Holy CRAP, I feel like I’ve managed to get so much done — washed the diaper wraps, emptied the dishwasher, pumped 2 oz and even applied for a JOB today. DAMN, I’m good. (The job is LLBean, seasonal/temp work taking orders at the call center around the corner from my house. I’m hoping it’d be a decent evening P/T mama-job through the fall, while I finish my degree. evening P/T = no extraneous childcare expenses, so, yay. Plus, maybe I could wrangle myself some awesome corporate training gig? One can wish. ANyway.)

So, the feat that places just above "we lose everything we own in bankruptcy/foreclosure because Gretchen doesn’t have a damn job" for Dave is, "we lose everything we own in a fire."  He’s worked so damn hard for every little thing he has, and losing it all in some tragic way is his number one phobia. Yesterday, when I was chatting one-handed with jeanne, and I heard a ‘thump’ in the basement and the power flickered, I got a little nervous about that myself. In fact, I didn’t go to the basement because I couldn’t decide what to do with Ingrid — do I take her and risk the thump being a fire that’s about to take out the stairs (we have no other egress from the basement aside from the kitchen stairs), or do I go alone and risk Ingrid being alone when the stairs collapse? Um, yeah. Mama paranoia, much? So, I left the door open, and kept chatting with jeanne, figuring if it was all about to go bad, at least she’d know what happened right before.

When Dave came home, I was hesitant to tell him about the sound, because if it was just some random neighborhood power bump (did I ever tell you about the time when my mom was here alone, and pushed down the button on the toaster at the exact moment a tractor trailer truck hit a pole down the street, knocking out power to most of the West Side? So she tried to call Dave at work, because she thought she’d blown out the whole house’s power trying to brown some bread? Hee) he would still pace all night, waiting for the worst. I told him anyway, andhe , as predicted, freaked out and started checking everything — inside, outside, upstairs, everywhere. Like, maybe it was a tree branch that fell, or something the cat knocked over, or something. I kept saying (as he passed) "I shouldn’t have said anything, now you’re never going to sleep again, I’m sorry I even mentioned it …" over and over.  On about his 11th pass by, and my 10th apology for needless worrying, he said "NO, you SHOULD have said something."  Apparently, when he opened the door to the hot water heater, he saw this:

Uhh, yeah. A soot-filled box, and melted wires are NOT what the HW timer is SUPPOSED to have. It’s all good, he replaced it today (AND I STILL GOT ALL THAT SHIT DONE!), but, uh, yeah. EEK.

And now, some requisite baby photos. 

Um, the family self-portrait didn’t quite work out. But check out that cleavage!

Poor girl has a spread of baby acne cropping up.

And yes, that’s my nipple. Behold.

The elusive sleep-smile, captured at last. Miss Ingrid loooves the eatin’ round here.