A day in the life of a housewife... again!

This morning I got up at 5.35, made breakfast and coffee, walked the dogs and fed them (Gracie wouldn't eat anything - that pissed me off!). Then I did the dishes, did some laundry, changed our bed linen, dusted, vacuumed, mopped and then cleaned the bathroom. I also cleaned the dogs' water fountain. I cleared the yard of dog poop too. Then I made us lunch, and now I need to do some more dishes and put the other ones away. I'm tired!

We're going to look at some more houses today, there are 4 we're supposed to view this time. Hubby is finishing work an hour early (he didn't take his lunch break) and we're meeting the realtor at one of the houses right after that. Then this evening the in-laws are coming for dinner. It's 92ºF right now and it's going to be 97 later - it's too hot! It's going to be hot for a while, I think. We're in April now and it's not going to cool off now, not much anyway. That means walking the dogs early every day, before it gets too hot for them (and me!).

Last night I had another driving lesson, it was my first one since Sunday. It went really well, I ended up driving for about 4 miles on a main road and didn't do anything wrong! I shifted gear fine every time, I obeyed the speed limit and I didn't drive too far to the right of the lane! Hehe. I also had some traffic lights to contend with, and stopped behind a car without getting too close. I also got a good start when the lights changed, so that was good. I didn't get all stressed out - I think I'm getting the hang of this driving business! :-)

I drove us to our local supermarket on the way back, and parked in the lines albeit at a funny angle! Then I drove us home, the long way, so I didn't have to make any left turns, haha! I enjoyed it, it was a good confidence boost because I did good and that was by far the furthest I've ever driven on a "big" road so it showed me I can do it and everything is fine. :-)

Busy busy!

This morning I got up with hubby at 5.50 a.m. (he starts work at 6) and made us coffee and breakfast. I also did some laundry and changed our bedding. Around 8 a.m. I gave the girls their breakfast and their meds, then did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, tidied the house, dusted all over, vacuumed everywhere, mopped all the tile floors, cleaned the pugs' water fountain, cleaned the bathroom, cleaned the sliding door in the living room and cleared the yard of pug poop. Then I took a shower and hubby took me out for lunch at the local Thai restaurant which was a lovely surprise!

I might need a nap now, I've been on the go non-stop for 7 hours now! :-)

Also - the dogs are doing much better now. We've started using the water spray bottle again with Suzie which is a good deterrent and stops bad behavior in its tracks! Yay!

Weekend!

We took the girls for a nice walk this morning, it's another beautiful day in Phoenix! (as if that's really anything surprising!)

After that we brought the girls home and went to buy my stepdad a birthday card. It's his birthday next Sunday and to be honest, although I knew it, I hadn't really thought past February 10th (my big interview day). Just as well I looked at the calendar this morning! We mailed it right after buying it, so hopefully he'll have it in time. If it's late, then so be it, but it should probably arrive on Friday or Saturday.

I got an email from my friend T, and we ended up chatting on Skype (at long last!). She's planning to come over for a vacation in a couple of months! Yay! She said she's booked the time off work already and is hopefully coming on April 22nd and staying until May 1st. That'll be a great time to come here, the weather will be perfect but not ridiculously hot. My Mom and stepdad arrive on May 3rd, so it's quite close but it'll work. T will stay with us I think, which is fine - we have the air bed and it'll be nice to spend some proper time with her. I really don't think she could be anywhere near as annoying as my Dad when he was here! She won't leave a mess everywhere, that's for sure. I'm really looking forward to it! Hopefully she'll book her flights soon. :-)

Hubby got a call from work about an hour ago, but hopefully we're still going to be able to go to his parents' place for dinner. I'm looking forward to seeing them, now that I've been approved for my green card - my mother-in-law was so excited for me when I spoke to her on the phone, it was so sweet. She even caught me off-guard by saying "I love you" when we said goodbye. I wasn't expecting that! It's so nice to have such lovely in-laws, I really appreciate them. Hopefully Gracie will be calmer there today and not bark so much at everyone!

Sleep? What's that?

Wow... We had a terrible night's sleep last night! Hubby and I woke repeatedly because of the pugs: Suzie was lying right against hubby (she's like a hot water bottle when she does that, so he kept waking up as he was too hot). Gracie snores so loud I'm starting to think we should've named her Nora (The Snorer!) and she was right next to me. I lost count of how many times I woke up to get her to stop snoring! Hubby left the bedroom at around 4.40 a.m. and went to lie on the couch; I followed him 10 minutes later and told him to go back to bed, and that I would move to the couch with the girls. He can't sleep on the couch, and he has to work at 7 a.m. I can sleep on the couch normally (although it turned out not this morning!) and I don't have a job, so it was only right that hubby could have the bed to himself. We've also decided that no longer are the girls sleeping on the bed with us. Even when it was just Suzie, we weren't sleeping that well. I like having them on the bed with us but I don't like the lack of sleep, and it's not something we should be doing long-term if it's impacting negatively on our lives! Tonight we'll go to PetSmart or Petco and get a nice big comfy dog bed that they can share. They'll still sleep in our room, but at least we'll be comfy in our (very comfy) bed and actually sleep. Gracie will still snore like a big fat man, but at least it won't be right next to our ears!

