Of Mice and Men (and Hair and D.C. and Basketball)

Have I told you about the mice? Oh heavens, the MICE!

Normally, when I share with you details of my life, I try to work them in to a post subtly, usually as an illustration, primarily to teach you a valuable life-lesson. Not today. Today, I tell you what I’ve been up to the past few weeks for the sole purpose of telling you what I’ve been up to for the last few weeks.

Indulge me. I’ve been through a lot.

Please and thank you.

First, the mice. A few weeks ago, I pulled a potato out of my pantry and noticed a line of chew marks across it. Upon further pantry investigation, it was immediately and profoundly evident a mouse was spending an exorbitant amount of time in there. So, I bravely pulled every last item out of my pantry to uncover the culprit and rid him from our home.

And by “I” I mean, “I called my daughter, Rebekah in for support, because she is not the least bit frazzled by rodents, but rather finds them quite endearing.”

And by “bravely” I mean “touching every item three times before I picked it up to make sure nothing jumped out on my head.”

“And also shrieking like a little girl, repeatedly.”

We never found a mouse.

I proceeded to throw out several opened and gnawed containers, wipe down everything with bleach, and put it all back in.

And I also set two no-kill traps—one in the basement (where there was more mouse evidence) and one in the pantry.

And by “I” I mean “Jon.”

Over the next two weeks, we caught three mice and released them into the woods. Four if you count the mouse carcass Oreo the Cat left for us on the basement floor. Thank you, Oreo?

I was only mildly freaked and sincerely hoped this was the last of them. That is, until my good friend Peter–who happens to be a college professor–left me this comment on Facebook:

Mice have a gestation period of 19-21 days and average 12 babies per litter. If 2 of the 4 mice (50% probability) you caught are female, and they have been in residence for more than two weeks then I think you could conservatively estimate about 20 more mice after the four you caught. Source: I studied mice a lot in my undergraduate Psych program.

And my friend Linda left this comment:

Sandy we got them in our garage when we lived in Indiana. They made a nest in the insulation Steve put up. He didn’t put the drywall up right away. They mated over the winter and by spring we had about 70…..yes…..70 mice in our garage!!!!! They got in my van and pooped everywhere!!! They got in all of our boxes in the garage as well!!!! We did not own any no kill traps!!!!! We were out for blood!!!!! Steve knocked down a piece of insulation with a golf club and they scattered like snakes!!! It was soooo creepy and disgusting!!!! Never got in our house!! I would have moved out until they were gone!!! I can tell you that when they ran everywhere and out the garage door it wasn’t very long they were scratching on the door trying to get back in!!! It took us about 2 weeks to get rid of all of them!!!

AHHHHHH!!!

So, Monday morning at 5:00 am, I stumbled into the kitchen to make my morning coffee and checked the trap in the pantry (it’s become my morning routine…”start coffee, check mouse traps, read the Bible, make breakfast for kids…”) when I heard some rustling! In the trap!

I panicked.

Because, you know, normally I laugh in the face of fear and everything, but I am not fond of picking up a loaded mousetrap, y’all. I’m just NOT.

Especially before coffee and Bible time.

So, I stood there for a moment trying to figure out if I should wake up Jon or leave it there until he woke up an hour later (Jon, not the mouse). And while I was looking at it, literally looking at it, the mouse escaped the trap, ducked behind the spice rack and stared me down, eyeball to eyeball.

What kind of Turbo Mouse Terrorist walks out of a trap and stares down a human?

I’m not kidding you at all when I tell you my first thought was to grab my camera to capture the moment for you. If anything, this proves I am ALWAYS thinking of you.

And my second thought was, “No pictures” because I’ve been told many of you read my blog while eating.

And my third thought was, “They will never see my recipes in the same light if I show them a mouse in my pantry.”

My fourth thought was to wake up Jon, which I did. And he actually asked me, “What do you want ME to do about it?”

Ummmm….I dunno…RESCUE ME FROM ITS EVIL CLUTCHES AND KILL IT!!!!

Jon followed me into the kitchen where it still sat (the mouse, not Jon), looking at us. After an interesting two minutes of observing it jump around our pantry, and me shrieking and also jumping around our pantry, we introduced Turbo Mouse Terrorist to Oreo the Cat and ushered the two of them outside to take care of business.

Let’s just say, things didn’t end well for Turbo Mouse Terrorist.

