I woke up this morning and realized my mouth was dry. That isn’t unusual as I sometimes have a habit of sleeping with my mouth open at night. But this dry was like the desert on a very hot day. When I reached the bathroom I was astounded to find my bottom lip looked like I’d joined Paris Hilton in a lip collagen party.

The reason my mouth was dry is because my bottom lip was so swollen and heavy I couldn’t keep my mouth closed! My son’s first reaction was to tell me I looked like a fish. Nice.

Our 4th of July was nothing out of the ordinary. My husband’s birthday is on the 4th and we celebrated very low key at home, which was nice. We spent 2 days at a local lake with some good friends boating, swimming and fishing. I have not eaten anything different or taken any new medication that would cause an allergic reaction such as this.

It’s been twelve hours and 5 Benadryl later and there is no improvement. I skipped work today thinking I’d rest and hang out and by tomorrow it would all be better. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow and must go to the office, so let’s pray that when I wake up in the morning my lip is back to looking normal. Otherwise I’ll have to come up with some really crazy story about how I got bit by a blow fish, because according to Dr. Google that might very well be a possible cause.

I was recently eating lunch at a small pizza dive. My usual is half a stromboli and half and order of breaded mushrooms (very healthy). As lunch was almost over I went to cut one last mushroom in half (because they are large) and to my surprise did not find a mushroom inside the deep fried batter.

Instead it was wadded up paper. I’m pretty sure it was a receipt!

I yelled, “It’s paper.”

“Yes, it has letters on it!”

Because that is how can tell right? Letters, not numbers. Whatever my logic the fact is that I was served a deep fried receipt. It wasn’t even my receipt.

I don’t even want to know how it happened. The waitress didn’t charge us for the mushrooms, but she also didn’t seem to surprised either. No mushrooms for me for a long time.

What happens when you try to juggle more than you should? In my case you receive a card in the mail. Not just any card though, this was a card that I bought, signed, addressed to myself and mailed.

As I looked through our mail I even thought to myself that this handwriting looks familiar.

Imagine my surprise to find that I’d cared enough to send the very best to myself. The worst part is I’m not even sure who the birthday card was intended for. Now I need to figure out who didn’t get a card and send them a belated wishes.

Why am I so pathetic? Because I am spitting my excess saliva into a plastic cup. Sounds gross doesn’t it? It all started this weekend with a sore throat and after several hours at a convenient care center today I found out I had strep throat.

I’m fairly certain my wonderful husband didn’t intend to spend his afternoon taking care of me on Father’s Day, but he has. Just another reason why I’m lucky that I found such a good guy.

For now I’m taking the antibiotics I was given and spraying Chloraseptic in the back of my throat to try and numb the throbbing. Oh, and spitting saliva into a cup.

It’s been a while since I’ve had time to post anything here. I’ve been struggling to keep up with Props & Pans. Our lovely dial-up country bumpkin internet service is SLOW! Note to realtor’s - you should really tell anyone who’s moving from the city to the country that things like DSL and Cable aren’t usually available.

Other than the internet connection our house is slowly becoming home to us. It hasn’t taken Ethan much time to meet and greet the neighbor kids. He can usually be found running from one yard to another. One great thing about our area is that our road is just a gravel lane with about 8 homes and every neighbor has young children. Being out by cornfields and away from the busy street we were used to, we can let Ethan run a little more and not worry as much.

This is the beautiful sunset we are quickly becoming accustomed to in the evening. The ambulance sirens and helicopter noises we were used to are becoming replaced with frogs and the sound of the wind whipping through corn fields.

Nate’s been doing a lot of the outdoor work and I’ve been playing Inspector Gadget indoors, looking for things we know we packed but aren’t sure where. Meanwhile over Memorial Day weekend, we had an odd request regarding our home in the city that was still on the market. A young man asked if he could stay the night in our empty home.

My first reaction was to think of the HGTV show “Sleep On It,” where people spend the night in a house to see if it is a good fit or not. Believe it or not, our realtor had never seen this show! I bet he’s never watched House Hunter’s either. In fact, he was quite shocked by the request calling it the “stupidest thing he’s ever heard of.”

We weren’t really opposed to allowing this, because we’d moved all of our items out except a love seat and bed. We did require some legal paperwork to hold the man liable for any damage, etc… It went well and he made us an offer. Now we are to the inspection phase and this guy submitted a list of 45 demands that he wants corrected.

For example:
Remove sandbox and sand from yard - Fine.

Replace furnace filter - There is a new filter sitting next to the furnace, but we can put it in if you really don’t know how.

Remove an old heavy dresser that was left in our basement - Fine hand me a chain saw.

Replace all light bulbs in the house with the new energy efficient ones - What? Does he not know where Wal-Mart is? Lazy ass.

Unplug a light hanging over the basement shower - He must be a double arm amputee right?

After two weeks of the back-and-forth ridiculous demands we finally gave him the final offer and a deadline to reply. Needless to say he backed out of buying our house and it is back on the wonderful market. There will be no more overnights. I’m fairly certain he made this list of demands during the 14 hours he spent alone combing the house for issues.