Day of Rest, my left... er... never mind.

The neighbors apparently own but one CD. It sounds vaguely familiar but I can't place it... I'd LIKE to place it, however... straight up their left nostrils, in turn. Call me a curmudgeon, but I think I ought to be able to sit in my own living room without my back teeth vibrating from THEIR bass. And when you factor in that its the same song, on repeat, for more than 5 hours... I start to feel a little desperate.

I started by throwing a Nike at the wall. Followed by a paperback copy of The Devil Wears Prada and ending with a vigorous pounding, none of which could apparently be heard over their selected piece. I dug out my large portable CD player, set it against the wall and was all ready to strike back with my collection of various recordings by the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields (conducted by Sir Neville Marriner), only to find that I'd left the entire CD case at work.
Boo.

Luckily for all involved, the oblivious trio left about 10 minutes later and have yet to return home. I CANNOT WAIT TO GET OUT OF HERE.

Also, they have apparently opted to stop taking the dog for lengthy walks, and letting her simply relieve herself on the 3 foot by 4 foot front "yard". The only trouble is that A) she's a large rottweiler, B) the yard has a downward slope and C) all the dog crap is rolling down their barren yard when the wind blows and onto the sidewalk. No kidding. We don't have tumbleweeds in these here parts, we got rolling dog crap. Kuh-lassy. And no, they don't clean it up.




The husband's car was pronounced just-this-side-of-clinically-dead, with a transmission that was just about toast and five separate "Bend Over" engine codes popping up. He spent all Saturday at some dealer in Maryland, and I do mean ALL DAY. Left the house at 9am, got home at 10pm. He got the car he wanted, said he got a good deal, but I'm certainly glad I wasn't with him. I hate car shopping. HATE it. I'm not a huge shopper to begin with, but car shopping is the worst. And kind of shopping that takes as long as oh, say... childbirth? No way.

And then I nearly fried my Ameda. If you read the literature on the Purely Yours, it details how at no time does milk ever enter the tubing... except apparently when I'm involved. I was tired and not paying much attention to the dangerous vacuum that was being created... and finally when I did look down, both tubes were busy pumping milk back up out of the bottles and INTO the pump itself. I'm lucky I didn't electrocute myself (and what a way to go THAT would have been!). Always quick on my feet, I yank the power cord out, pull the tubing out and pour at least an ounce and a half of milk straight out onto my lap. I dried and swabbed as best I could and then just... hoped for the best.

Sure enough, the next time I went back to it, it didn't start up. All I could think was "How'm I going to convince my husband that I ruined a $200 piece of equipment with my BOOBS???"

Ever the optimist, I chose DENIAL as my course of action. Three times I tried to start it up and got nothing - not even a sad little whine - for my efforts. Finally, I admit defeat and call my husband to break the bad news... Just as I'm starting to explain that I broke the pump and how, I give it one last try.

And it started up. Go figure. I hemmed, hawed and I think I convinced my husband that I'd totally forgotten why I called, never mind, Jane-You-Ignorant-Slut. The poor man is used to me making no sense whatsoever to begin with so it couldn't have been too hard.

And the poor baby is teething pretty badly, making him grouchy and giving him an upset stomach. As he's got reflux to start with, its kind of like the mentos & diet coke stunt. Only it smells significantly worse. I'm on my 4th load of baby laundry today.

Its a good thing tomorrow's a work day, its probably the only way I'm going to get some rest.