When it rains

Oy.  You know those days where the BEST thing you can say is that no one lost a limb and you managed to park the car without driving it through the far side of the garage?  That would be today.  
     (Extended) Family crisis?  Emphatic check. 
     Hurt feelings? (mine, over something silly)  Check. 
     Troubling work issues?  Check. 
     Sprained hamstring forcing me to give up my precious heels?  Check.
     Small child who has refused to sleep for two (!) nights in a row
     because of the #$%^&* rainstorms?  Check.
     Blown Plumbing Gasket-y thing?  Check - Oh no, wait, that was last week.  

AND WE ARE OUT OF WINE.  

Two Mondays ago I came into work to find waterlogged ceiling panels strewn across my desk.  Shortly followed by a day of huffing mildew.  This past Saturday I was - wait for it - at work when Matt called to announce a pipe or something had broken in the upstairs bath and the light fixtures were dripping.  Things seem to have gone downhill from there.

Today is the type of day to remember the important stuff.  Like bathtub art.
Oh, look!  It's a water theme!

And sweet girls

And sweet boys

And missing teeth

[Tooth Fairy Inflation:  What happens at 5am when you realize you fell 

asleep without running up to the gas station for change]

And grown up boys 

And family trips to the zoo.  

The Girl with her Aunt & Uncle.

Six other random good things:
- I didn't get a ticket tonight driving home at 70 with the cop behind me.  70 in MO is like 85 in SoCal. Maybe 90.  I never got a ticket going 80mph in SoCal.  Here? I'm passing 94% of traffic at 70 and got pulled over once going 72.

- Matt is secretively planning a weekend away.  I'm not supposed to know about it.  He's good people.

- When my brother & his wife came to visit they brought home-cured salmon.  YUM.

- I played "zaniest" in WWF for 81 points.  Heh.

- When The Girl fell this weekend and cut her lip open she didn't need stitches, and when something small and fanged left a bunch of huge angry welts on the The Boy they were better by this morning - which I knew because I'd marked the edges with Sharpie (that would be spelled p.a.r.a.n.o.i.d.).

- The flood resulting from the broken thinga-ma-bob dried more or less without ruining anything.  Or so the professional insurance guy says.  If I start getting unaccountably cheerful, it's probably because I'm huffing mildew.  

13/31 for 21 Punctuality

Lucky 13?  Apparently not for me today- no one look at the publish date, m'kay?  These are some photos from my son's last day of summer.  It was a Monday, school started on Tuesday.  I took a day off work so we could go to the zoo and cram one more bit of freedom in before we returned to the navy uniforms - just mommy and her boy. 

He spent most of our trip admiring the ongoing construction and not so much the exotic creatures. I suppose cranes can serve double duty, right?

So close!  Just an inch off.  Uncle Pete calls that construction tolerance.

There's a Slitherens joke in there somewhere.

Happy Days.

Operation Interlude, IV

Danger!  St Louis

Zoo.  Just Mommy & Me, the

Last day before school

After the crowd, we go to the zoo

[There's a joke in there but I couldn't quite swing it]

[Insert second joke about feeling like a hippo after 6 days of feasting....]

The girl was NOT amused (it was in the 90s)