Yesterday morning brought the death of 2 dreams: 1) the dream of living to a ripe old age 80 and 2) the dream of not really cleaning my floors for the 6 months we are renting this house. It all started as a normal peaceful night...L crying because of teething woes, G screaming out that he'd lost his paci, Paul's long legs disrupting the tightness of my covers. At 6 am, we hear an ear-piercing noise that could have, in my foggy state, a multitude of scary scenarios. We jump out of bed faster than we've moved in years, flipping on the lights, running into childrens' rooms, checking all the entrances. It scared the crap out of us....the equivalent of being shot from a cannon dead asleep.

Turns out a dead tree limb had fallen into a 5 foot glass door in our kitchen. At 6 am, I am relieved, because at least that does not require an ambulance ride (which is kind of where my gauge reads. ambulance/ER visit=critical. all other things=not critical). We head back to bed and proceed to have another 'adult discussion' about having a gun in the home. I have no idea what natural disasters have to do with fire arms, but at that hour, it made perfect sense to P (he probably knows I'm in a weakened state until I've had my coffee). And I couldn't go back to sleep because I was so excited that we wouldn't be paying for repairs associated with this natural disaster.

The Glass Doctor came at 10:30 because that's the only time I told him not to come, and we were at swim lessons. The sight of me, lugging Lilah, with Garrett close behind, seems to make all repairmen nervous...I have no idea why?! The Dr. told us, of course, that "it was a rare size and would have to be special ordered. It would take 5 days, and did I want him to board it

up?". Ugh, no I think it's great to have a human-size walkway into my house. The Dr. chuckled and said "you'll be finding glass from this mess 2 years from now."--which is exactly what the mother of a child who hasn't worn shoes since May wants to hear.

I think he's right because the only mess I've seen worse than this was the time, in 7th grade, when a friend and I decided to make Orange Julias drinks and we (being "me") turned and lifted the pitcher, with the blade still turning. It splattered sugared orange mess across the state line and my mom is still griping about it.:)