So...

I may have overreacted in that last entry. You know, the one where I swear vengeance on our neighbors for allegedly stealing our garbage can. (again.)

"Allegedly" is the key word in that sentence.

This morning found us in our normal routine: I was flipping pancakes, Brian was getting ready for work, and Scotty was playing with his bop-bops. When Brian came down, he asked me if I had checked the neighbors' curb for any sign of our can. I had been thinking about the great garbage can heist all weekend (I even spied on them last night when the garage door was open, trying to get a look inside for any sign of our can) but this morning, the pancakes had taken up all of my mental ability and I had completely forgotten it was Monday, i.e. Garbage Day.

Needless to say, at Brian's prompting, we both ran to the window. (Scotty jogged behind us, wondering what the heck his parents were up to now.) And...no can. The neighbor's cans were lined up neatly - all two, not three - and both had lids.

Brian and I stared out the window for a long time.

Brian: They don't have our can.

Me: We don't know that for sure. It might be in the garage. They may have taken it hostage.

Brian: [sighs heavily]

With that, he headed to work and I set about not burning the pancakes. Imagine my surprise when about 10 minutes later, I hear a knock at the garage door -- the door that leads to the house from the garage. I thought I had shut the garage door?

It was Brian, toting our can. You know, the can with our address on. The can that I've been fixated on for the past five days.  And as some of you may have noticed, as he was so quick to comment in my last entry, our garbage can was not tied up in the neighbor's garage. Nor were we going to start receiving ransom notes from our garbage can's kipnappers.

Nope. The damn can really did blow away. It was all the way down the street, past the yellow pole things, and in a different subdivision. Brian happen to catch sight of it as he was driving out of the neighborhood. The poor little can spent the last five days exposed to the elements, laying on its side, all alone. 

As he stood in the garage and pointed out the retrieved can, he started jogging back to where he was parked. "This better be going in the blog!" he shouted as he ran.

Thanks, honey.

So to my neighbors: my apologies. Sorry for calling you thieves. (I am pleased I got a chance to use some good Charlie Sheen quotes, though.) Can I make you some muffins to make up for this horribly awkward neighborly faux pas?

And in an effort to distract the rest of you from my glaring mistake, here are some cute pictures of Scotty from this weekend. Enjoy!

(We had a little bit of an issue with the hawk. See, it's in our backyard to scare the pigeons away. Scotty, however, thought it was part of the Easter celebration. I had hid an Easter egg next to the hawk, and Scotty retrieved both the egg and the hawk and then promptly put both in his basket. We had to explain that no, the eggs are not from the hawk, but from the Easter bunny, despite fact that hawks lay eggs and bunnies do not. It was confusing, to say the least. I think we might have really screwed the kid up.)

(we were finally able to get the hawk away from the Bear and headed to Cili for a lovely Easter brunch with Uncle Jim. I hope everyone had a great weekend!)

Because our garbage can is officially missing.

Again.

I kid you not. What I think is especially funny is that I heard the garbage truck as I was typing the last entry, the very entry that described our neighbor's very weird behavior and yet stupidly, I didn't go running out to the curb and save our clearly marked can from the Great Unknown. Oh no - that would have logical. Instead, I finished the entry, published it, and promptly sat my bum on the couch and watched approximately 42 minutes of 'The Real Housewives of New York.'

Despite having just written an entry about losing our garbage can, my brain didn't register this irony.

By the time Scotty woke up and I had grown tired of LuAnn/Alex/Jill/Bethenny & Co arguing (it was a rerun from last season), I completely forgot to check the curb. It wasn't until we got back from our playdate later that afternoon and I checked the mail did I think, "Hey! It was garbage day!" And just like that, I realized, it was gone.

And we are now officially one can short. Again.

I will say, this time I'm doing things differently. Because it's our can. Our house address is on the side. We have already retrieved our can from the neighbors once before; now what is their excuse going to be? I can only imagine.

Because I will say this: it's on. Oh, it is so on. Monday is the next garbage day, and while Garbage Man may cometh, I will taketh away. I am not messing around. Screw this whole "neighborly" niceness. Here's an idea:  stop taking our can! 

If necessary, I will walk over there in my jammies and demand the safe return of our can.

Because it's our can.

Duh. Winning.

Grr...

So stayed tuned. Monday should be an exciting day.

Oh, and happy Easter! Peace, love, and all that jazz.

It’s been pretty windy around Vegas for the last few weeks. I have no idea how Chicago got the title of “The Windy City” since I believe Vegas’ wind puts Chicago’s wind to shame. I mean, we’re talking gusts up to 50 and 60 mph. It’s enough to knock a grown man over.

And it’s more than enough to send an empty trashcan flying down the street, as we experienced last week. Before Brian left for work one blustery morning, he gave me rather stern instructions to ‘make sure [I] grab the can right after the garbage men come,’ or else we were going to lose our trash receptacle to the Great Unknown. So I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ll make sure I grab it quickly.’

Guess what? We lost our can that day.

