Last week, the Phoenix are was hit with a major wind storm. Dan and I happened to be home at the same time, which is a rarity in itself. Add the winds up to 68 mph and the downpour of rain, and you’ve got a perfect example of the world ending.

For you Phoenix residents, “rain” is that wet stuff falling from the sky. No, not the misters on your patio. That stuff that floods our streets and makes our roof leak.

Anyway, during this storm the wind made our windows rattle to the point that Dan opened the blinds even though it was pitch black outside. His logic was that “if something comes flying at the window, I want to be able to see death approaching.” This was interrupted by me whimpering “I don’t want to die” when something loud crashed outside.

We awoke in the morning to find a tree sprawled across the backyard. We were lucky that A)the tree was not larger and thus did not hit the house, B)the tree did not break anything besides an old plant pot and C)the tree was not full of spiders that crawled away, fleeing the storm and the sudden crashing of their natural home, came through our doggy door and infested our house.

These are the sorts of scenarios I think up when I’m tired and scared, and there’s a major storm outside.

The insurance people wanted pictures so I figured I’d show you guys some photos too. Here’s a before picture. For the record, I did not take a random photo of our backyard. This is from the wedding 3 years ago. So the tree is was (RIP) a little bigger than you see here. It’s the tree on the right.

And after:

It’s been a week and the tree is still there. I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen to it. Thankfully, my dad is taking care of the getting rid of the tree and all the insurance stuff. It’ll probably stay exactly where it is until he comes home on Sunday for the holidays.

Being an adult is hard.

I recently headed to Toys R Us to finish up some Christmas shopping.

No, I was not buying for Dan. Although I did find a geeky K’nex thing that he probably would have liked, I didn’t want to buy my husband’s gift from a toy store.

It was a little harder to shop this time because I didn’t have any clue as to what the kids wanted. Child #1 is a 7-year-old boy. When I asked for advice from a “toy expert” (seriously, it says it on his shirt!) he recommended anything that made a mess, made noise or had a million parts. My next question was what can I get a 7-year-old boy that WILL NOT MAKE HIS PARENTS HATE ME? Turns out, that’s a much shorter list. We ended up with a game and a magic kit. I can totally picture him showing off his magic skills on the playground and kids will be all jealous and he’ll be like “my favorite aunt bought it for me because she’s the bomb, yo.”

That’s how kids speak, right?

Child #2 was almost too easy to shop for. This little girl who’s turning 5 needed some Princess stuff, stat. We all know that I am good at buying cutesy girl presents that have abnormal amounts of glitter and pink. I found her gifts all in the same aisle practically but when I turned the corner, I was faced with this. It’s a pink Disney laptop. There was one left on the shelf and two ladies were literally bickering over it. A store employee stepped in to find a second one for the loons women and crisis was adverted. When I got to the check out line, one of them women happened to be right behind me. I gestured to the laptop and said “you’re going to make some young girl very happy.” She responded “yes, my 4-year-old will love it.”

… FOUR. YEAR. OLD?!

When I was four, I’m fairly sure my parents were hiding some of my Christmas gifts and rewrapping them for my birthday in March. Had I been given a laptop, I probably would have tried to throw it like a frisbee.

Anyway, child #3 is a year and a half. I fell in love with this little toy that says the name of fish and plays classical music. And then because I didn’t want my relatives to hate me, I also purchased books that made no music, had no flashing lights and were not annoying at all. Spoilsports.

When I arrived home, I triumphantly showed the gifts to Dan. As I piled them up in mini towers, Dan looked quizzically at them.

Dan: What are these for?
Me: Christmas, of course!
Dan: You’re already buying the Christmas gifts?
Me: *in a slight panic* There’s only 2 weeks until Christmas! I still have to wrap all the gifts, finish my finals, put up the decorations, prepare the house for my parents’ visit, send out Christmas cards, ship these gifts across the country, figure out something you want that won’t cost a fortune and plan merriment and festivities with all of my friends. *wheeze*
Dan: Is this a bad time to tell you that the 20 foot tree in the backyard blew over?

More on that later, after I am finished breathing into a paper bag.

I got mad at Dan yesterday. It started off simple enough, where I put in my lunch order via telephone as I was on my way home from class. Dan was all “why am I making your lunch?” and I was all “because I said so” and he was all “you are 30 minutes away” and I’m all “that’s why I’m phoning in my order, duh. It’s like ordering pizza delivery but instead of pizza it’s a sandwich and instead of delivery it’s DiGiorno in my kitchen.” Dan did not seem to understand why I suddenly considered him my personal chef on call since he had lots of homework to do that was due today. I got mad in response.

No one ever said marriage was fair.

My husband is pretty good at ignoring my temper tantrums. He sighed, finished his homework and then brought in the ginormous Christmas tree that we inherited from my parents when they moved into an apartment. By the time I stopped at the grocery store, the gas station and got home, he was pretty sure it was safe to talk to me again without my head spinning around and flames shooting out of my eyes. Kudos to him for not asking if I was done with all the crazy. Double kudos for realizing that my craziness would subside when I saw the tree up.

He’s also had to start encouraging me to get stuff done. After we ate, I decided to take a nap because my life is tiring y’all. When I woke up, I had absolutely no desire to work. I wanted to lounge and catch up on The Office and 30 Rock, but Dan was very adamant that I needed to finish up some stuff. He told me to go work on Christmas cards and then found me playing Bejeweled on Facebook. A stern look got me back on Christmas card duty, until I got side tracked again. Dan told me to finish up the cards and I tried to convince him that they would get done with Christmas magic.

I’m pretty sure I heard him mutter “Christmas miracle” but he refused to repeat it. Probably wanted to avoid the head spinning and eye flames. Again.