Faces Of Arizona

I was up at 3:00.  Hello World!!  Mr. Cooper immediately stuck his head under my arm.  IT'S BALL GAME TIME!!  Not quite yet my furry little friend ... but soon!  I figured I might as well drag myself out to the kitchen, because the ball playing fanatic wasn't taking NO for an answer.

After 30 minutes of chasing the ball around the living room, I grabbed a cup of coffee and went outside to sit in the not so cool quiet of the morning.  The crickets were chirping, along with just a couple of birds.  All the other smart ones were still asleep!!

It didn't last long.  That 4" long black centipede ... or whatever it was ... crawled over my foot and I screamed like a little girl.  So much for the quiet morning.  He landed on the door mat, which I tried to toss over the fence ... with no luck.  No worries ... I went back out an hour later with the shovel ... just in case ... and flipped the mat over.  He was gone ... to come and crawl over my foot another day.

The sunrise made up for it.  The faces of Arizona are many.  You might think this is a sunSET, but no, this is looking East to the morning sun.

This one is from two days ago.  It happens most every morning, these beautiful sunrises.  It almost makes up for the snakes and scorpions.  Speaking of which, I just killed my first scorpion in the garage.  You've gotta watch for those guys all the time!

It just keeps getting better.  

Patty and I were soon off to the funeral of a neighbor.  The building was full.  It's sad to think about it, but that's the way we will all be going sooner or later.  I'm hoping for later ... like 103 would be nice!!  I've still got lots of adventures left and sprinklers to repair.

It's cool enough this morning that the sprinklers are on my menu.  Wish me luck.  Once that's done, it's off for paint and supplies.  Somewhere in between I've got cactus to chop out, rats to catch, bushes to prune and dams to build for the coming monsoon storms.  Oh ... and adjust the chain on my saw.  

Not to be outdone by the furry little friend Cooper, Jonathan has been quite the busy bee.  When I said they were chewers, I wasn't joshing you.  This is one of those big sticks he demolished in about 20 minutes.  I must say, he's very neat at stacking.  This would make great kindling!!

Just look at that beak ... it's perfectly honed, the better to chew your finger off with.  Now you know why he isn't allowed to roam about the house.

And yet another question has arisen.  I got an email from Lazy Days RV that my rig was due for a service. So those of you who have fifth wheels, just what SERVICE is required?  Really, I'm not looking forward to dealing with another problem, but I know there are things that need to be greased.  Can anyone tell me what all that might include so I know what I'm talking about when I call them?  I greatly appreciate your help!!

It rained again last night for a couple of hours.  I tried to catch some lightning with my camera, but it was infrequent and weird up-in-the-sky stuff.  There's a 60% chance of rain for the next two days, which means there's a 100% chance it's going to rain cats and dogs.  I'm hoping Mother Nature gets it all out of her system because in 9 days they will start on my new roof.

Hopefully things will dry out enough I can continue with painting, but I'm not holding my breath.  I think I picked the wrong time of year for this project!  Now to go see if my game camera survived the storm.