Have you seen my chew toy?

This morning, Stew was on the phone with some dude named Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown. Apparently, he's some sort of boy detective who solves all sorts of crimes. Only Leroy's parents and teachers call him by his given name (a name he dislikes); the rest of the neighborhood children refer to him as "Encyclopedia" due to his intelligence and cleverness. This reminds me of Stew because only his mom and sister call him by his given name of "Brett", while his friends, brothers and wife call him "Stew" (or "StewDog"). It seems Stew decided against using the name neighborhood children gave him when he was growing up in Pierre, South Dakota. In fact, I don't think anyone's referred to him as "Pee Wee" in years...

Anyway, you're likely wondering why Stew contacted Encyclopedia Brown. Well, it's a Claire thing. Apparently Momma couldn't find her slippers anywhere in the house, and Claire's been known to take household objects and relocate them to her secret hiding places. So far, we've discovered stashes of hair brushes, car keys and contact lens holders in the following locales: the bottom drawer of the office file cabinet, the window sill of the front window (behind the drapes), the clothes hamper in Momma and Stew's bedroom, Claire's training potty in the bathroom and on the bottom roll-out shelf of the cupboard next to the refrigerator. So, it looks like we're hiring Encyclopedia Brown to come find Momma's slippers and a slew of other missing items.

Did you catch the line above about our kitchen cupboards having roll-out shelves? Who needs a 2-car garage when you can have roll-out shelving in your kitchen? So, take note realtors... except for the agent from Keller-Williams who scheduled a second-showing at our house for 3:45pm on Sunday only to cancel the appointment at 3:30pm and has yet to return our agent's phone call asking "why?" But before I go off on yet another rant about realtors, I'm sure the agent realizes what a pain in the ass it is to clean our house - a house trashed on a daily basis by a 19-month old toddler and a 3-year old dog with a shedding problem - and then get a crying toddler and an uncontrollably scared dog who hates to take rides into a vehicle to drive around for 90 minutes so said realtor can show her client our beautiful home. And I'm sure there's a perfectly legitimate reason why she can't seem to return a phone call to our agent. So, congratulations Keller-Williams Realty, you've made the top of my Real Estate Agencies That Suck list due to the ever-growing number of your agents who have missed scheduled showing appointments. I'm just going to group all of your branch offices together since I don't know the names of the agents or from which office they work. Maybe I should consider hiring Encyclopedia Brown to track you down. Better yet, I think I'll call Dog the Bounty Hunter. I hear he has a new show he's working on with HGTV that will air after House Hunters. It's going to be called Realtor Hunter, and here's the proposed theme song:

There's fear and darkness all around you,
The realtors are on the run;
You think you can just skip scheduled showings,
But that's unprofessional and wrong;
No use in hiding in your office,
I'll hunt you down 'cause I'm the Dog!
I'm the Dog...
The big bad Dog...
The Realtor Hunter!!!!