Mike walked out the garage door to take the garbage out a few minutes ago. Little Girl was standing right by the door and trying to follow him, so I went over to make sure she didn’t get smushed by the door. As the door closed, I saw a tiny brown streak come scurrying in the door. Not knowing what it was at first, my natural reaction was to scream and whisk LG out away as fast as possible. Which of course scared her and made her start crying. It was only a tiny baby gecko, and when I realized that I took her back over to look at it as we waited for Mike to come back in the house (the same Mike who HEARD me scream and kept right on walking - darn him).

When he got back in, I explained what happened, and he tried to get her to look at the gecko with him. Every time it moved she screamed and cried. Great. I taught her to be afraid of lizards. (I suck. You can rescind your Mother of the Year Award nominations. I’ll understand. Really I will.) Finally, I picked her up and took her back over to the gecko myself. And she was fine. I kept explaining to her that Mommy was just startled because she didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t anything to be afraid of, and Mommy was sorry if she scared her. (Okay, maybe not so fast on the nominations.)

Then it was time to send the gecko back into the big wide world and so Mike caught it in his hand to take it outside. Whereupon, it shed its microscopic little tail. Which kept convulsing around in Mike’s hand. Which totally creeped me out. To my credit, this time I did not scream. And neither did LG. Lesson learned.

Heard from LG in the bathtub tonight: “Gecko! Gecko! Gecko! Gecko!” (You get the picture.)

Am I the only one who does not like to share her spirals? Seriously. Am I?

P.S. I didn’t get called in on a jury panel at all today! So I’m free! YESSSS! I’m totally doing the Happy Dance!

I’ve decided that if scribbling on an envelope with a pencil or taking all the objects out of the front pockets of her diaper bag keeps Little Girl quiet during mass, I’m okay with that. Because 1) she’s quiet and 2) she’s QUIET. As opposed to her saying “HI!” or “PAPA!” or whatever else she wants to say as loudly as she can. Quiet is good. Of course when she says “Amen”, well that…that is adorable.

Jury duty tomorrow. I might be able to get on one of the computers there and check my email or I might not. I found out that I can take my laptop with me and there is wireless internet, and that’s certainly tempting, but I decided I’d just try and get some reading done instead. It won’t hurt me to be without my laptop for a few hours. Will it?

Best line on Grey’s Anatomy tonight: “Because it’s what Jesus would freaking do!”

So far today Little Girl has:

• climbed on the sofa repeatedly until I took her out of her corral so she wouldn’t fall off the sofa and cause me to rush her to the ER with a head wound;

• reached up and stolen food off my plate as I was eating (if she teaches the dog to do that, she’s totally grounded);

• pushed her exersaucer from over by the closet into the kitchen cooking area (because what else is there to do with it when you don’t fit in it anymore right?);

• found Mike’s leftover glass full of melted ice on the table, pulled it off the table intact and then, as soon as I got near her to take it away so she wouldn’t spill it, spilled it all over the floor and herself;

• sprayed herself and Melody with the spray bottle;

• tried to push Melody down numerous times, as well as “hugging” and “kissing” her (Melody, bless her heart, endures it all);

• climbed up and down the three steps to the loft that are not blocked off (yes she has figured how to climb down without killing herself);

• shoved the big recycle bin to a position next to her saucer where one side of the cooking area is totally blocked off (I’m leaving it that way until her father gets home from church because I want him to see what he has in store tomorrow…ha!);

• pulled everything she can possibly reach off the table (including, but not limited to: scraps of paper, books, magazines, the telephone, the spray bottle, the cup, my purse - almost, a craft from VBS that one of the kids gave her, and a bag of sand toys that I got for our upcoming trip to San Diego);

• spun herself in circles while singing with her hands over her ears (while I watch her to make sure she doesn’t fall and crack her head open causing me to rush her to the ER - did I mention Mike has my car right now?);

• emptied Melody’s dog food dish while Melody was trying to eat out of it;

• put the food back in the dish while Melody was still trying to eat it;

• rinse, lather, repeat - the dog food trick until Melody finishes the dog food;

• pulled new garbage bags out of the box and put them (unused) into the garbage can;

• shoved the garbage can next to the previously shoved exersaucer and recycle bin further blocking access to the kitchen;

And she’s only been up two two and a half hours. Help!

