Your Intuition Always Knows

I noticed just a couple little oddities at first, not alarming, but nagging.

An upstairs bathroom window left open. ("I don't remember doing that").
A tupperware container full of change outside of it's normal drawer. The mattress pushed over slightly. (I don't remember doing that either").
A pile of hair bands spilled on our bathroom floor. (I know I didn't do that!)

After dinner, M & I tried to figure out which one of us left the bathroom window open. Was my memory getting that bad? There was no way someone could have come into our house. Our TV was still here, the computers were here, the house looked pretty much the same as we had left it. Besides, our German Shepherd and Lab were inside, surely they would keep someone out. But I just couldn't shake that nagging feeling of someone having been here. M suggested I check for the Ipod upstairs in the kids' room. Sure enough, it was gone.

When I saw the empty spot on the dresser, the hairs on my arms stood up. Strangers walked through our house today! In our kids room, in our room. Rifling through our nightstand drawers, pushing our mattress aside. After filing a police report, we spent the evening calling credit card companies and putting fraud alerts on our socials. The police suspect it was kids, taking just what they could carry. We live right next to the woods and they exited through a back gate right to the trails. In a way, it's a relief to think that it's kids and not some creepy man walking through here with other thoughts on his mind. But to lose the cameras, the Ipod and the baby monitor of all things...it's a bummer! I've always felt such security with our dogs here, but apparently they can be sweet talked.

I guess that's all for now. We have Playschool tomorrow and I'm the snack lady. Life goes on.

Oh, the Guilt

Today I shut Bear's hand in the car door. On the hinge side. Uuggh! I hate even thinking about it. It happened during the hubbub (beware of hubbubs) of getting out of the car and over to the playground. As I was shutting the door, I glimpsed his hand near the crack but I didn't think it was that close. Turns out it was closer! It was sickening to see his little fingers wedged in the impossibly skinny door crack, hear his shocked pause and then panicked shrieking. Luckily for Mom's conscience, oh yeah, and for Bear, his fingers survived, nothing is broken and we didn't have to visit the ER. He was even able to eat a pretzel and hang on a monkey bar afterwards.

If only Moms recovered that well.

TGIF!

My stepdaughter had to put her 13 year old dog down.
A friend's Mother passed away.
A friend of another friend died unexpectedly after surgery.

And today I discovered that our renter left us with a $500 water bill. Needless to say, he hasn't returned any calls.

Sometimes you have to just get through the week.

"Toot"

While running errands this afternoon, I saw a little deer along a neighborhood side street. Seeing deer in our town is a common, everyday, multiple-times-a-day occurence. It's nothing special, but my children don't know that. They don't even know what a deer is! So I pulled up alongside the deer let the kids look while I "wowed" excitedly. The deer stayed put nicely and gazed back at us. The kids weren't too terribly interested, but as I pulled away, I could hear Boo quietly saying "toot, toot".

"Hmmm, toot...toot", I whispered to myself, trying to translate (which is also a common occurence), "doesn't sound like deer."

Then it hit me, she was saying "cute".

Well, it was cute.

My Parents Are Visiting

I'm trying to get my Dad to start a blog. So I'm showing him how to do a post. He has a ranch in Spokane and is selling grassfed, organic beef if anyone is interested. Who says you can't do a little promotion while we experiment with blogging?

Our Future Tech Support

The Parent Room

Today was our second Playschool class and things went very smoothly. Last week, Bear got a little overexcited (so much to do!) and a little overtired (it's in the middle of nap time) so the second hour was pretty much meltdown after meltdown. But we survived and returned this morning, despite my late night anxieties.

During the second hour, I visited the "Parent Room" and enjoyed a cup of coffee while the kids played. As we sat around the table drinking coffee, one of the moms said she graduated high school in 2006. 2006! Ok, so I won't be telling anyone when I graduated.

"I tried a year of college, but it just wasn't for me," she continued.

Oh, but to be 21. So much possibility. When I was 21, divorce was something that happened to other people, and life was full of time. Time to go to school, build a career and then think about kids. I politely listened, drank my International Delight French Vanilla coffee, and wondered if she was going to complain next that she has sex only four times a week?