I looked all over for it. We live on a cul-de-sac with only nine other houses, so it couldn’t have gone far. But I could not find the darn thing. I looked all over and finally gave up. When Brian got home, he was none too happy, and even commenced a search of his own, running up and down the street in his little jogging shorts. (giggle)

It turned up nothing.

The next day, he went out and bought another garbage can. “It’s critter-proof,” he told me proudly.

Number of raccoons I’ve seen or any animal, for that matter, that would fall under the category of “critter” since moving to Vegas?  Zero. But I appreciated the effort. And the new can.

So imagine my surprise when on the next trash day while watching Brian drag our new critter-proof can to the curb, I noticed the neighbors across the street had not one, not two, but three trash cans lined up at the end of their driveway. Two were identical, though one was missing a lid, and the third was the standard-issued one from the garbage service. All three were piled high with trash.

All of the cans were lined up with the front part facing the house, not the street.

“Brian,” I hissed. “They have our can! They have our garbage can!”

He looked at me blankly. “What do you want me to do?”

“GO GET IT!”I yelled, waving my hands at him.

So Brian dutifully trooped off to ring the bell while Scotty and I stood on the porch, watching intently. This whole situation was going to be resolved quickly, I was sure, since our address was painted on the side of the can. The same side that was currently facing their house, but how were they going to argue with that? It was our can.

Within a few minutes, Brian was walking back to the house, empty-handed.

“What happened?” I jumped on him as soon as he hit our property line.

“Well, she said she didn’t know it was our can,” he started.

“How is that possible? Our address is painted on the side!” I exclaimed.

He shrugged. “She just said that she was wondering why their can was missing a lid.”

“But their garbage can has a lid…our doesn’t.” Our lid had blown away in yet another wind storm earlier in the year. “She didn’t notice that she now had…three garbage cans? And that there was still a lid on one of the cans?  Did she think the trash cans were multiplying? They were mating in the garage or something?”

Brian just shrugged again. “She said they will bring our can back as soon as the garbage men come…but she swears it isn’t our can. Despite the fact that they have an additional garbage can. Without a lid. That just magically appeared in their garage. With someone else’s address painted on the side.”

Weirdos.

I finally stopped interrogating him and let him go to work, but the minute the garbage truck rumbled around the corner, I was on our can like nobody’s business.  I felt strange going across the street and taking it off their curb, but for the 12th time that day, I told myself, “It’s our can. I am not stealing…I am taking back what was originally ours.”

Is that what OJ told himself when he robbed those men at Palace Station back in 2007?

Who knows. But it was our can!

Argh. The complicated mess that is a neighborhood.

And now today is yet another garbage day, and Brian dragged our can to its rightful place on the curb. It’s windy again, so I’m prepared to haul it inside the minute it is emptied. Because as we learned last week, while the can may be critter-proof, it doesn’t mean it’s not neighbor-proof.

...pickles...

(this is definitely my child. He loves pickles, especially pickle spears. And always the refrigerated crunchy kind. Yum!)

...and perseverance. Because using a spoon isn't always easy, but Scotty won't give up, even if it means wearing his applesauce, as opposed to eating it. Yes, I forgot to put a bib on him.

Needless to say, we will not be trying hot soups anytime soon.

Oh, and just in case you were curious, here's a shot of the new garage storage. Be still my heart! Seasonal decor has found a home.

::sigh::

Ever since say, September, I've been obsessed with organizing our garage.

Call me crazy, but I believe a three-car garage should hold at least one car. And yet, ours houses zero. Not even a bike.

Over Thanksgiving, my dad was kind enough to help Brian install these gigantic, white cabinets and I love them. Seriously. Every time I look at them, my heart races just a tiny bit. They are sturdy, clean, and look really impressive. And best yet, our junk is carefully concealed behind the gigantic white doors. Why do I have 8 cans of various shades of green spray paint? I don't know. But I can tell you where exactly it is stored in our garage, lest the need arise for some basil or lime colored paint. (far left cabinet, third shelf, in the back.)

I even took down our Christmas decorations on the 26th of December (sorry, just not very sentimental) and waited with baited breath to store all of our ornaments, tinsel and bows with precision. Except the lovely white cabinets are now full, and we still have about 300 boxes on the floor. Hence the need for overhead storage.

I've been asking (read: nagging) Brian to put up the overhead storage since December 27th. It's going to mainly house what I like to call "Seasonal Decor" and while it's out of the way, at least it's still within reach. (Easter is coming up fast, people).

The only problem with the overhead storage? The only time Brian has to do it is on Sundays. And Brian said he would do it as soon as football season ended.  So while I cheered on Green Bay (from a distance, naturally), I felt torn. If they win, Brian is happy. If they lose, my seasonal decor continues to occupy a giant chunk of floor space and my car continues to get dirty since it sits outside, next to the sprinklers, every night.  Which is more important to me? Does it matter?

I think you know where this story is going, since the Packers play in the Superbowl this weekend.

I did manage to convince (read: harass) Brian into hanging the shelving this past weekend. Technically, the Packers were not playing. This was his one, shining moment to get into the garage, hang some wire rods, and call it a day.

