[Sound of crickets chirping]

That about sums up my last 24 hours. There are no words, but rather the silence speaks more loudly than any adjective could.

It all started yesterday morning. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. and realized that our big guy was still asleep. I should have known that the world was off its axis when Ethan was still sleeping at 6:30. You see, this kid has an internal alarm clock that has been set at 6:00 a.m. for quite some time now. Despite our sneaky efforts to trick the clock (putting him to bed half an hour later), we've failed miserably. Maybe this is the reason why we never choose to stay up past 10:00 p.m. When and if we ever contemplate a night out, any ideas of what to do are quickly followed up with a "Yeah, but we need to be home before 10". I need at least 7 hours of sleep a night to keep up with Ethan. The only time this kid sits still is when he sleeping and even then he still fidgets! (Gee, I wonder who he takes after????).

Okay, back to the story.

So, I wake up at 6:30 and immediately my overly-active brain starts running wild. After quick deliberation with myself I decide that I'm going to head outside and pull weeds. Seriously? If this isn't insight to my personality, I don't know what is. Who pulls weeds at 6:30 a.m.? Apparently this chick does.

I put on Pandora, gleefully put my headphones on and start pulling away. About 10 minutes in I feel my phone vibrating; it's Gabe. "Where on earth did you go?" He sounds mildly concerned, but as I say "I'm outside pulling weeds" I can mentally picture a face that says "Of course you are". He knows me so well. I tell him that I'll be done in 10 minutes. That quickly turned into 45. I became increasingly irritated with the chives growing on the side of my deck and decided that it was just time to cut them back. Gabe came out on the deck with Ethan with a look that was a little confused but more amused. Seeing my little guy and my guido both still in their jammies made me jealous so I removed my wet gardening gloves and brushed off whatever of the black dirt I could and headed inside.

I walk in the kitchen and I am met by the toothy grin of my 14 month old, and a sharp pain in my back that literally brings me to my knees. Gabe looks at me with a furrowed brow and says "Are you alright". I wasn't quite sure how to answer. I concluded that it was just from bending over pulling weeds and that it would go away.....well, it didn't! I spent the remainder of the day walking around normal one minute and the next minute looking like I was doing some sort of awful dance and yelling out a horrible noise. I wasn't even this vocal when I was giving birth. So, yeah. It hurt. And it still hurts. Really? Hurting your back from pulling weeds. Try making that not sound ultra-sissy!

I'm going to blame the next installment of my story on my aching spine and the fact that it was taking over any rational thinking I had left.

I had taken out chicken and was marinating it for dinner. I decided that since it was such a ginormous package of chicken I would grill the remainder for the rest of the week. I figured I'd be ahead of the dinner game. I put it on at 10:45 a.m. Gabe was busy upstairs painting the ceiling of our still-in-construction-stages master bedroom. He came downstairs and saw me with a plate of raw chicken and said "Do you want me to do that while you feed Ethan his lunch". I replied with a confident "No, I've got this". I've got this. Yeah, I had it alright. I put the chicken on, all seasoned with lemon-pepper and heard the sizzle. Yum. I thought to myself "Man, this is going to be really good in a salad this week". I went back into the house, continued the big man's lunch, and then stepped outside about 8 minutes later to give 'em a flip. They were starting to turn into grilled perfection; golden grill marks and all.

Fast forward to 5:30 P.M. We're at my grandma and grandpa's house with some family getting ready to start grilling our dinner. My aunt is in the dining room telling us how they had already grilled their chicken. I went to say "Hey, I did the same thing", but instead all that came out of my mouth was a "OH MY GOD". I quickly tried to convince myself that it wasn't true. "No, I didn't. I took it off". Nope, I didn't. I never took the chicken off the grill. This is, yet another reason, I'm glad we're literally 25 seconds away. My uncle assured me that the grill had probably already run out of gas and that everything was "probably fine"! He and Gabe ran home to check on it. Thankfully, the house hadn't burned to the ground. But the chicken? Well, it didn't make out so swell. Needless to say, they were now chicken bricks.

Yeah, I've got it. Bet I won't say that again.

Luckily, we got a good laugh out of it. In fact, we laughed all the way home (for that long 25 second drive). We laughed....until we walked in the door. And that's when the real "fun" began. We had left Stewie (our Westie) out while we were swimming and enjoying the bbq. Normally, this isn't an issue. He's pretty good. Well, this time, he wasn't so good. In fact, this was really, really bad. Obviously he was secretly fed way too much "people food" at Gabe's company picnic on Saturday because my living room had turned into his personal toilet (if dogs used toilets that is). It (and we all know what I'm talking about) was all over the living room. And it wasn't the kind you could just pick up and throw in the potty. This was the kind that, well, I'll spare you the details. Let's just say that Gabe and I looked at each other and said "Uh, how in the hell are we going to clean this up". I quickly volunteered to give Ethan a bath. Gabe was a champ and took on the challenge. I was pleasantly surprised after rocking our babe to bed that the living room showed no signs of the "crime scene", as we dubbed it. He was victorious. Stewie's stomach, however, was not.

We recovered nicely by sharing a pint of chocolate almond ice cream while snuggled up on the couch. We even got to bed early. It was a pleasant end to a, well, we'll just call it an interesting day.

The alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. this morning. It's Monday so it already sucks (sorry, there's no other way to put it) but waking up at 5:00 sucks e even more. But here's the kicker, I was up even before the alarm went off. What woke me up, you say? A smell.

Yes, folks. A smell that seemed all-too familiar. Like the 8 hours ago kind of familiar. I laid there for a moment. First of all trying to figure out what time it was. Second of all trying to convince myself that I was dreaming. But then Gabe woke up and he confirmed my fears. "Oh god. He did it again didn't he". I rolled out of bed and Gabe whispers "Watch your step, it could be up here".

Alright, I'm sorry. But this is already a BAD way to start a Monday morning. You never want to hear "Watch your step" when it's referring to that any day. Let alone 5:00 a.m.............ON A MONDAY!

I creep downstairs, trying not to wake up Ethan. I reached for the light and I hesitated for a moment. I don't know why? Like I thought if I closed my eyes hard enough it would just vanish on its own. My better judgment won the battle and I turned on the light and saw the disaster. Yes my friends, this time it was worse. Much worse. At least last night it was contained to a centralized area. Now it was everywhere. It spanned from one end of our living to the other.

Gabe and I tend to always be on the same page about things. Today, thankfully, was no exception. We, almost simultaneously, said "Where are the knives?" Mmm hmmm. That's right. At 5:00 a.m. this morning, well, probably more like 5:15 by the time we gathered our whits about us, we were cutting out our living room carpet.

Now, in all fairness, it's been the plan since we moved in to replace the carpet with laminate flooring. We just planned on waiting till the fall. Well, our "plans" showed us who's boss, didn't they? The funnier part is that I didn't feel like moving all of our living room furniture around before work so we cut out the "bad" parts and left the rest in tact until tonight. My living room now has a giant circle missing from the middle of it and miscellaneous square patches here and there on the outskirts. It's super classy.

Just to add a little more pizazz to my morning I almost ran over a ginormous turtle when I left the house and then after dropping Ethan off a rather large dog, who I mistook for a deer, darted across the road right in front of me.

Oh yeah, and my back still hurts.

Happy freakin' Monday.