Seriously, couldn’t she have saved some of this delightful energy for tomorrow???

For some reason, having to go to jury duty on Monday is making me anxious. And that is annoying me. I’m not really sure why other than the possibility that I’ll get chosen for a jury and have to be away from my little one during the day for the rest of the week. I’ve not been away from her for more than a few hours since she came home from the hospital. I know she’ll be well taken care of by her father, but still, I don’t like being away from her. Hopefully, I’ll either not get called in for a jury at all, or I’ll be able to convince them they don’t want me, or that me having to be on a jury will cause a financial hardship, which it kind of will because Mike is not able to work if he’s home with her. And when you’re self-employed, not working means not getting paid. Anyway, I’m anxious and that bugs me. Ugh.

I called this afternoon to see if I would have to go into jury duty on Monday. And of course, I do. Bleh. I’m not really looking forward to it, other than the fact that I’ll have some uninterrupted (or mostly uninterrupted) reading time. Hopefully, I’ll get out of there early and not have to do anything. Hopefully. Cross your fingers and pray.

Okay, I know y’all probably get way more humidity than we do like ALL THE TIME. But that makes it worse for us because our bodies do not know how to handle humidity. It rained this morning. And then it stopped. Had it kept raining all day that would have been better. But no. It stopped. And hey! It’s only 84 degrees because it rained! But hey also! The humidity is 64%. SIXTY FOUR PERCENT PEOPLE! Which means that even though the heat index is only 90, I’m here to tell you that it feels WAY WAY hotter and nastier and stickier than that. The dew point is 71 degrees, which means people with evaporative (swamp) coolers need to get their butts to the mall because (speaking from experience), evaps do no good whatsoever in this kind of weather. Thank you oh thank you inventers of air conditioning. I won’t give you my first born child, but I’ll send you double chocolate cookies in the mail. I need a nap. And cake. And chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

After the storm blew over, it was pretty quiet and I did get some good sleep in, but not as much as I would have liked to have had. I’m really glad Mike was home last night, though. I hate being alone during scary storms. Some of the lightning strikes were pretty close. One of them actually tripped the AFCI in our bedroom. So I was a little freaked out there for awhile. But everything is fine, thank goodness.

Little Girl slept through the entire storm. Not. a. peep. Until her father went out on the back patio to close off part of the dog run so Melody wouldn’t track mud in the house. He dropped a metal pole on the concrete and THAT woke her up. Go figure. She went right back to sleep, though.

It was Melody’s first big storm and she actually handled it pretty well. Her heart rate was up a bit and she was shaking during the worst part, but she didn’t seem to be having an anxiety attack like Lady used to. She went outside once and turned around and came right back in. Mostly she just wanted to be near us, which was fine.

Tomorrow is the last day of Vacation Bible School. I’m ready for it to be over. I do enjoy it - being with the kids (because although I don’t admit it very often, there is a part of me that misses teaching), being with other grown-ups (since the only conversations I get all day are words being repeated over and over again or LG grumping at me because I’m not doing something fast enough to suit her - not that I don’t enjoy that, but hanging out with other people is nice, too…lol!) and sharing music. But by this point, singing the same songs 50 times a day (Okay I’m exaggerating. A little.) starts to drive me crazy and the theme song seems like the longest. song. ever. Little Girl needs to be back on her regular schedule and I need to be able to actually get something done around here again. (Of course, I have stupid Jury Duty on Monday - SO not looking forward to that.) But, tomorrow is also the last day for the Religious Education Director who has been there for 21 years. We will all miss her immeasurably. So, in one small way, I’m wishing VBS will never end. And yet, not.

I just realized that today is (almost was) July 25th. July 25, 2006. For the most part a day pretty much like any other. Except for 11 years ago on this day, I had a heart attack. At age 28. And for the past 10 years, I’ve sort of dreaded this day. And gotten a little anxious as it approached. But this year? I almost got through the entire day without remembering. Since I did remember, I’ll just say that it’s been a long time. And although I still remember that day pretty clearly, it doesn’t have the same power over me that it used to. I could have died that day. But I didn’t. I’m still here. And now I’m a mom. And now my heart is doing pretty darn well. And I plan to stick around quite a few more years thank you very much. So here’s to making it through another year. And here’s to looking forward to the next 40 or 50 years or more. I guess I did have something to write about, after all.

