You might ask,

"Why is Mike dressed like a retard?" I thought about posting this picture with some funny lie about how Mike likes to dress up in strange outfits once a week but I thought that might be too mean. The other night Mike was watering the garden and noticed a bunch of mosquitoes flying out of our closed storm shelter.

You might remember that a few months ago we got two rounds of rain. One lasted for almost two weeks and then a few weeks later lasted 21 days. We noticed that our storm shelter was cracking the same time our house started cracking. That was in Feb. We called the people that we have the warranty with and told them it was filling up with rain. The never called us back. We have called them every few weeks since Feb. and even had someone tell us they would come out and check the shelter. Anyway, it seems like I am digressing but it all relates to the story.

So Mike is outside and sees the mosquitoes and thinks to himself, "I should see what is happening out there." He comes running inside and tells me he was just swarmed by mosquitoes. He sprayed himself with mosquito repellent like five times and took bug spray out to put around the shelter. Then he threw bug killer down the shelter. In the morning our patio was covered with black dead mosquitoes all around the shelter. So gross.

He went to his church meetings and told the Bishop who told Mike we should sue them if they don't come out by October. The first counselor said we should buy a shop vac and clean the water out and then give the company the receipt. So last night Mike bought a shop vac and got all dressed up so that the mosquitoes wouldn't kill him. He was out there for two hours and then after the boys were asleep I joined him.

The smell.....Ugh. I was wondering if anyone in my family remembers the smell from the pig farm? I'm not talking about the pig smell but the stagnant water smell from under the slats. You know what I'm talking about? Probably not because I wouldn't know what you were talking about. I sat there trying not to breathe it in and the whole time kept thinking, "I've smelt this before." Then I remembered. Yuck. Anyway, you can't smell it in our house thankfully but we wreaked and had to take showers to get the smell off us.

It took three hours last night and we still have a little more to do. The water ruined our food storage that we had down there. So we have mosquitoes, flies, and maggots down there. I had the easy job of staying upstairs and dumping the shop vac but Mike went down and sucked the water up. He is such a good husband to not make me do that. I couldn't help but wonder what it was like cleaning up New Orleans after Katrina.