Because I Haven't Mentioned Edward Cullen in Forever

Y'all know I had no choice but to jump on the leaked New Moon movie poster bandwagon, right. I just have no control over my Edward Cullen impulses.

I just have to say that I LOVE THIS MOVIE POSTER. The only way it would be better is if *I* had any acting talent whatsoever, was cast as Bella Swan, and got to make-out with Edward Cullen all day long.

Would y'all think I was super ridiculous if I already had the movie release date set in my iPhone? That's totally normal, right? RIGHT?

Monday Scorecard

• My bed was so comfortable this morning that I hit the snooze 3 times. Monday -1
• I had 2 cups of coffee before 7am, seriously increasing my perkiness level. Monday +1
• I am having a super cute hair day. Monday +1
• Kaeli was unbelievable sweet and cooperative this morning. Monday +1
• The card reader on the bus wasn't working. Free ride to work. Monday +1
• The guy sitting next to me smelled like stale leftovers. Monday -1
• Traffic seriously sucked. Took forever to get to work. Monday -1
• Dancing with the Stars finale and The Bachelorette with Jillian starts tonight. Monday +1

Looks like I'm up 5 to 3. Suck it, Monday!

Kaeli Sound Bites

The Set-up:
When Kaeli was at the park with her grandma today, she fell while running around the track. The track is made of gravel, and her hands and knees were covered in scrapes. No lie, she looked like she had been dragged through rocks.

Me: Oh My Goodness, Kaeli! You look awful.
Kaeli: Just what every girl loves to hear. Thanks.

I have no idea where she picked up that kind of sarcasm.

More Car Talk

Last Friday, I had an appointment with my insurance adjuster to get an estimate for the damage to my flooded car. After all of my Google searching and unsolicited advice from coworkers, I was a little nervous about the outcome of this meeting.

(Turns out that there are so many flood claims in good old H-town right now that, they had to fly the guy I met with in from Maryland just to handle the demand!)

The guy was really nice. He determined that since my car was still running and drivable that the damage wasn't too bad. He worked up an estimate, and I left my precious car in the very capable hands of the men at the "flood specialist" repair shop with the assurance that it would be done in a few days.

As I was driving home in my rental car, I had mixed feelings about the outcome. On one hand I was happy that I would get my car back, but on the other, I was worried about the future value and safety of my car.

Turns out that all the worrying was pointless because, the next day (Saturday), my insurance guy called to tell me that after further inspection, they realized water got into a lot of my electrical stuff. He decided to total my car.

My cute little car is gone. I had already taken everything out, so I'll never see it again.

Upon hearing this news, Rob immediately went into "guy problem solving mode". He immediately got on the Internet, and two hours after hearing about my car I found myself being dragged around a car dealership.

I really was only going to look, but then I saw the exact car I wanted. The car that had been in the back of my mind ever since someone mentioned that my flooded car was most likely totalled. The car that I didn't let myself think too much about because (1) I didn't want to get my hopes up and (2) I felt like I was betraying my flooded car.

Kaeli was really excited to go car shopping. She suggested that I buy a limo and just hire a butler to drive us around. I really love the way that girl thinks!

So, barely a week after the super stressful flooding, I'm driving around in my new car! It's wonderful and pretty and I got a good deal and I LOVE IT. It's so much bigger than my old car (it was a Mazda 3). It is a little sad to think that my days of a small cute car are over for a while. We were growing out of the old car anyway, so, while the timing wasn't exactly what I had planned, everything worked out for the best.

I guess all of my hopes and prayers from the last post were answered because the whole process could not have been easier.

After driving my old Mazda for 4 years, I couldn't imagine not having another one so:

Check out my Mazda CX-7. YAY!!

Isn't Kaeli so cute in her gymnastics leotard?

Oh, There's More...

Just having a flooded car wasn't enough to make yesterday go down in history as one of the Top 5 crappiest days I've ever had.

After dealing with all of the car stress, Kaeli and I went inside to clean up and try to relax a little bit. Up until this point, our dog, Maverick had been seriously neglected because so much was going on. We put his leash on, and took him for a nice walk.

Things were going just fine. The sun had come out, and all of roads had dried up. Quite frankly, unless you had spent your morning trying to salvage your car, it was a pretty day.

I noticed a couple of kids petting a dog that wasn't on a leash. I thought nothing of it until the rather large dog started CHARGING my 11lb. poodle mix. I told Kaeli to get away, and I tried to pick up Maverick before the dog could get to him, but the mean dog was too fast. He's barking and trying to bite Maverick, Mav is trying to get out of the way, and I'm trying, in vain, to get my little dog off of the ground to safety. The next thing I know, mean dog has a hold of Mav's tail and Kaeli is watching and FREAKING OUT. I'm trying to scare the dog away, but it's not working. Maverick manages to wiggle out of his collar (since I still have the leash) and take off running towards home. In hindsight, I guess I could have let go of the leash and let Maverick go running right away, but I kept picturing mean dog chasing him down and hurting him since I wouldn't have been there to protect Maverick. Finally, the mean dog runs the other way. I get Kaeli and Maverick into the apartment, and go looking for mean dog's owners.

The mean dog is chilling in the grass, and the kids are petting him. They don't know who's dog it is. In fact, no one in the whole complex knows who owns this dog. The kids totally ignored me when I said that they probably should be more careful around it. He seemed okay around people, but they had just watched what he tried to do to my dog. It didn't seem to phase the kids at all.

