It's raining - water, paint and bills.

On Friday I planned to do some blogging during Noah’s afternoon nap. Neither happened. The boy was awake for 8 and a half hours with no respite for either of us. Don’t know if this patchy sleeplessness is due to teething, the excitement of learning to walk, the outgrowing of two naps a day or just a test of his mother’s patience. It isn’t that he becomes unhappy or unmanageable when he doesn’t nap; it’s just that I can’t get anything done all day. On Friday I had planned to make vegetable curry for dinner which takes quite a bit of prep work and cooking time for which I also expected to make use of naptime. Instead I allowed Noah to completely and shamelessly ransack the kitchen while I cooked. The meal was completed but it looked like the kitchen had sustained a direct hit. He was so tired by the end of the day that he fell asleep in the midst of eating a biter biscuit in his car seat during our return from our maiden voyage to BJ’s wholesale club.

But Friday was nothing in comparison to the mayhem of the day prior. On Thursday afternoon Noah and I drove down to Queen Village to visit our friend Julie’s new shop – she just opened juju salon & organics across the street from Essene. I’ve been doing some marketing work and consulting for her and her new endeavor and we had to talk some bidness. The boy just marveled at the cute and comfort of Julie’s new digs while we got some info quickly out of the way. More on that later. After our meeting I went back to my car, deposited some of my work product in the car, put Noah in the hip hammock and then headed to South Street to look for a bookstore that no longer exists. Of course all that happened after I realized that our driver’s side rear wheel, hubcap, quarter panel and bumper were spattered with lilac paint. I have no idea how it happened or when it happened but I did rule out driving through something since the front wheel was untouched. As I type Mark is taking the car to a detail shop to find out what it’s gonna cost to get them to take a stab at scrubbing off the paint. Anywho – so with the knowledge that my car had unexplainable paint on it I went for a useless walk on South Street to find a bookstore. When I returned to the car I couldn’t find my keys so I started dumping the contents of my bag on the hood of my car. Noah was starting to squirm so I took him out of the hip hammock and placed him on the sidewalk. Just then the panic alarm on my car started honking – loudly and repeatedly. I assumed I had bumped it looking for the keys though I had not yet located them. A woman in her fifties stopped to comfort Noah because he was obviously frightened by the horn and his mother was occupied insanely throwing things around on the hood of the car. All of the sudden I guy came out of nowhere and handed me my keys. At first I thought he saw them on the car and picked them up but in the midst of the horn still honking I said “Where did you find them?” and he said “You left them on the roof of your car earlier” and walked away. I just about died. Meanwhile this woman is standing there and I keep hitting buttons on the keys to make the honking stop but it just keeps on going. And the woman is saying “Just hit the panic button again and it will stop.” And Noah finally goes from looking shocked and dismayed to crying – and so I literally throw the keys at this woman and say “YOU do it!” And she does. I was still so freaked out that I don’t even recall what I said to her before she walked away – but I think I muttered paltry thanks. It was a pathetic display all around. I'm so ashamed - but glad my car wasn't stolen since it would have been about the easiest theft in the world.

Saturday also did not start out so great. For the first time in the almost five years since we bought our house we had some water coming in from our roof. Dr. Robert the contractor (yes – that is why we called him) looked at it and said it’s gonna cost us $500 to repair the damage and silver coat the roof. He also talked to us about the possibility of doing some other house stuff we’ve been neglecting- and what it all amounts to is cash. Luckily we were able to put the sucky morning behind us when we headed to the Milligans for Oktoberfest. The hosts were incredibly hospitable, the babies were ADORABLE, the company was entertaining, the food was delectable and the beer went down smooth. It was a fun evening. Afterwards we slept at my mom’s place rather than trek back to the city.

On Sunday morning Mom enjoyed some time with Noah before we headed over to my Dad’s place to celebrate both his birthday and my Oma’s. We had an AMAZING lunch at Il Garda Italian Restaurante. It’s a really tasty family run BYOB that was damn impressive especially since it’s located in a strip mall next to the Walmart. We brought a nice bottle of Chianti, ordered steamed clams, bruschetta, chicken cutlets doused in wine, veggies and seafood, a rack of lamb, and tiramisu. Mmm. I wish I was eating it all over again. Yum. And Noah was an angel – incredibly messy but amazingly sweet and well behaved while he dropped bread all over the floor. I apologized to the busboy for the mess and explained that the mess was an easy trade off for a happy boy. In the evening the Eagles annihilation was background while we watched Noah scoot about until we hit the road.

This morning Mark went to Comcast to fetch our DVR box. We finally caved. We’ve been holding out on THE FUTURE because we couldn’t warrant spending the extra ten dollars a month when we don’t watch all that much TV anymore. But we recently decided that the ability to pause live TV and watch a show from the beginning after it already started would be huge benefits to us since Noah isn’t always on the same page with our TV viewing schedule. We resolved on a budgetary compromise to curtail our Netflix expense by decreasing our movie allotment to two movies at a time with a max of four a month – because we realized we haven’t been keeping up with the films we have been receiving.

Noah’s napping and Mark is downstairs playing with the DVR. He has off for Columbus Day. Of course he just came home and told me that the detail shop said that the paint was body work and needed to be sanded out and clear coated and then the body shop told him that it was an expensive job and we should report it to our insurance if we have a $250 deductible. GREAT. When it rains it POURS. And this weekend was a drencher.

OH – and the very happy and exciting news is that Noah is making regular walking attempts since Saturday – after a halt in walking operations since his first steps a few weeks ago. He is now well on his way to running around the house. And he's such a happy boy that it's hard to stay pissy about an apparent run of bad luck we're having - because obviously he still makes me feel very lucky.