Pros and Cons of New Home Life

Getting used to my new home has been both a blessing and a curse. I love the tranquility (usually).  I love having quail in my yard and other birds I've never seen before. I love watching the hummingbirds wage war on each other. I love the neighbor's fat gunia fowl that leap over our fence to eat the bird seed I put out for the sparrows.

And I love the store Winco, which seems to have a bit of everything I need for prices I haven't seen since the '80's.

On the downside, I have no social life. I have no car. My boyfriend and I get on each others nerves from too much time together. If I need to go somewhere and it's on his route for the day I might get to go. That is so constricting it makes me want to scream.

My income has plummeted without DSL and good Internet access. The only way I can even type this blog is by going to the library and using their DSL. Last time I was here the computer I was on had Yahoo Messenger so I got to leave a message for friends I haven't been able to talk to since leaving Anaheim. Only today none of the library computers seem to have it. I have no control over what programs they do or do not have. And for some reason at 1 PM the library suddenly fills up with people so if I don't get there before that, there are no computers available. There is a 3 hour limit per day on computer time, so I'm trying to squeeze what I used to do online in 8 hours a day into 2 library sessions of 3 hours each per week.  And since Thursday is Thanksgiving, this week I only get one day to do everything. So I'm typing like a maniac trying to get everything done.

I'm so far behind on Nanowrimo because of my limited computer access.  I'm about 15,000 words behind. I can write longhand but then I have to type it all in later so it's a big time suck. Ack! I'm staying home on Thanksgiving so I hope I can use my boyfriend's computer. We are sharing one monitor and one keyboard, so if he's on it, I can't be. My monitor died in Anaheim, and the move used up all our money, so who knows when I'll get another one. I really don't know how I'm going to make a living if I don't get a satellite connection or something. Or Verizon gets off their butts and  puts more DSL ports in Lucerne Valley. I feel like a little old lady living out here in the middle of nowhere with technology from the 50's.

Hummingbirds

Today I took the hummingbird feeder the previous tenants left hanging in a tree in the backyard, and cleaned it, filled it with sugar water and hung it from the joshua tree in our new front yard. Within hours we had visitors. I spotted four different hummingbirds sipping nectar from the feeder. And they looked different than the ones in Anaheim. Hopefully I'll have time to take photos of them another day as it's dark out here. I also brought the glass hummingbird feeder from the apt. in Anaheim, but I haven't been able to find it yet.  We had four moving vans, so I'm sure it was in one of them somewhere.

Hummingbirds bring me joy. What can I say. My friend said in South America they call them Sugar Birds.

We've been putting out seeds for the wild birds as well. They didn't eat the sunflower seeds but they were gone by evening so something ate them. Probably the guinea fowl from the neighbor's house. They leap over the fence sometimes.