July, July!

I feel like the whole month more or less dashed off when my back was turned. Between the trip home, the wedding, house-sitting and then recovering from it all, life has felt a little too much like just going through the motions to suit me. I am used to getting very tired around 10:00 pm, but I'm not used to dragging myself out of bed only with difficulty well after 7:00, many mornings in a row. That is what happened all last week, and my tiredness even persisted through many of the days, making me drag along through work, and have difficulty motivating to leave the house when not entirely necessary.

However, so far this weekend has been just what the doctor ordered, and I'm feeling much better. Yesterday we managed to catch up on laundry and other exciting things around the house. This morning I turned my attention to the fact that I left my old faithful 256 MB jump-drive in Tucson. Mom offered to ship it out to me, but I declined, saying it might be time for me to upgrade anyway. This morning I took a peek at slickdeals.net, a great site for finding really amazing offers and anything remotely nerdy. I found a 4 GB USB flash drive for $13.99, free shipping. Now, admittedly I hadn't shopped for a USB flash memory device for many, many years, but this price blows me away, nevertheless. 4 gigs is huge. And $14 is really not a lot of money.

So, I placed my order and now I'm kind of excited for it to get here.

Home, Kind Of

After many days and many events I find myself back in Iowa, where things haven't changed a whole lot. I feel like I was gone for a long time. And I suppose I was. After flying back from Arizona on Friday, I spent the weekend in Chicago at Brian's sister's wedding. It was an enjoyable event, but after three days of attending various receptions and gatherings and ceremonies, I was more than ready to head home. Sunday evening was glorious - sitting around quietly with Brian and catching up, and then sleeping in our own bed.

Unfortunately, that all ended on Monday morning, when we both had to leave for very long days of work that involved a good deal of catch-up for both of us. Then there is the further complication that I agreed to house-sit this week for someone I don't know. The two dogs are Shelties - and the smallest examples of the breed I have ever seen. The house is about two miles away. I thought house-sitting would be no big deal, but the dogs so far have proven very strange. Although they are young, they have bizarre and elaborate feeding requirements, and so far have refused to eat all of my carefully prepared meals. They also won't engage in any sort of normal dog activity. They don't even wag their tails. They follow me around the house staring but run away when I talk to them or try to get them to play. And although they will allow me to put their leashes on and walk them around the block, they don't seem to derive any enjoyment from this experience.

But of course the main discomfort of the whole thing is having to spend so much time at someone's else's house, and sleep there, so soon after returning home myself. Also, between the extra work and the dogs, I haven't even gotten to see Steen yet. =(

So, I guess this has turned out to be a fairly whiney blog post. I do apologize. The good news is I'm sure I can persevere until the dog's owner returns on Saturday, and in the meantime it looks like we will even get a visit from Brian's parent's to cheer us up. And after that, Brian and I should have many unbroken weeks of living our life the way we want to.

Arena

Today Meryl and I spent the entire day constructing an arena in our very own backyard. We are incredibly exhausted, sore and sun-burned, but we are also pretty pleased with ourselves.

Mom came out and took some photos. This is most of the arena.

This is the rest of it.

This is the arena with Meryl, me, Romeo and Jak all inside for scale.

Oh, Romeo

This is my sister's great dane, Romeo. He has grown since my last visit.

He likes to sprawl around and take up as much space as possible.


He face is still pretty cute, though.


But his paws are absolutely enormous.

Introductions

Well, I'm back in Arizona for a little while, and I finally made it out to meet Autumn and Efrain's new daughter, Isabella. She is about three months old, and when she is not sleeping, mostly occupies herself with working on being able to roll over.


Here she is, sleeping happily in her swing.


Her dad dotes on her.


He also brings adventure to her life.


Liz also came in to town from Santa Fe, making the day into a grand reunion of close friends.


Autumn was excited that we were there.


She also seems pretty happy to have Issa in her life.


Even I got to be pretty comfortable with her by the end of the day.

Westward, Ho!

Tomorrow, I am going to drive to the Chicago suburbs, leave my car at Brian's parent's house, take a train into the city, take the el to the airport, and get on a plane that will fly me back to Arizona. Once there I will bask in (dry) heat and intense sunlight for just over a week. Although Brian will not be going with me - and I will miss him - I am looking forward to the trip. I love the Tucson mountains in the summer, and lately I'm experiencing a bone-deep craving for open space. Although I grow more and more fond of Iowa, (largely thanks to Steen), I still miss the freedom of hopping on a horse, riding over a ridge or two and then pausing on hilltop to look out upon a 360 degree view of empty land without so much a phone-line to indicate nearby human habitation.

Of course, even in the remote parts of the desert north of Tucson, these views are growing fewer and farther between. My favorite one is now marred by two houses. Most of the others are mere illusions provided by rising and falling geography. Still, even with the encroaching buildings and roads, there is a different feeling in the west. The land is still wild. Here, everything has been tilled and harvested a million times. There, in most places outside of town, man has mostly just passed through.