Domestic Geek

Today we made the monthly drive up to Homestead North in Keystone, SD. It rained briefly somewhere along I-25 in Wyoming. It had to have been after Wheatland since Marcus is driving.

Not a long post today as I'm rather irked.

In an effort to multitask, I decided to do my laundry on site tonight while I watched the Bronco game, did dishes and worked on some computer stuff. When I went over earlier, all the washers were full. I got my stuff in around 8 finally, had it in the dryer a little before 9. As soon as the game was over, I went to get my clothes and the laundry room is locked. This would be my fault if say, I knew 10pm was the time they locked it; however, I have walked the dog at 1 in the morning and it was still open. Apparently closing time is whenever the asshole with the key decides it is time to lock it. There are no posted hours and the couple of times I have been in there babysitting my laundry on a Sunday evening, it was after 11 when the dude showed up.

I let laundry go too far and we were totally out of clothes, so everything is in there. With my luck, the guy won't be back at an early hour to open it, either.

We're also out of poop bags. They expect the residents to clean up after their pets, yet we haven't had bags in over a week. I carry my own, but the lawn is becoming a mine field out there.

Also, the 3 fountains in this place haven't worked in months and they're freaking disgusting.

I'm so glad they felt the need to raise everyone's rents $50 so we can live in a crappier place than it was when we moved in.

I haven't accomplished much today and it felt wonderful!

We got into Keystone after 2 am last night. I really tired to get out of work by 3 so we could hit the road at the start of rush hour, but of course that didn't happen. I got off a little after 4, then forgot it was rent day, so I had to go to the bank to deposit my check. Then there was a couple of things I needed from the store as well as a Chipotle stop for dinner. Fortunately, we had packed almost everything the night before, so we got on the road a little before 7, but traffic still sucked. Between coffee, 80s on Eight on Marcus' Sirius radio and my Kindle app, I did manage to stay awake for the whole trip (I usually zonk out between Cheyenne and Wheatland). We rolled in a half an hour later than expected due to the large amounts of deer on the sides of the road between Edgemont and home. The last thing you want to ruin your vacation is hitting a stupid deer. After getting all our gear into the house and unpacking the cooler, I think I conked out about 3:30.

It was no surprise then, that I didn't wake up until 11 this morning. It is so quiet here that I sleep amazingly well. Since it is not tourist season, there wasn't even an 1880s Train to wake me up. I fixed some coffee and bagels for us to eat for breakfast while Marcus took T out.

I puttered around for a bit and sometime around 1 (I think), I took the Kindle to bed to read and next thing I know, it's 4. I've been battling something viral for the last 3 weeks and my typical insomnia and I think my poor body just needed rest.

I had grand plans of doing some design work for Marcus and getting some stuff here unpacked, but none of it happened. I did make a pot of potato leek soup for dinner and baked Marcus some oatmeal raisin cookies, but that's about it for the day. Oh, I've read a bit more of book 3 of the Game of Thrones series.

We were visited by some deer this afternoon while I was making the soup:

I hope that's what South Dakota residents call themselves. I searched online and didn't find anything similar to the disagreement as to what those in Colorado are called (I myself prefer Coloradoan, but I digress).

The week prior to Memorial Day, Marcus and I made another quick trip up to Hill City, South Dakota. While the previous trips have all been about sight-seeing and biking, we had another agenda. Marcus wrote in great detail about it on his blog.

A quick summary: we may soon move our house to Hill City.

Why now? Well, the park owners are threatening to raise lot rent again (under the guise of high water usage). If such an increase goes into effect, the lot rent will be more than the house payment. Also, with the construction going on around here with the Fitzsimons complex, traffic is going to increase substantially. Access to our street was cut off by something they're doing over there, so the park owners converted the empty lot next to us into a street. Also, Aurora has made it no secret that they want to do away with mobile home parks. It's probably only a matter of time before we'd be forced out anyway. Finally, it's even getting harder to put an older manufactured home anywhere, even Hill City. If we don't do this now, we may never get it onto a permanent foundation.

Anyway, we'll know by the end of the month if we can do this. Sadly, we'll have to treat it as a vacation home at first. While I can probably find something up there to replace my pitiful salary, it won't be so easy for Marcus. First things first, though.

So, here's a little sneak peek of our (hopefully) new home:



Keeping fingers, eyes and toes crossed for the next three weeks...

My whole life I've believed (brain-washed, more like it) that the products made by corporations had to be better (better than what, I didn't know). Ever since a friend of mine opened my eyes to the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and having read the corporate lies/justifications as to why they use them, the wool started coming off my eyes. With the relatively recent introduction of genetically modified foods into our systems via the lovely folks at Monsanto, I'm trying to give big corporations as few of my hard-earned dollars as possible.

A few years ago, I figured out that commercial cough syrups did nothing more than keep you sick longer. I found a home-made cough remedy that really works for me. More recently, I found that a simple mixture of apple cider vinegar, baking soda, water and sugar did wonders for heartburn (stuff that Tums or Rolaids couldn't quickly relieve). I quit buying commercial cleaners for the toilet and the shower. Turns out white vinegar & baking soda works wonders there, too. I've still been buying Formula 409, though, and realized I really believed it was the only thing that would cut through the grease on my stove. Well, guess what? I used the vinegar/baking soda solution on it today and it worked so well, my stove actually squeaked it was so clean.

A few weeks ago, I made the yummiest fajitas for dinner. Not only were the ingredients all-natural and organic where possible, I even made the seasoning from scratch. No more need to buy those super-expensive seasoning packets that have a lot of unnecessary crap/sodium in them.

So, do any of you reading this have any tips for commercial product replacements that work really well? I'd love to hear them!