So he did. Kind of.

I tried to set the stage as best as I could. I took Scotty far, far away (Target) and left Brian to work on his own, uninterrupted. I know I give him a bad rap for his handyman skills, but my dad (i.e. Bob Villa) was impressed with Brian's craftsmanship on the Gates of Hell (we all remember that one, right?) and I started to think maybe I should ease up on the poor guy.

And then Saturday happened.

Scotty and I had just gotten back from Target and were fixing lunch as Brian happily measured and drilled in the garage. All of a sudden I hear the sound of the drill followed by this very terse, "Help!" and then silence. It was so quick I thought I had imagined it.

So I started walking to the garage, but something inside of me said, "Run!" I rounded the corner, threw open the door (had he fallen off the ladder? Did a box fall and hit him? Are there wolves in the neighborhood?) and was greeted by literally a sheet of water pouring down from the ceiling.

What?!

Brian, poor guy, looked awful. He was wet and angry and totally freaked out. And oh yeah, there was a fountain of water pouring out of our ceiling through a hole in the ceiling.

Like any good married couple in a time of crisis, we immediately started yelling at each other.

"What did you do?" I hollered.

"I don't know what happened!" he screamed at me.

"Turn off the water!" I yelled back.

"I don't know how!" He was now jumping up and down in the water as it gushed over us. I'm sure the neighbors were getting a kick out of this one.

For whatever reason, back in November, my dad had randomly pointed out the water valve to me. It was in the spot where we were going to put the cabinets, and for some reason, like a dream, that whole conversation with him flashed through my brain in this very moment.

I ran to the wall, found the valve, and turned it. The water, blissfully, stopped gushing. And Brian stopped jumping around like a crazy person.

And then, as we stood facing each other, wet, confused, but mostly relieved, the door to the garage started shaking and I realized that in the heat of the moment, I had left Scotty inside to fend for himself. He was standing on the other side of the door, shaking the handle and screaming at the top of his lungs.

Poor kid.

The rest of the story, sadly, is pretty dull. We called a plumber (cheap, let me tell you, on a Saturday afternoon. On an emergency basis.) We sat around and looked at the dirty dishes piling up and discovered a new-found appreciation for the beauty of running water. Brian mopped, swept, and cleaned the garage while the plumber cut a giant hole in our ceiling and replaced the pipe Brian drilled into with another pipe. Brian wrote a check to the plumber, and just like that, the water was running again.

Honestly, I don't fault Brian. It was a one-in-a-million chance that he would drill into literally a 1/2" pipe in the ceiling (that technically was placed too close to the wall anyways.) And he cleaned up the garage, including Scotty's five thousand Cheerios and Craisins that were littered about, and now it looks better than it ever has.

Now we are letting the insulation and ceiling dry. A dry wall guy will have to come out to patch everything up, and then maybe, just maybe, my garage shelving will be hung. I'm just hoping it happens before December 26th, 2011.

We've had some pretty gnarly weather here in Vegas for the past several weeks. (As I type this, the sun is shining, but less than 48 hours ago, white stuff was raining from the sky. No dead birds, thankfully.)

I snapped this picture the week of Christmas.  It is of our street. It's supposed to show the mountain we live next to...but there is no mountain to be seen, just clouds.

The cloud cover was low enough to touch. I'm not sure when cloud cover becomes fog, but we don't really ever deal with fog in the desert. Or do we? Can someone look this up for me?

Anyways, the point of this whole post is that those crazy-low clouds lead to extreme winds, which in turn knocked down a gigantic branch off of the tree in front of our house. Now, I'm all for yard and landscaping and consider myself fairly proficient with both our lawn mower and shrub trimmer, but this was out of my bailiwick.

So I called Brian, Ye of the Great List of Referrals. (I swear, he is the best person to call for darn near anything related to services in Vegas. Plumbers, electricians, general contractors, etc. He has an entire office of people to ask and can usually get back to me within 45 minutes. Impressive.) I told him we needed a lawn care service, stat, and one that could take down branches the size of small cars but without killing or hurting our tree. I was very concerned about our tree and have become quite fond of it in the six months we've lived here. 

And not only did the Great Referral Source agree that I should not be climbing trees with power tools (made only more dangerous by my crippling fear of heights), he suggested using a certified arborist. Be still by heart!  A certified arborist! The Rolls Royce of lawn care services!  I cannot describe the love I felt towards this man in that moment; not only does he love me and our baby, but he loves our trees! And wants to make sure they live to see another season! Hurrah!

So I called and they came out today to repair our ailing little tree. It was painful to watch the hacking of limbs, but I kept telling myself, "This is necessary. Sometimes you gotta break some eggs if you want to make an omlette." Probably the most unexpected part is that the workmen's actions kept Scotty fascinated for a full 30 minutes as he gazed out the window. Nothing has ever kept his attention for this long - TV, the iPad, me dancing like a loon. But our front yard was quite a sight to behold when there is man in your tree.

Could this be a possible career choice for our little Bear one day?

A mom can only dream.

::sigh::