Updated at 12:30 am to add: Although I was beginning to wonder if my heart was going to make it through all the close lightning strikes we had for the last hour or so. Things have quieted down. Melody got a tiny bit stressed, and Little Girl didn’t even make a peep. I envy her being able to sleep through all of that!

Little Girl can now identify a circle, a star, a square, and a triangle. And the way she says triangle is just too precious.

She can also (most of the time) identify blue and purple.

I’m slightly proud. Can you tell?

I also have nothing else to write about. There’s a huge storm blowing around outside and I’m tired. Two more days of Vacation Bible School - it’s fun, but by the end, I’m ready for it to be over.

On a really happy note, we made our hotel reservations for our trip to San Diego coming up in September. Yay! Hopefully, we’ll get to do dinner or something with Mr. Syndromes. We are so looking forward to getting out of the heat for a few days. Seriously.

Taken by Mike

Most telephone solicitors, while annoying, are polite. Probably a lot of the people they talk to, are not. But hey, they knew that was gonna happen when they took the job.

Then there are others. Who are flat out rude. And unprofessional. And jerks. Which I don’t get. How on earth do they expect to actually sell anything if they are obnoxious? Do they think they’ll intimidate you into buying something? I really just don’t get it. (Read on …)

As we were moving the cardboard cactus props for Vacation Bible School back out of the closet for the week…

“Mine is floppy.”

“It needs Viagra.”

“You’re keeping yours up!”

“I’ve had more practice than you have.”

I spent the day getting all of our income tax information together - or at least the part I’m responsible for. Yes, I know it’s July. We filed an extension and now we can’t put it off anymore. It was not really the way I wanted to spend my day, but there you go.

Other than that, there is not much going on around here. Yesterday was not only the hottest day of the year (118 was the official high, but it reached 120 in some parts of the Valley), it was the hottest day in a DECADE.

It’s almost midnight and it’s still 100 degrees. Ugh. Just ugh. All I can say is thank God for air conditioning.

Updated to add the link to the car seat cooler pad!

It hit 120° F in some parts of the Valley today. Yep, you read that right. Here, it got to about 116°. Yep, nasty. And then, miraculously, there was a storm and it rained! And the temp dropped to the low 80s in an hour - 30 degrees in an hour. Gotta love the rain.

But before the rain, there was a duststorm. I was in the laundry room and heard the wind, so I opened the blinds to see what was going on. And saw our blow up wading pool flying through the back yard. It landed against one of the palo verde trees. Mike ran out to rescue it. It has at least one hole, so we’ll have to see if it’s salvagable. That kinda sucked.

Then it rained REALLY REALLY HARD for about 10 minutes. Not really enough rain to do us any good, but at least it cooled down for a bit.

Earlier in the day, as I was loading Little Girl into the car to go to the grocery store, I spotted one of these guys in the garage. Note how big he is. I called Mike to make sure he wouldn’t bite me because I had to get really close to him in order to get the ice packs out of the freezer for Little Girl’s car seat cover (which I would put a link to if I could find it because it’s a cool item but I cannot). Mike told me it was “just” a palo verde beetle and he wouldn’t hurt me. He’s still yucky. But luckily, he ran and hid when I was trying to take his picture with my cell phone.

We went to the in-laws for dinner tonight to meet our new nephew - 5 days old. He weighed about 7 1/2 lbs at birth, so a normal sized baby, but gosh he looks so teeny tiny. And Little Girl looked huge next to him. He is the tiniest baby she has ever seen. She was pretty fascinated by him and started pointing out and naming his body parts: “nose”, “eye”, “foot”, “knee”, “elbow”. It was pretty cute. She wanted to hug him, but at the time she was sitting in the high chair and so she didn’t get to. But, she was very interested in her cousin. She’s not the baby of the family anymore, and it was really amazing to see how much she has grown. She’s a big girl now! Of course I forgot the camera, but my sis in law took a picture. If I get it anytime soon, I’ll try and post it so you can see the newest member of our family!

We’re going to have a hot hot weekend, but if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get some more rain - and by more rain, I mean a little less fleeting than today’s.

Hope you all have a great weekend!