Rain!

It's a wet, grey day in Phoenix! It's raining on and off, and it's supposed to continue that way for the rest of the day and into this evening. It actually makes a nice change, really. Most of the time it's warm and sunny with blue skies, so a grey drizzly day is quite refreshing!

We had a lie-in this morning, Suzie woke us up at 6.30 so we put the dogs on the bed with us and they eventually went back to sleep. We got up at 9.40 - positively late for us, even for a weekend! It was nice, but I do feel a bit groggy now because of waking up and going back to sleep a couple of times. Oh well! It's not as though we're doing much today. I think it might be a movie day - there seem to be a few decent-ish movies on TV, so that'll keep me occupied for a little while!

I need to go to trusty old Target at some point, poor Gracie has allergies at the moment and she's scratching lots. She's on Benadryl 3 times a day (luckily we got the Target own version which is exactly the same, only $4 for 100 so that's great!). Anyway, we're also having to put shirts on her to stop her from scratching herself too badly - her skin was getting raw where she was scratching, so it does help to put a shirt on her. I think I'm gonna buy a pack of baby shirts from Target, she's gonna need a few because all the scratching inevitably results in holes. There's no point spending $15 on a dog shirt, when I can probably get 4 or 5 baby shirts for around that price. Well, I haven't looked into the prices, but I'm sure they're a lot cheaper than dog clothes anyway! She probably needs either a 12 or 18 month size, I'm thinking the 18 month will be better because it'll fit looser. Pugs are hard to buy clothes for because they're broad shouldered and dog clothes that are meant for their weight range and length are usually too small around the shoulders. Ordinarily it wouldn't be an issue because we don't dress them very often, but Gracie seems to feel the cold a lot more than Suzie and with her scratching because of her allergies, it's the only thing we can do to help (apart from the Benadryl of course). Gracie actually seems to love wearing clothes too, she gets all wiggly and happy when we get them out for her. Suzie? Not so much. Apart from the gorgeous pink polka dot dress she wore to our wedding, she loved that one!

:-)

Gosh, the past few days I've spoken to lots of my friends... Wednesday I talked to Taj, who arrives here on April 22nd, and I also talked to my Mom and Dad for a while to tell them about the house and my unexpected tax rebate. My Aunt Dorothy also called, so I spoke to her for a bit too. Thursday I talked to Tamzin, Debbie and Rochelle. It seems to happen like that - I don't get to speak to anyone for ages and then in the space of a couple of days I speak to loads of people. I kinda would prefer it to be more spaced out but hey, what can you do? I guess it just happens to be when people are free - I'm free most of the time, but they're all busy!

Oh - good news, the government shutdown has been averted. Hopefully there will be no disruption while Taj, my Mom and my stepdad are here! :-)

We might finally be getting somewhere... Maybe!

Hubby got an email from our realtor last night, she now has her computer back virus-free and found hubby's emails which had somehow gone into her junk mail. Hopefully we might be able to look at some houses when hubby finishes work today at 3... Fingers crossed, anyway.

When we went to get our mortgage pre-approval, it was based on 20% down which is what hubby wants to do. Our realtor has now said she doesn't understand why we don't want to just put 3.5% down, like most first time buyers. Well, that'd be because we'd end up borrowing a lot more and our monthly payments would be higher, and hubby has saved up so what's the point of not putting down 20%? It makes more sense to us to put more money down and have lower monthly payments - otherwise the mortgage will be crippling us! 3.5% is fine for people who haven't got savings, but it seems daft to only put that down when you do have the money there!

The dogs had a fight this morning, it was the first time in a while. Neither of them was hurt, hubby grabbed Suzie as soon as she started and then I got the spray bottle and used it on them both. It didn't have any effect this time but I think it's because I didn't get it in time - it was on the dining table and I was in the living room area, so it took me a little longer to get it. All's well now though, thank goodness.

I took them for a short walk just before 9 a.m. - it was already 70ºF then, it's going to be 83 today, then 86 tomorrow, 92 Thursday, 95 Friday... yuck! This is spring? Damn!

I'm not exactly looking forward to summer in the desert, it'll certainly be an experience... =/