I know, I know. My blogging negligence – my blogligence, if you will – has been totally out of hand, inappropriate, and quite frankly, offensive. I apologize. I have no real good excuse either. Busy, busy, but not really any busier than usual. I think I was just in the market for a bit of a writing vacation.

I can’t believe that October has come and nearly gone. It doesn’t seem just that time passes by so quickly. As soon as I feel mentally prepared to finally start the fall/Halloween season, it’s nearly over!

One biggish thing that’s occurred in the last couple of weeks is that Mike has been accused of a crime that he’s not guilty of committing. (Actually he’s not guilty of committing any crimes…as far as I know). We received a notice about it in the mail a while ago and proceeded to ignore it. We assumed that it was an identity confusion issue. See, Mike’s been getting calls from collection agencies claiming that he owes about $1800 on unpaid rent from one of the apartments in “downtown” Newcastle – an apartment we’ve never even set foot in. We call the collection agency people back and tell them it’s not us, you have the wrong Michael Martin, etc. but it doesn’t seem to help. (We have checked all of our credit info, etc. and do know that it’s not identity theft – just identity confusion).

So, we ignored this first notice in the mail but then got another one of those “call us back phone messages.” I call back and find out that Mike is being accused of being guilty of committing a hit and run/rear-ending incident and that he owes money, there was even a police report filed against him. They had our phone number, address, vehicle type and license plate tag.

Collection Dude asks, “Is this you?” I tell the dude, “Um, yes, that’s all of our information, but it’s not us. Neither one of us has ever rear ended anyone or hit and run…from anyone.” He SO obviously did not believe me. So Collection Dude says, “Well, this woman has even filed a police report with the Tacoma Police.” I ask Dude, “How do we prove that we didn’t do this? And when and where did this supposed accident take place?” Dude looks up info and says, “On January 24th, 2008, your husband hit a white Lexus at the Radiation Center in Tacoma, Washington.”

After telling him again, that it’s not us, we’ve never even been to “Radiation Center,” and that Mike rarely even drives our CRV, I look up the date – January 24th, 2008 on my calendar. Now, it wouldn’t be rare for there not to be anything written on our calendar. We do, believe it or not, have days where we don’t do anything worthy of writing on the calendar; however, thankfully, we DID do something that day. I can PROVE that Mike is innocent! On our calendar it says, “Play at Amy’s.” We had a play date that day, in Seattle. AND to make things even better, a few days after that play date, I wrote a blog on what went down that day right afterward our play date. When I told a couple people what I was actually doing that day, they didn’t think that my BLOG would really support our innocence…or at least my sanity. So, should we need to stand trial, my BLOG could act as evidence, but if that’s no good, I’m in the market for some character witnesses. Anyone interested?

Here it is, a description of what I did on January 24th, 2008:

January 29th, 2008

Apparently I was gaining too much of a healthy self-confidence, maybe even an ego. So, God planted this little moment just to remind me what a nerd I really am.

Last week, I met the sister-in-law of a really good friend. I won’t go into details as it’s a long and confusing story of how I connected with this woman. Anyway, I had just gotten the boys strapped into their car seats and I thought, I should go introduce myself. So, I went up to her and explained who I was and that Mike and I are good friends with Kate and Kevin.

“Oh!” she says. “From that thing?”

“Engaged Encounter! Yep.” I supply the “thing” that she is looking for.

“They’ve met some really cool people through that,” she informs me.

Then somehow my brain quits functioning and I get stuck. All I can do is grin from ear-to-ear and say, “Yep, we’re really cool peeps.”

She laughs and kind of jokingly mocks what I say, “You’re like yeah! That’s us!”

And then for some unknown reason all I can do is repeat the exact same mind-blowing line again, “Yep, we’re REALLY cool peeps.”

We say our awkward goodbyes after a terribly awkward conversation, and I get in my car. I drive up the narrow street, turn around in the intersection and head back down in order to depart the neighborhood. She’s still standing outside, so we wave (Oh wow. There go the really cool peeps again! She must be thinking). I feel like she looked at me kind of strangely as we drive by but think nothing of it because I am SO cool. Two seconds later I hear a weird sound on my car – coming from the roof. A moment later, my travel coffee mug goes rolling down the windshield, down the street and rests underneath a parked car. This is why you don’t put things on top of the car. (For the record, I don’t usually do this, but my hands were so full I didn’t have a choice).

I park my car in the middle of the road, hop out and get down on my hands and knees in search of Travel Mug. I can’t seem to find it anywhere and decide that lying on the ground in the road with my children sitting in the car in the middle of the street is probably not the best plan. So, much to Matthew’s distress, I decide to forego the coffee mug search and continue home.

At the first stop light, I decide – for whatever reason – to get a piece of gum. Before chewing it, however, I’m going to be really cool for the cars around me and check myself out in the visor mirror. Right. Two BIG BLACK poppyseeds stuck on either side of my top row of teeth. Of course I have big black objects in my teeth. As if I wasn’t making a great first impression all ready! Now I know that my “We’re really cool peeps” comment was thoroughly supported by my appearance…followed by the coffee mug rolling down my car. Reality check: we’re not cool peeps. We’re not even really cool. And I really shouldn’t be saying peeps.