Garage door guy came out to our house.  This was the same garage door guy who’d installed a replacement door after the previous garage door incident.
He took a close look at our lopsided door and said that the issue wasn’t the door install, but maybe the garage door opener – which he wasn’t responsible for.  He also said something about a man claiming to be the homeowner calling him and berating him for a bad installation and that he wasn’t going to pay for the repair.  I assured him that wasn’t us, that we aren’t the homeowners, just the renters.  He fussed a little bit about the way he was treated but I didn’t know anything about any of that.  I just wanted to be able to close our garage door.

Even though he claimed he wasn’t responsible for the issue, he started messing with the garage door anyway, I assume to put it back on its tracks or something.  I didn’t really know what he was up to and didn’t feel the need to ask at that moment. 
While he was doing his thing I went on in the house because it felt odd just to stand out there and stare at him.  A little bit later I ventured back out front to see what the final prognosis was.  Garage door guy was nowhere to be found.

The garage door, while more straight, was still open and the automatic opener was still unhooked from the door.  I assumed garage door guy was going to call the landlord back and explain the issue.

Apparently angry little garage door guy didn’t. But we didn’t know that.  So we were just waiting around for nothing.
Ryan called the landlord this morning and left a message. She thought garage door guy had come out and repaired the issue and everything was hunky dory because she never heard from him.
She also asked for details about the “altercation”.
Which wasn’t really an altercation at all.  Just a frustrated garage door guy who was upset at how he was talked to by the homeowner WHO NEVER ACTUALLY CALLED HIM!
Maybe he is confusing our door issue with somebody else’s door issue because our landlord says no man called garage door guy. It was her assistant who made the call, who happens to be a female who is not the homeowner.

Because, you know, where there be garage door repair men, there be drama.

So, once again we’re waiting to hear back from our landlord, who may or may not be missing some hair.  The garage door is finally closed though, which is good, but we really don’t know what the future holds for the automatic part of it.

Or anything really.

It’s all very weird.
But such is my life.

The girl’s got six older brothers.

This could get interesting.

Tonight I was almost attacked by a monstrous beast of an insect.
This thing just about tried to kill me in the Hess station parking lot while Ryan innocently pumped gas.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little. But, really, he did look at me like he was in the planning stages of a full blown assult on my personal space.

Have I ever mentioned that I don’t like bugs?
Except lady bugs.
And praying mantis’.

So, I took the picture to see if Joe could identify the mammoth bug. I like to try to stump him with unusual insects.

I’m not successful often.

And wouldn’t you know it, the boy knew exactly what it was. A toe biter. Also known as an electric light bug.  A type of water bug.

I asked him how on earth he just pulled the answer to that question out of his head. He said it was in his bug book.
The National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Insects and Spiders.

He’s gone through a few of these books. Thanks to Papa, and then Uncle Stinky for continuing to supply them as needed.

I can barely remember how old I am, much less some insignificant detail I read in a book a year ago.
How kids are capable of retaining such obscure information I will never understand.

I love…

…this.

This little girl is just…
so…
…

I have no words.
Neither does thesaurus.com.

I have been wondering lately how Lucy keeps ending up on her stomach at night. It’s not every night, but occasionally I wake up to find her sleeping peacefully on her belly.
Which is not the way I leave her.
I never remember laying her down that way and can’t imagine I would absent mindedly do something like that no matter how sleepy I might be.
But she still ends up on her tummy sometimes.

Well, the mystery has been solved. Ryan saw tonight how it’s been happening.
He spied Lucy, at just under 3 weeks old, rolling her new baby self over onto her belly to sleep. Then she tucked her tiny arms and legs under her little body and got all cozy like.

What am I supposed to do with this kind of cuteness?

You better believe there will be pictures.

Um…
I’m smiling.
No, really. I am.

And so is Ryan.

Our garage door, the one that ate itself back a few months ago…
Apparently it got hungry again tonight at around 11.

Brand new garage door that cost the homeowner something like $1500. Same old our house really hates us in a severe way issues.

Right about now I’m feeling really, really,
really
glad we don’t own a home anymore.

And I’m starting to feel really awful for the homeowner. His house totally has it in for us and he’s the one footing the bill.

Baby, git yer hair brushed and put on yer best jeans. We’re goin’ to Walmart!

Okay, so Ryan didn’t actually say that but when he mentioned running to Walmart this afternoon I got all excited.
I haven’t been out of the house much since little Lucy was born.

I showered. I blow dried my hair. I used my hair straightener to de-frizz.
I even put on a little make-up.

In my freshly washed blue jeans and a clean shirt I walked into Walmart.
But after a brief glance around I thought to myself, Self, you are way over dressed for this.

Literally. I had way more clothes on than most of the shoppers. And a lot less make-up.

I have an LG vacuum cleaner (pet care model) I received in exchange for a short video review. A $300 vacuum cleaner.
I liked it a lot for a few months. But I don’t recommend this brand if you plan on wanting it to work properly for more than, say, a half a year. It gets clogged, like, every time I use it. It makes weird noises.  Gives up periodically, turning itself off.  And occasionally smells like it’s cooking something.

Have you ever smelled cooked dust?
It doesn’t smell like freshly baking chocolate chip cookies. That’s for sure.

So I had to declog it because my husband walked across the carpet and it needed to be vacuumed.
You ladies with husbands probably know what I mean. Or maybe not. Maybe my husband is the only one who tracks clumps of dirt across the house. He’s been fixing up the yard, repairing the automatic sprinkler system that came broken with the house. 

He’s awesome.
I let things like dirt slide.
It makes us even.

So I opened up the vacuum to clean it so I could vacuum up the dirt clumps. This is when dirt, dust, and dog hair sort of jumped out at me in a kind of mini explosion. Somebody should have been taking video.  It would have added a more humorous touch to this blog post.

So I cleaned it out really good.  Then I plugged it back in and turned it back on.

I started pushing it across the floor and it started making a weird sound.  But the current weird sound wasn’t the same weird sound it was making before I cleaned it out.  And though the weird sound definitely wasn’t supposed to be, it didn’t sound quite as bad as the weird sound it made before, either.  So I opted to just let it go and keep vacuuming.

And now my husbands boot prints are disappeared.  That was the goal.

And now I am finally happy.

Jesse gets words wrong sometimes. It’s not necessarily all his fault, though. I mean, he is just 2 after all. And I am his mother.

His latest mixed up word is actually a combination of two words.

Like, when I’m starting a load of laundry Jesse will say something like, I punish?
Which translates literally as, Mother, would it be acceptable to you to allow me to push the buttons that will start this load of laundry?

Punish is actually a combination of the words button and push.
I think Jesse has the most adorable way of mixing up words.

There is no denying that the boy is my son.

Lucy went and grew a whole lot in the last 15 days she’s been out of the womb.

She’s almost a pound heavier than she was a birth!
But she still doesn’t know what to do with her tiny arms and legs yet. They usually kind of flail about in an uncontrolled fashion.
That must feel strange.

When she is sleeping sometimes I’ll touch her lips just to see what adorable, funny faces she’ll make.
You can only do this with babies.
And sometimes husbands if they’re sleeping really deeply.
Of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that.
Besides, it’s cuter on babies.
Um… I’m sure.

Lucy has only been around for just over two weeks and it already feels like she’s been here forever. I remember being pregnant with her, but can’t really recall life without actually holding her at the same time.

It’s like this with every one of my kids.
Isn’t that weird?

And just like every other one of my children, Lucy fits so perfectly here.

I have a baby girl.
[soft sighs of thankfulness]