I feel really bad for hubby, because he's going to feel like absolute crap all day now. I'll make him a nice breakfast and some coffee - maybe I'll make extra coffee today, I think we could both use it to be honest! He's on-call all of this week, which usually means he gets called at like 4 a.m. and he has to get up and get on the computer to solve whatever the problem is (he's a programmer). His on-call weeks are always shitty, but at least if we have the bed back to ourselves then we'll have a better chance of sleeping well until he's called. I hope he doesn't get called on Thursday morning, because we have my AOS interview which is important and I don't want us to be like zombies. I hope the girls will be OK when we're gone, we haven't left them alone together yet but we'll have to do a trial run before Thursday and see how they are when we're gone for an hour or so. I think they'll be OK, but you never know do you? If they're not OK then we'll have to crate Suzie while we're out on Thursday morning, but I hope it doesn't come to that. We shouldn't be gone for too long hopefully, maybe 2 hours or so including travel time. The interview is at 8.40 a.m. so hopefully it'll be on time - they can't open much before that, maybe the first interviews would be at like 8 a.m. It's not like we're near the end of the day or anything - hopefully they won't have had time to get behind by my appointment time!

God, I am so tired. So so tired. You should see the very dark circles under my eyes - shocking! Thank goodness I don't have anywhere to be today - it's times like this I'm even more grateful to be a housewife!

Anxiety

Today has been a wet one in Phoenix - it's been raining pretty much all day! Tomorrow is probably going to be somewhat the same, too. Oh well, we can't complain - it's not like it happens very often!

My Dad arrives from the UK tomorrow. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet - I don't mean to sound awful, I am looking forward to seeing him, but I'm also kinda dreading it because he insisted on staying at our house and we really don't have enough room. He'll be sleeping on an airbed in the living room until Monday, and then he can sleep in our "second bedroom" which is actually hubby's office. He works from home and his hours are 7am-4pm so if my Dad's going to sleep in there he needs to be up and out of there by 6.50am... I'm not sure if that will happen, to be honest I really have my doubts. He can't sleep in there before Monday night because hubby is on-call all of this week and as usual he's been called at ridiculous times every day so far - 4am today, 5.30am yesterday. He has to get on his computer when they call him so we can't have anyone sleeping in the office while he's on-call.

The other thing that I'm worried about is that my Dad will probably expect me to pay for lots of things, like coffees and lunch etc. I'm lucky because I do get an allowance from hubby (his idea, not mine) so I do have some money I can spend, but not much. I've got good at making it go pretty far, but that's mainly because I don't go out very often! It won't go very far if I'm having to buy lunch all the time, or pay for admission into whatever places he wants to go to. Even a couple of coffees at Starbucks would end up using a decent chunk of my cash, because he'd expect a slice of cake or a muffin with it. I don't want to sound tight, but when you don't have a job you do have to be quite prudent with the money you have. I don't waste money on things like going out for coffee anymore, which is something I used to take for granted back in the UK when I was working full-time. Your priorities change when you're unemployed!

Finally, one last concern is that hubby and my Dad don't exactly know each other very well. I mean, hubby only came to the UK once while we were "dating" because he only gets 2 weeks holiday in a year and I used to get a lot more than that, so they've only actually spent a day together. I don't want to be pessimistic but I'm not sure how well they're gonna get along when they're thrown together for 10 days... It's probably going to be awkward for both of them, and me by default. I'm worried that hubby and I might get stressed out with the whole situation and snap at each other. Earlier today I explained that to him and he agreed - it probably will put us under quite a lot of strain, because of the space issue as much as anything else. That's without factoring in any personality clashes that may occur! Hubby is usually pretty laid back but my Dad can be quite highly strung and not very tactful - he's very stubborn and I think he's probably going to be a high maintenance, demanding guest. I hope that I'm wrong, I really do - I just can't stop feeling anxious about the whole thing.

Anyway... I've just cooked dinner (chicken fajitas) and done the dishes (for the second time today). Right now I have laundry in both the washer and the dryer. Hubby is soaking his elbow in epsom salts and warm water (for the 4th and penultimate time today) and pug-pug is chasing her squeaky gingerbread man around! I think I deserve a glass of wine and some chocolate... :)