This. This is Why I Plan to Lock Her in the Basement for the Next Twenty Years.

Alexis has a boyfriend.

The little punk's name is Casey, and he is a classmate. Despite the fact that I've made it real clear to him that I am big enough to take him down, the kid has been spotted hugging my kid, holding her hand, and generally being all together way too freakin' adorable with her.

I swear it was just six months ago that my dear, sweet daughter was in diapers. Now she's going steady with a boy. OH. MY. GAWD.

Casey is all I hear about these days. "Casey wants to come to my house," Alexis tells me. "Casey didn't eat his lunch today," she reports. "Me and Casey played tag today," she says. I ask how some of the other kids are doing and if she played with anyone besides Casey. "Casey is my boyfriend," is always her answer. It's as if she has dumped all of her best girl friends for a boy.

Fan-freakin-tastic. I thought I had ten more years before I had to perfect my Watch Yourself, You Little Punk Stare.

Tonight Alexis was out in the front yard with me, helping me rip out weeds and grass for a flower bed. She told me all about her day as we worked, including all the fun things that she and Casey did together. It was all very cutesy and fun and blah, blah, blah. Suddenly she stopped her gushy Casey talk mid-sentence and started staring across the street. "What do you see?" I asked.

"Look, Momma. There's a boy," she replied.

As my eyes rolled out of my head, I looked over and saw the 4-year old who lives directly across the street walking down the sidewalk with his slightly older brother.

"Momma," Alexis continued, "he's cute."

"What about Casey?" I asked.

"I can have two boyfriends," she replied.

And then I died.

I Wonder if They Had Any Idea that it Was a Dog Making All that Noise

When our Realtor told us that our townhouse buyer wanted to have our kitchen appliances included in the sale, I said, "HAHAHAHAHA! SUCKA!" She probably heard, "I guess that would be OK." Either way, BUH-BYE!

While the appliances were fairly new (we replaced everything when we remodeled the kitchen five years ago), I hated them. Especially the fridge. It was a good fridge in theory, but in reality, it was evil. We found it at a Sears Outlet for less than half the regular price because it had a huge scratch on the right side, which just so happened to be the side that was up against a wall in our kitchen. It's problem was that it defined "self defrosting" as "melt the frost and then pee it all over the kitchen floor." Seriously, every single day there was a puddle by the thing. We tried and tried to get it fixed and finally ended up just letting a towel live on the floor in the "pee" spot.

So long, pissy fridge!

Of course the new house didn't come with appliances since the people who lost the house to foreclosure took everything that wasn't nailed down (and sometimes even that). I didn't think that was going to be an issue. We would run to the Sears Outlet, sell a kidney or two, and return home with a new stove and fridge.

I'm so over-optimistic sometimes.

For two months we kept an eye out for a decent deal. For two months all we saw were things that were either WAY too expensive, or WAY too beat up. I had thought we would already have the appliances before we moved, but we totally didn't. Then I thought we would just run out after we did the closings and return home with a fridge and stove, but we totally didn't. Finally, we spent an entire day running from store to store looking for something, anything, that we could live with.

Nothing. Anywhere.

Until Mr. Husband thought to check out That Place Where Geeks work. I happen to despise that place, but it turns out that I really, really, really can't live without a fridge. I could go months without a stove, but one day without a fridge was enough to make me cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. It was worth a try.

We walked into That Store Where the Geeks Work, and immediately I spotted a perfect stove. It just so happened to be a scratch and dent and was marked down $700. SCORE! That left us with the all important fridge.

I stared.

I paced.

I compared.

I couldn't make a decision.

When at last I did finally make a choice (You'll note--that's "I" and not "we." Mr. Husband would have nothing to do with the actually deciding. BAH!), the one I picked turned out to be on backorder. Of course. We could wait two weeks, or I could go pick a different fridge.

I was so frustrated I said I would just go check more stores. Brilliant, I know.

I spent most of last Monday searching all of Greater Pittsburgh for a decent deal on a fridge, and NOTHING. It's like everybody saw me coming and rushed to hide anything priced under $1K in stainless. (I have a weird thing about spending a lot on a fridge--all it does is keep my food cold. I don't need fancy. Just pretty.) (Pittsburghers, please don't list stores I should have checked in comments. Trust me, I went to every. single. one of them. I get irritated with myself just thinking about how much time I wasted.)

At the end of it all, I ended up back at That Place Where the Geeks Work. I went over budget and just grabbed the first semi-pretty fridge I could find.

We didn't really want the responsibility of getting the appliances across the just-replaced wood floors without damaging them, so I shelled out the $30 for delivery, which was scheduled for last Thursday.

Except, somehow the fridge ended up under my name and the stove under Mr. Husband's, so That Place Where the Geeks Work got confused and thought it was OK to split up the deliveries. From there, it was a short trip to them deciding to deliver the stove early. A full day early.

