Nothing to whine about, but still

I am going to apologize in advance for this list of my current annoyances. None of them are earth shattering. None of them are even very worthy of note. Bear with my anyway.

All four of us are going to be out of town next week. The Boy will be at camp. The Girl will be at a different camp (of sorts). The grown-ups are taking advantage of this absence of kids by hitting the road in search of adventure. The problem comes with the other child in our life.

Our favorite kennel is booked up and has no room for him next week. He is WAY too much trouble (i.e. giant, hairy, noisy, needy) to put on any family member or friend, so I forsee an unknown kennel with insane rates in our future--if we can find one that has space for him. I don't even want to think about about the other side of that IF.

Let's keep going with Marco. I love rabbits as much as the next person (that next person being Nance). Unfortunately, Marco doesn't see them as cute and wonderful. They are his mortal enemies. Marco's main goal this time of year is to protect our home from the attacking hordes of bunnies coming from every direction. His main weapon? Tremendously loud barking. He has a special bark just for bunny attacks and it will cut right through a previously calm person and make them start screaming out the back door "Will you just shut the #$% up already?" Just the other day I spotted a rabbit in the neighbors yard. I ran over and scared it away before the dog spotted it. That is what it has come to.

I can't find the Good keys. We have two sets of keys for the van, aptly named Good and Bad. The Good set has my Girl Scout fob, a few choice keys and the clicker that works. The Bad set has just the van key and the clicker that went through the wash. The Good set has been missing for more than a week, and I'm running out of places to look. I do not want to go on vacation with the Bad set.

Do you know Real Simple? This magazine has happily filled the gap in my reading material since we outgrew Family Fun. While I love it, the thing is gigantic and chuck full of ads. I can't just flip through it, because it's too easy to miss the articles buried in all the ads. In response to this, I have to read the magazine in the nerdiest fashion ever, front to back, using a bookmark. I get about halfway through it when the next month's issue shows up. The result will be that it will take me two years to read my one year subscription.

If you've ever been in our backyard you know we have the granddaddy of all oak trees out there. Last fall, for the first time since we lived here, that tree dropped billions of acorns. They were small, marble sized, but the entire yard was carpeted with acorns. It was unreal. We were slipping and sliding on them all over the place. Now, as nature intended, there are baby oak trees growing EVERYWHERE. In the grass, in the ivy, right in the center of the roses, in flower pots, every sidewalk crack... anywhere a little acorn could have rolled, it did and now is growing. You could spend all day out there (and I have lost many days) pulling up little trees and it still looks the same. Even sitting here typing about them is getting me all worked up. I've got to go pull up some trees right now!