He had a collar, but I wasn't going to get close enough to look. I'm assuming that he got out of someone's yard. I was going to call animal control or something, so that they could handle the issue, but then the dog disappeared.

Thankfully, Maverick seems ok. As soon as we got into the apartment he was wagging is tail. I checked him for puncture wounds, but I don't think the mean dog ever got a good grip on him. Maverick is little, but he's scrappy.

I walked away from it the most injured. I have a huge burn from when the retractable leash wrapped around my arm during the dog rescuing efforts. Not to mention that now I'm totally terrified to take Maverick out for a walk. I'm also rethinking the retractable leash idea.

Maverick has always driven me a little crazy. He has destroyed my shoe collection, chewed up Kaeli's toys, and, when he gets really mad at me, he urinates in his crate and rolls in it so that he's completely soaked in dog piss. Then, as I was petting him and showering him with extra attention last night, I realized that I would be devastated if something ever happened to him. As annoying as he can be, he has firmly implanted himself as part of this family. I don't want to wish bad things on an animal, but I seriously hate that other dog for even coming near Mav.

The whole incident probably lasted a minute, but it was a seriously long minute. Like a slow motion minute that was just icing on the cake of one of the longest days ever.

I Will Never Look at Water the Same Way Again

Yesterday was one of those days that just sucks ass. There is no eloquent way to describe the shittiness of my Tuesday.

3am - Early Morning Storms

Kaeli came into my room, and asked to sleep in my bed because she was scared by the thunderstorm. Until she came in, I didn't even know there was a storm. It turned out to be a really bad one. The thunder was so loud, and the lightening was so bright that I couldn't fall back asleep. There was hail hitting my windows so hard that I was sure they were going to break. It was insane. I just sat there watching the ridiculous amount of rain. I have never seen so much rain in my life.

6am - Happy Ignorance of the Day Ahead

It was still raining so hard. I turned on the TV to check out the morning news. OMG. There was flooding EVERYWHERE. And, of course, my side of town was hit really badly. Kaeli's school was delayed 2 hours, the park and ride wasn't running routes, the power went out briefly, and the weatherman was very adamant that if you didn't absolutely have to be anywhere then stay home. I watched the pandemonium for a while, then emailed my boss to let him know that I was going to wait out the storm, and I would be into work after I dropped Kaeli off at school. Then I smiled because I was going to get to sleep in on a weekday. I blissfully climbed back into bed.

8am - The Shit Storm Begins

I get a text from my friend saying that the powers that be decided to cancel school all together. I realize that I'm going to have to call work and tell them I'm not coming in, but I quickly find out that staying home with Kaeli is the least of my worries. My alarm goes off, my phone rings, and someone is knocking on my door all at the same time. I rise from my slumber to my friend calling and my neighbor knocking to tell me the same news.

My car is full of water.

As it turns out, pretty much every car on my street is full of water. Neighbors are informing other neighbors, and in a matter of minutes the parking lot is full of people trying desperately to dry out their cars. The water has receded, so the street isn't flooded anymore, but the damage has been done.

My friends and I spent about two hours trying to soak up as much water as possible, but it really didn't help. I gave up, dirty and exhausted.

Since Rob is truly the best boyfriend on the planet, he left work and drove all the way down here to help me. He spent hours shop-vacing (is that even a word) my car. It didn't really do a lot of good though. There is SO MUCH water. I know he knew that his efforts were futile. He just did it to make me feel better, and try to help me out.

My car still runs. I'm not sure it's such a great thing to be driving it around, but at this point I just don't care. It was still wet this morning. Don't even get me started on the smell. So seriously disgusting.

I called my insurance to make a claim yesterday, but so did everyone in Houston. I have an appointment on Friday with the insurance adjuster. I've never done anything like this before. The only accident I've ever been in was a fender bender when I was 16, and my mom handled everything. In all honesty, I have no clue what the heck is going on.

At first, I just figured they would take a look at it, and decide to take out the carpets and re-upholster everything. Then, I got to work. According to my coworkers, water is a car's kryptonite. They are all telling me to hope it gets totalled because there is no coming back from that kind of water damage. I'm still making payments on my poor little car. I only have about a year left. It scares the crap out of me that it will get totalled, but the insurance company won't value it for enough to pay off the car and have a little left over for a down payment on another one. I'm also scared that the car won't get totalled, but it will never be worth anything ever again because of all the water damage. Apparently, no one wants a car that has ever been in a flood.

I've realized that I do not handle stress well. I have this tendency to just shut down and avoid everything at all costs when things get to be too much.

I'm also annoyed with myself because I've always thought of myself as an independent chick, but the first thing I did was call my boyfriend and freak out!

I know it could be so much worse (one story in the news is particularly awful), but right now, it feels like a lot. I just hope and pray that this all goes smoothly and quickly.

And now for your viewing pleasure, a few hastily taken pictures:

This picture doesn't really show anything. I just think my poor car looks sad and pathetic.

This is inside the trunk. We pulled up all of the mats, and this is my spare tire. Please notice the POOL of dirty brown water surrounding the tire. The tire was submerged in gross rain water and floating trunk trash.

Also notice the dirty water line. It might be tough to see, but, apparently, this is how high the water came up to my car.

I can say, with a large amount of confidence, that I will never be able to enjoy a thunderstorm ever again. No longer will I find snuggling under the blankets while sleeping or reading comforting and cozy.

Because My Google Reader Can Never Be Too Full

New Fun Blog Alert!

New Fun Blog Alert!

I just finished reading through Love Story, and it is such a cute idea for a blog.

I'm a sucker for other people's tales of romance!