Whatever, I dealt with it. The stove delivery was scheduled between 12:30 and 2:30, so I quickly sped home with the idea of using my lunch break to open the door and let people give me an appliance. 12:30 turned to 1:30 without any sign of installers, so that lunch break extended a bit. 1:30 turned into 2:15, and then the delivery guy called. They were running late, but would be delivering the stove within an hour.

Fine. I waited.

3:30 rolled around and I started to get antsy. 4:15 rolled around and I started to panic. Alexis has dance class on Wednesdays, and hell hath no fury like a kid who is forced to skip dance class. I waited ten more minutes and then called and left a message canceling the delivery, saying I absolutely HAD to leave.

At 5:30, the delivery guy called and said they were at our house. He didn't seem all that happy that I wasn't.

I think that's why he hid our stove. For real.

Thursday morning, the fridge showed up within the scheduled delivery window. But, the stove, which was supposed to have found its way into the same truck, was nowhere to be found. When I say "nowhere to be found," I mean people were saying, "CRAP! Where did it go?"

I finally decided to just go to work and figured they would find the stove eventually. Just as I pulled out of the daycare parking lot to head for my office, they called. Of course. The delivery truck with my stove on board was a mere 20 minutes from the house (allegedly). Meanwhile, I was 30 minutes away. I didn't let on to my little dilemma, and instead just thanked the delivery dude for calling.

Miraculously, I beat him to the house. By an hour and a half. I guess some guys not only use a different ruler, they also use a different clock.

Whatever. They showed up with my stove.

And proceeded to make me insanely sporky. As in, I was ready to dig out my titanium spork and put one of the delivery guys out of his misery. He was a mouth breather. I cannot handle mouth breathers. And when I say he was a mouth breather, I mean he made Darth Vader seem like a silent kind of guy. I felt like I should look around for the ventilator because there was NO WAY someone could possibly breath that loudly.

I managed to hide a good 50-feet away while Mr Vader fussed with the stove. Of course the thing wouldn't just slide into place, so it took him a solid hour to get everything connected and happy. In the meantime, the dogs were blocked in the basement, so Meg was going nuts. She kept making her ridiculous whiny Bully noises, perfectly countered by Vader Installer.

Meg: BUBUBUBUBBBUUUBLUH BUBUUBUBUBBBUUUUBUBUBLUG
Mr Vader: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh *Hand me* hhhhhhhhhhhhhh *the* hhhhhhhhhhhh *drill* hhhhhhhhhhhh
Meg: WUBBAWUBBAWUBBAWUBBAARF WUBBAWUBBAARF WUBBAWUBBAWUBBAAAAAARF
Mr Vader: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh *I have* hhhhhhhhhhhhh *your stove* hhhhhhhhhhh
Meg: ARP ARP ARP ARP ARP ARP ARP
Mr Vader: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh *I am* hhhhhhhhhhhhh *your* hhhhhhhhhhhh *father* hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Me: I didn't say anything because you can't talk when your brain has exploded all over the place.

After an hour of that insanity (Meg never gives up. Ever.), we finally were fully equipped with all the important appliances.

Which we still haven't used.

Not even once.

I guess it would have been OK if they hadn't been delivered last week after all.

(I finally bought groceries on Sunday--three days after the fridge was delivered.)

(Now accepting bets on how long it takes for me to completely lose my mind over that crap paint job the previous owners left behind. And the missing microwave.)

Mr. Unlocking the Dead Visits Our 'Hood

Note: The first time Mr. Husband will hear this story is when he reads this post. That is by design. Before you mock, nag, harass, fuss at, or otherwise torment me, Mr. Husband, please remind yourself that this little event makes the score 2-1. You're still in the lead. I will bring that up (again) if you so much as think a word about this whole thing in my presence. *ahem*

Mr. Husband is out of town right now. The reason for that is a post of its own, but I need a little help writing it, so it's on the back burner for a day or two. Anyway, any time the man leaves his women unsupervised, we shop. It's what we do. So, we headed out bright and early this morning, with our eyes set on no less than a dozen stores.

We caused havoc all over the Pittsburgh area and than lastly landed at the grocery store. We went a week without a fridge (yet another post that is hanging in the wings), so it was one of those epic grocery store trips where you need abso-freakin-lutely everything. By the time we made our rounds, there was so much food in the cart that I had to evict Alexis in order to make a little space for the juice and milk.

We cruised back home and I parked in the front part of the driveway, with the idea that going in through the front door would be significantly easier than going in through the basement. That little moment of brilliance saved me from having to haul 20+ bags of groceries across the entire basement, up a flight of stairs, and across the dining room to put them away. Me so smart!

