Most bipolar birthday ever

So I turned 23 on Friday. It felt kind of weird, because when I entered college I was about to turn 19 and I thought ok, 21 year old guys are on the same page as me, brand new to college (most of them) fresh off their missions. 22-year-olds I thought were basically equivalent to a year older than me. (See how I was just subtracting out their mission? I'm not sure how appropriate that was or not...) But 23-year-olds? They were pretty old. And now I've hit that mark myself. I guess it just makes me realize what a significant five years of my life I've just lived, and it kinda boggles my mind how quickly it seems I got from being a high school senior to a college graduate (ok, Associates degree but it counts), wife and mother. Time sure can fly.

But I'm getting off-track. I wanted to talk about the actual day, rather than what it implies. So re-focusing: the day started off quite nicely. Sam took Jori downstairs so I could have an extra hour of sleep, and brought me up breakfast in bed after I woke up. It was delicious! :) We dropped Sam off at school, then Jori and I went to baby story time at the Provo City Library. We came home and I put Jori to sleep, and started watching a fun movie I'd checked out. I sure do love movies.

And then! ugh.

So it's a long story, but basically our apartment had all this damage over the past two months randomly. Now we never damage apartments. In two years of marriage I don't think we've done so much as...I can't think of any really minor damage but, even that! But for some reason, everything we touched turned to broken, it seemed. One of those things was the wall below our stairs-Sam was exercising early one morning by doing toe-touches on them, and somehow slipped and fell backwards into the wall-leaving a huge dent. Oops.

That wouldn't be so bad on it's own. But unfortunately it doesn't stop there. This one day Sam had had a really long day at school/work and came home with a headache, but it was one of the days I have school in the evening so he had to take care of Jori until bedtime. But she screamed the whole time for him. Like, the entire time. And he held out and held out and finally got her to sleep and put her down in her crib...only for her to immediately wake up and start screaming again. That'd break pretty much anybody! So he left the room, closed the door and without much thought, just as a reaction to the stress and frustration...hit the door. And broke it. Bah.

That's really no big deal-Sam would never in a million gazillion years, ever hit Jori or me. I've known a ton of guys who have hit walls, doors or cars when frustrated. It's all right, it happens. As long as it isn't a regular occurance-that'd get expensive in a hurry, with medical bills and damage repairs. Not to mention hello, control your temper. But the last time Sam hit something because he was so frustrated was like, ten years ago, so I'm not worried about this becoming a habit.

BUT! Joy of all joys, our apartment managers came by the day before my birthday to inspect our place (they were doing inspections of all the apartments). And I was so embarrassed of our damages (there were more, like I said I'm just embarrassed) I didn't want to be there so I left them a note explaining how the damage happened and left.

Unfortunately, they interpreted it as me trying to protect my husband, and not being there because I'm trying to hide a black eye or something. Yeah. They thought Sam was abusing me!!! They thought the dent was from Sam throwing me down the stairs!

Worst birthday present ever!!! The person you're closer to than anyone else, is accused (falsely, of course!!) of one of the worst possibilities ever?! Need I use more exclamation points?!?!?!

That's probably overkill so I'll ease up on those. So anyway I spent a good half hour explaining to the maintenance guy who came by on my birthday, to fix a toilet but also question/inform me about their concerns, that Sam is not abusive and those were simple, explainable accidents. Followed by Sam and I going over together after he got home to ease the mind of our manager. Bah.

At least we succeeded. Sheesh. Now we've just got to be SUUUPPPPEEEERRR careful not to damage anything else. Sam also mentioned (he took this way easier than I did, he was just laughing about the whole thing) "Wouldn't it have been awful if you'd tripped or something and you did have a black eye when you saw them?" That would have been straight out of a Mary Higgins Clark book: all evidence is stacked against someone, but in the end turns out they're innocent. Thank goodness that wasn't the case, I think I would have passed out or something equally dramatic.

The rest of the day went smoothly at least-Sam, Jori and I went out to Cafe Rio for dinner, then we left Jori with babysitters and Sam and I went and saw MI4 at the dollar theater. Great end to the day. :) Oh wait I'm forgetting! Even better, when we got home, the babysitters told us "She was the easiest baby ever-we played for half an hour, she ate from the bottle, we put her in the crib and she only cried 10 minutes before falling asleep. And she hasn't woken up yet." I just said "Excuse me? Are we talking about the same baby?" yeah, miracles happen folks. I guess that was Jori's present to me.

Well, it's midnight so I'd best stop fussing with this blog and turn in.