Savings and Loam

Yeah, it's been slim pickings on my blog for a while. As long as my new computer doesn't randomly reboot (again), I might actually get something published and start using it regularly again.

So the financial debacle has finally caught up with us. I'm in no position to whine, it is merely a statement. SuperMom and I are doing fine and working away, but our tenant that lives in our old house in San Diego just became the unwilling recipient of a gradual withdrawal from the unemployment coffers. L happens to be the coolest tenant ever. As much as we'd like to see her succeed and buy a home of her own, if she has to rent, we really want her to rent from us because she is awesome. No hassles, low maintenance, easy to talk to, and very funny. So anyways, she just had a life-altering surprise and asked us if we can help. Well, we weren't about to risk losing her and having to find a new weirdo tenant from 2600 miles away, so we're, digging deep and helping her out.

In other news, the traditional pre-birth "nesting" stage is upon us. Last time I was remodeling our kitchen right up until munchkin's arrival. This time it's a whole lotta yard work. We finally broke down and had the front yard landscaped, but that really only gave me a breather. This weekend she we decided to complete some unfinished grass and sprinklers in the backyard. After an hour or so with the neighbor's roto-tiller, a few hours of raking, several hours of digging, soldering, cutting, gluing, and reinstalling all the sprinkler valves the hack landscaper installed, we were almost done. And then it got dark. And then it rained. And there we were shoveling Hawaii clay at 10PM on Sunday night. This project is of course going to stick around long enough to ruin more than one weekend. So far we have what earlier in the weekend was about 400 sq feet of freshly tilled and nicely raked dirt. It now is a lumpy, muddy mess (with sprinklers!). Oh and how lovely it is to come home and have to give the dogs a bath before they can come inside the house. Gah.

On the upside, our mango tree is loaded with a couple-hundred mangos that are beginning to get ripe - and none of us like mangos. Why couldn't we get a house with an avocado tree, or bananas, or coconuts, or apples?! There's nothing quite as tortuous as having a ginormous fruit tree that everyone in the neighborhood raves about and it being one of the very few foods that you don't care for.