I left my house key in the door as I rushed the frozen items to their new home. We had gone to a grocery store that is 20 minutes from our house, so every second mattered when it came to protecting the ice cream from further damage. Once all the cold stuff was properly put away, I tossed the stuff that belongs in the pantry on the floor and rounded Alexis up. I hadn't yet freed the dogs from their prison in the basement and figured Alexis and I would walk around back and let them out through that door.

I grabbed Alexis, grabbed my keychain, and locked the front door behind us before we started the trek around. As we neared the back door, I reached into my pocket to grab my keychain. Which didn't have a key on it. We backtracked and I searched the driveway, sidewalk, and grass, but didn't find a key. I peered in through the dining room window. There it was. Lying on the floor. Behind locked doors and windows.

My keychain is the type that lets you push a little button and separate it into two pieces. My little accomplice had apparently decided my keys dangling from the doorknob resembled a puzzle, and she broke it into pieces. Good thing I noticed THAT before I locked us out of the house.

Fortunately, my cell phone was in my pocket. I called information and got a number for a close by locksmith, who quickly assured me that he could be there in 45 minutes. I no more than hung up the phone when the inevitable happened: Alexis told me she needed to go to the bathroom.

Of course.

After she reminded me of that little fact approximately 3,451,351,879 times, I started eyeballing the backyard. No neighbors were anywhere to be found, and I haven't talked to any of them enough to go knocking on the door and asking to use a potty. However, at the back of our yard is a line of trees. Behind that is an old abandoned strip mine. In other words, completely concealed wide-open space abounds.

Ten minutes later, I knew something about Alexis that I hadn't known before: she's not cut out for camping. At all.

I begrudgingly dragged her wimpy little body back up to our house and figured I would distract her by finding something constructive to do. We settled for doing a little yard work. Just as we started to make a little headway, I heard the most wonderful sound. A sound so wondrous, so beautiful, and so enchanting that even now a little tear comes to my eye when I think about it.

I heard music wafting from an ice cream truck as it neared our street.

As luck would have it, I had a couple of bucks in my pocket, so Alexis finally got to learn the magic that is the ice cream truck. She is forever going to associate getting locked out of the house with a rainbow push-up, and that's just fine by me.

Just as Alexis started to savor her little treat, I spotted the locksmith. As his beat-up van rounded the curve as the end of our street, I realized something I hadn't really realized before: For the first time ever, we live in a good neighborhood. The ancient blue van looked completely out of place amongst the giant houses in such a way that it was actually startling.

The locksmith himself looked even more out of place. I'm pretty sure he stepped straight out the crowd at a Grateful Dead concert, and he forgot to take a shower or change his clothes before he headed over. To that I say "YAY!" because it means he got there faster. Frankly, I don't care if a locksmith look like he just stepped out of a prison horror flick. Just get me in, yo.

Mr. Unlocking the Dead stepped out of his van, grabbed a pile of tools, and followed me around to the back door. I figured that if I had to pay somebody to break into my house, he should at least do it where fewer neighbors could see him at work. He took one look at the lock and said, "Is that a {blah blah blah}? I can't open that."

I saw the army of tools Mr. Unlocking the Dead had in the back of his van. In fact, when he drove down the street, you could hear doors spontaneously unlocking themselves out of fear for that van filled with burglary equipment. Apparently, however, the locks we put on the day we moved in (we figured that was sort of an emergency since we have no idea who had a key to the place from back when the Loooovers lived here) are REALLY good. Normally that would have had me jumping from joy, but at that particular moment, I was hoping they would try sucking for a second. Mr. Unlocking the Dead jiggled and jangled the lock for a few minutes, but no luck.

"I'm going to have to break it to get in," he said.

I sighed and said to go ahead and do it. There were keys inside the house, and another key in Tennessee, but not a single one was anywhere useful. It's not like Alexis and I could just hang out outside for a day or two.

Mr. Unlocking the Dead rambled back to his van to grab a new arsenal of tools. Just as he returned, I noticed it.

The garage door.

"Sir, that door still has a junk lock on it," I said as I pointed at the garage door.

"The garage door opener will keep it from opening, though," he said.

"There isn't a garage door opener," I told him. "The previous owners either took it or never had one put in."

"OK," he said as he returned yet again to the Unlocking the Dead Mobile.

He returned with exactly one tool--a little something that looked exactly like a tiny eyeglass screwdriver. Before I could even blink, he shoved the point of the screwdriver in the lock and opened the door. Click!

[There are about five people who know where we live and read this site. If somebody shoves a screwdriver into our garage door and steals all our stuff before Mr. Husband can get back and install a garage door opener (honey, that project moved up to #1 when I saw how easy it is to pick that lock and the other lock in the garage--if I had thought of it in time, I could have done it myself), I will hunt you five people down and put a hurting on you. Just so you know.]

We shall never speak of this incident again. Ever. Understood?