Getting back to normal

Look at this guy...happy to be home and even happier that someone apparently turned the place into a jungle gym full of new climbing pleasures in his absence.

Unfortunately for Anthony - but fortunately for me and Brandon - the jungle gym didn't stick around for long.

When we went to college and lived in Normal, Illinois the joke was always, "This is as close to normal as we'll ever get!" (Thanks, I'm here all week.) Right now, after the crisis of an exploding dryer and house-wide choking smoke smell has passed, we're back home and pretty close to normal, but hopefully we can get even closer in the days ahead.

After eight nights and nine days out of our home, we moved back in Saturday. The house is definitely good enough to live in - especially if you like walls whiter than your average hospital ward and a complete lack of kitchen cupboards that forces your dishes to migrate to the hall closet - but not quite back to its former state.

It didn't take that long to get to the point of livability Saturday, as we had spent the past week wiping soot off of literally every surface in the home. It's amazing how soot crept onto everything, even things I had in drawers and plastic storage tubs.

It's also amazing that I married a man who owns this:

Ahhh, the discoveries one makes while cleaning every surface of her home.

Anyway, my point is, it didn't take long Saturday to go from this:

To this:

Or this (yes, I fed my child lunch on the floor in the middle of the disaster zone)...

to this...

Now, if things aren't exactly back to normal, at least the problems are less about major needs - like where we're going to stay at night - and more about minor unexpected hiccups - like when Brandon had to run out to WalMart at 11 p.m. for a dress shirt because he realized all of his were dirty or at the laundromat and he had court the next day, or the fact that I had to make an emergency underwear run last night or risk today being a commando day.

OK, so that was a major need.

But still, wardrobe malfunctions aside, we're doing good. Now if I can just get someone to haul the burnt-out, rusted-out washer and dryer off my patio before I get accused of being a total redneck...