The Month in Pictures

Yes, I fully admit, I've been a bad, bad girl. I mustn't neglect The Sandbox this way. So here's what has kept me so busy...

The House.

Den Before #1

Den Before #2
Can you see why that dizzy broad who owned this place before me had a tough time selling it? And why I got it for about $50K less than the original asking price? Nice couch, doncha think?

Den After #1
And here, friends and neighbors, is what I saw in it, the reason I stuck it out and bought it even though it needs a new roof. I painted it a dark gold.

Den After #2
What? Who's this?

This, gentle readers, is Moonpie. He's a 6-year-old retired racing Greyhound. He was picked up out in Bisbee, near blind from Pannus (a rather nasty condition I have to treat with eyedrops the rest of his life), love-starved, even skinnier than a Greyhound should be, and his eyes were so painful you couldn't touch his face. He even bit the Border Patrol vet who first looked at him. Now he's a wonderful pet, the best dog ever. I relented and gave him the couch after watching through the dining room window one day as he said goodbye to me at the door, made sure I was gone, and then climbed right up. He is just lovely.

I also decided to sell my house in New York, as it has become apparent that hanging on to it will forever act as a burden. I've spent over $15K on renovations and I'm not willing to rent it out for just enough to break even after paying the landlords their monthly snow-blowing and lawn-mowing fee. I had it appraised, expecting about $85-90K, and was ecstatic when the appraisal came in at $115K. After paying the realtor and the mortgage, I'll recoup all I've spent on it, plus about $25K pure capital gains. Not bad for two years of fixing up the old grey mare. There's my new roof, and I'll put the rest into big improvements to this house--not a bad investment either, seeing as how the house down the street just sold for $350K, fully twice what I paid for this one. I figure, if I fix this one up the way I did the last one, not only will I have a fabulous house to live in, I'll also make it all back (and then some) in the long run.

And what did I do after getting that good news, besides to tell the realtor to list it NOW, was to find The Perfect Car. I mean, it's like Providence smiled at me on the Net, which is where I found my gorgeous (almost) new 2005 Nissan Altima SE-R, the Special Edition package, with ALL the fixins: Bose stereo system, all black and grey leather on the inside, smoke grey exterior, power sunroof, just a pimp-mobile all the way. You'd think it was a forty thousand dollar car, to see it. I'll post some pics of it in the next few days, if I can stop driving it long enough to take some photos.

See, What Had Happened Was...

I think I’ll rename this blog Memoirs of the Whore of Babylon.

William’s long gone, although he did call to tell me one of his best friends, another Border Patrol Agent in New Mexico, had died. My immediate response was pure skepticism, but he seemed to get a bit emotional while he told me about it, how they found her body in her home and no one knew the cause of death, that she was only 34 and her weapon was within arm’s reach, etc. He’s either missing out on a very successful acting career, or I feel like a monumental jackass for sending him a text message reading, Did you move already? What’s with the hit and run??

So he went to visit his family in South America and clearly thinks that if he isn’t in town, there’s no reason to call. Not that I’d want him to call me from South America, but Tucson?? Me personally, I think nothing of flipping the cell phone open and calling people on it from wherever, that’s why I pay for it.

So then he wound up that conversation with, “I’ll call you in about two weeks.” I told him not to bother, not unkindly, just meaning I release you from any and all real or perceived obligations without malice. Fly and be free, friend.

So that very night I climbed into 3” black leather pointy-toed stilettos and enjoyed a rather raucous girls’ night out with Shannon and Bobbie, complete with tequila shots and lengthy evaluations of the ass quotient in the bar, a dim little dive next to a racquet club. I had resigned myself to having loud fun with my girls, telling stories about Iraq and about common acquaintances, when I glanced up to see two unbelievably attractive men walk in, alone. I say unbelievably attractive because they had that sexy quiet confidence of older men, at least mid-thirties, well-dressed—in short, adults. We have so few here. The table perked up right quicklike.

Bobbie and I planned our friendly course of action, and after I turned back after a quick word with Shannon, dressed to kill and wearing dark sunglasses, in the bar at night, like an incognito starlet (and quite frankly, looking the part), and Bobbie had crossed the room to the mens’ table and sat down. I went and sat next to her after introductions all around and a nice firm handshake from each specimen.

I sat next to Greg, Bobbie next to Matt. Matt, I discerned, reminded me a great deal of a pilot I’d known in Texas, fully cognizant of their appeal and never forgetting it, not for one second. Way too cocky for my taste. Greg, however, was (is) a different story.

He’s a CW3 (getting ready to pin 4), a pilot, here for training, divorced, and 36. And I, like every other red-blooded American woman, have *A Thing* for men in flight suits. There is nothing a man can wear that is sexier than a flight suit…unless you’re Dubyah, and then nothing you do in a flightsuit or anything else is even remotely sexy.

So now it’s three days later and he’s on his way over, having called and asked me if I wanted some company. He can’t stay late, since tomorrow he has to get up early so that he can fly an Army plane to Las Vegas for lunch, and then he’s coming back. I am in the wrong business. And he leaves in about three weeks, back to Georgia. Of course! Rat bastard, I’ll make him fly an Army plane all the way back out here, the punkass.

William who?