But first...

I owe everyone a retrospective on my first week as full-time mommy, but first there's something I have to get off my chest.  Our neighbors.  Sigh.  They've lived there forever, apparently, and we cannot figure them out.  They go to the trouble of installing a pretty new door, but it takes them a whole year to paint the bare wood trim surrounding it.  They hired some random neighborhood guy to paint the rest of the trim, but he only painted one of the two front windows, and about half of the soffit and trim work.  So when we gaze out our kitchen window, we see literally 2 feet of painted trim, the rest is peeling and rotting.  Lovely.  I can't tell you how many times we considered sneaking over there in the dark of night to spend the 30 minutes it would take to finish the job, but they'd probably shoot at us.  (We've mistakenly gotten their Guns and Ammo subscription before.  We know they're armed and dangerous.)  They hired the same guy to clear out the underbrush in their forest of a backyard, but left several rotted trees standing, well, leaning precariously, I should say.  Why bother?  Today took the cake though.  Aforementioned guy that has yet to finish one thing they hired him for is back -  now he's washing and waxing their 1990-something Ford Festiva POS like it's a flippin' Ferrari.  Now I have no problem with keeping one's vehicle clean and shiny, however, this thing has the horsepower of a golf cart and is held together with more bondo than metal.  Not to mention that we have a perfectly good Autobell less than 2 miles up the street.  Explain to me the logic behind this.  Our house may be crumbling but hey our Festiva looks gooood.  Seriously, with the 2 hours that dude spent buffing and armorall-ing, he could have finished the paintwork and chainsawed the dead wood in the back.  So frustrating.  But I shouldn't be surprised.  These are the same folks that had a raccoon living in their chimney the entire summer last year.  We watched the little guy popping his head out every night at dusk.  I don't know how you can ignore that.  We had a raccoon family move in (probably the same one) and it was like an all-night rave in our hearth until we got rid of them.  (Humanely of course, don't call PETA.  Tip:  Much like we don't like their racket all night, raccoons don't like loud music blasting all day and they will move themselves out.  Nobody likes noisy neighbors.) 
Speaking of wildlife, we had a deer visit our backyard today.  Not unusual for some places, but we live in the city and it was the middle of the day.  Poor gal looked completely lost.  I spotted her in the neighbors' yard (yes, those neighbors) and grew worried that they'd shoot her and eat her for supper.  But she hopped over the fence, wandered across our property and effortlessly jumped to the other side.  Beautiful.  I hope she finds her way.  Boy did Savannah miss out - she goes bananas over squirrels and chipmunks.  She would've keeled over from the excitement. 
Next post...mommyhood...promise.