You would think that with my child at Grandma’s & Grandpa’s house for the week (can I get a HALLELUJAH?!!!), I’d at least have the courtesy to write something–you know, throw out some amusing little tidbit from my daily life that we could all have a chuckle at and move on.

Well, you’d probably be wrong.

The Boy is indeed at Grandma & Grandpas, no doubt being seriously spoiled as I type this, and I have an extremely quiet house for the rest of the week. The woman who usually watches Owen is on vacation in Florida this week and my two options were to either take off the entire week to stay with Owen or to ship send The Boy to the in-laws for the week. It was a tough decision (hmm…with The Boy 24 hours a day for 7 days straight with no break….or…empty house with no small ‘helpful’ child or husband for 7 days…hmmm…) but ultimately, I was able to power through and make the choice least likely to result in my ending up on the local news under the tagline of “…local mother snaps suddenly”. Seriously though, Owen’s only been gone for 3 days and I am missing his squishy little self. Almost even the part where he sleeps sideways and wakes me ever so gently by kicking me solidly in the kidneys first thing in the morning.

Other than that, life is pretty dull at Casa YouMeAndABaby–I’m trying to fit in all the things that need to get done around the house and tend to go better without a little helper (see: scraping paint from back door and re-painting) as well as some freelance jobs that have come up, so it’s actually a fairly busy and boring week.

I can’t believe that the 4th of July is right around the corner. The Husband will be home and we’ll be traveling to Alderson, West Virginia, our usual 4th destination, for a family reunion of sorts and fireworks. My favorite part is always the food since everyone usually brings a dish of some kind or another and there’s lots of good food to eat. I usually go with my old standby–potato salad made from my grandmother’s recipe. In the two years that I’ve brought it, I haven’t had to bring any leftovers home (and that’s even with a huge double batch).

Does anyone else out there ever feel like they’re always going to be socially awkward forever? It’s probably not as bad as I’m thinking it seems, but I just never seem to be able to talk to people that I don’t know very well without saying something dumb or managing to plant my foot squarely in my mouth, usually multiple times. The crazy part is that I’m not that inept when I’m talking to clients or potential clients on the phone. I’m calm and collected and able even to be (appropriately) funny. Must have something to do with feeling comfortable about what I’m talking about/explaining and not being good at making small talk. I’ll be 32 in August, I’d like to move out of the gangly-feeling adolescent stage at some point in the near future (face take note: this means you as well–breakouts are not attractive at 14, even less so the same week each and every month on an almost 32 year old face).

I think that about covers everything currently on my mind.

Oh, that and which of the new Mountain Dew flavors? I think I’m going to have to go with the Voltage as the Raspberry Citrus is just good stuff.

Discuss.

Last week was one of those weeks that just kind of flew by. Which, depending on the events of the particular day, was probably a good thing. I give you my recap of the last week in short list format for your viewing pleasure:

Sunday: Owen locks himself in the car after church. Thankfully the car was running at the time and the AC was running full blast. Not so good was the Ambulance and Fire Truck that had to come to the church parking lot to unlock the door, lights ablaze and sirens wailing. After this, I don’t think I can complain that I don’t know very many people in my congregation.

Monday: A small tornado touched down in three separate locations located within about a block of my house. Ask me how glad I am that it wasn’t our house that sustained extensive roof damage like the guy down the street. It was pretty crazy—it came up out of nowhere and by the time I had completed the thought process that the clouds across the way appeared to be swirling in a circular pattern and were sucking things up off the ground into them and maybe it would be a good idea to grab Owen and head for the basement, it was all over.

Tuesday was pretty quiet, although I did learn that my child already, at only almost 2, knows the power of a good poop joke as evidenced by his highly vocal performance of fake pooping on the potty.

Wednesday: I shake my fist and curse the grain product that was infested with carpet beetles that I so cleverly (unknowingly) bought and brought home to the cupboard and find that I am now completely infested on all three shelves of the very tall and very deep cupboard. Really, I ask you, what’s more fun than impromptu total cupboard cleaning, complete with pest spray? Especially when you make the initial discovery of infestation after 10pm at night. Do I know how to party around here or what?

Thursday: Discover that wild rabbits have completely eaten 12 petunias before they can even be planted in front flower bed, along with first three blooms on zucchini plant. Debate merits of pellet gun vs. live trap. Ultimately decide to put down hair instead.

Friday: Pick husband up at 4am after he has been out of town for work for 5 weeks. Come to the conclusion that husband needs to schedule arrival home after 8am in the future. Also consider most effective area to kick repeatedly when husband tries to get frisky at 5am after being picked up and does not seem to fully grasp the concept that if Mama is more sleep deprived than usual, no good can come of it.

Saturday & Sunday: Temperatures do not go below 90 degrees. The idea of lying naked on the AC unit crosses my mind more than once. That is, when I wasn’t engaged in creatively rearranging my clothes so as to achieve maximum sweat removal from bodily crevices.

The saddest part of all? The above represents a fairly normal week around casa YouMeAndABaby.

My pep talk to the garden (small exerpt: Grow dammit, or I will stomp a mudhole in you and walk it dry. I know, I should TOTALLY be a motivational speaker) has apparently worked because on Tuesday? I ate the first radish from the garden. Granted, it was a little bit smaller (still overall good-sized though) and therefore a bit more zesty than I care for, but still, I WAS ABLE TO EAT SOMETHING OUT OF THE GARDEN THAT I GREW WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS. Note to self: Get out of the house more often, STAT.

I am also working on overcoming my fear of talking myself up to total strangers in the interest of growing my portfolio so I can make my ever closer escape from workplace a reality. Believe it or not, this is actually resulting in a more positive outcome than I would have initially guessed. On a totally unrelated and non-biased tangent, you don’t happen to have a website or blog that you need designed and want to pay someone oodles of paper with dollar signs all over them, do you? Why am I asking? Oh, no reason at all. (www.trenabdesigns.com /shameless self-promotion).

Thing the third: Who will win Top Chef next week? Who do I want to win. Now that they’ve weeded out all the psychos, it’s kind of hard to pick who is the most lame. Although, I have to say I am so glad that Dale had to pack his knives last week, because he seriously made me have anger issues and I found myself shouting things at the TV against him because he made me so angry for all the other chefs who had to compete against him. Don’t watch Top Chef? Don’t worry, I’m totally not a complete loon–I just feel a mite strongly about my cooking competition shows. Yet one more endearing personality quirk. No, it isn’t a personality ‘flaw’…quirk just sounds so much more…not most likely to go crazy and end up on the news, don’t you think?.