I have a whole new level of respect for my sweet kitty. She kicked into commando mode, and that was that. She strutted around all morning like, “I am Freakin OREO. You got a problem with that?”

After this, I tried to read my Bible and sip my coffee.

And then I tried to get my little children off to school.

And then I went all manic and proceeded to pull every single item out of my pantry AGAIN. Throw away anything that could have been remotely contaminated AGAIN. Wiped everything down with bleach AGAIN.

And then I called Orkin. Who will be calling me in the next 24-48 hours (!) to investigate the extent of the problem and proceed with extermination. (Really, Orkin? You can’t come like NOW?)

And then I drove to Target where I proceeded to purchase glass and metal containers for the pantry to protect the food and my sanity. And that was after I had used up every old jar I’ve saved.  And even resorted to whatever plastic I had on hand.

$235 later, and I still don’t have enough containers for all this. This food is still sitting on my island because I just don’t know where to put it. I would put it in my car…but for the Linda story…

I think it would have been cheaper to throw the entire contents of my pantry away and just eat out for the rest of our lives.

Moving on…

You know we are in the middle of house renovations, right? (I promise I’ll post some pictures, but I’m waiting until it gets to a certain phase. We still have all the painting to do and we need to change out some lighting. And also remove mice.)

Last week at the end of spring break, we had our hardwood in the kitchen and foyer sanded and refinished. In the event you’re considering having this done, allow me to educate you about the process:

1. If refinished hardwood is one of several on-going renovations, this is about the time you become less excited about having strange men in your home and more excited about having your life back.

2. You will need to remove everything from the rooms with hardwood so they don’t get covered in dust. This will take several hours. The floor guys will put up a plastic barrier to protect the rest of the house.

3. You will not be excited you have to remove everything from these rooms because you already did this when they tore out your counter tops and also when they replaced your carpet. And you will need to do it again next month when they repaint your walls.

4. You may actually use swear words next month when the painters show up at your door.

5. Removing everything from the rooms and putting up a plastic barrier will not prevent a layer of dust from forming on every blessed surface in your home, including walls, and rooms where you closed the doors, and rooms in other houses on your block, and also in neighboring counties.

6. It will take you several days to wipe the dust off everything, including every container in your pantry, which brings the grand total of times you’ve wiped the contents of the pantry to THREE (assuming you also have mice).

7. You will need to stay in a hotel for four days while they refinish the floors because the polyurethane is toxic to humans.

8. Polyurethane is apparently not toxic to mice, but instead morphs them into Turbo Mouse Terrorists who defy no-kill traps in the face of humans.

9. Polyurethane fumes penetrate the fiber of every permeable material in your home. Including, but not limited to, towels, clothing, furniture, blankets, carpet, hair and skin. And also ziplock lunch bags. Which will cause your children to ask, “Mom, why did my lunch taste like chemicals today?”

10. Come to think of it, the chemical taste may have been from the fact I bleached down the pantry three times this week.

11. The cost and time of staying in a hotel, eating out, wiping down every surface and doing multiple loads of extra laundry to accommodate the refinishing process exceeds the cost and time of ripping up the floors with your bare hands and putting down brand new hardwood. Or gold. In fact, it probably exceeds the cost of burning your house to the ground and starting over.

12. Burning down the house and starting over would also take care of the mouse problem.

Voila: my newly finished floors. Pretty, huh?

And speaking of floors (?) I have been in a complete hair crisis lately. I love good hair. And, typically, I love my good hair. So, when I confess I have not been happy with my hair lately, you have to know this is a TRUE crisis.

(Allow me to save you all the trouble of leaving a comment about “First World Problems” while I remind you this post was designed to be self-indulgent. I understand completely that disliking my hair ranks low on the list of TRUE crises. In fact, it ranks exactly THIRD…right under mice infestation and polyurethane fumes.)

Anyway, after studying my hair in the mirror for days and days, I realized it wasn’t really my hair I was hating—it was my FACE! I mean, age and stress and a crazy-long winter, not to mention polyurethane fumes, has taken its toll on my skin. So, I did what any Face-Hating Self-Indulgent American would do—I dyed my hair brown.

OK…it’s not brown-brown. I really wanted it brown-brown. My hair lady is amazing and talented, and totally gets me (as if that’s even possible). She knows how to make my hair happy. So, I’m a little confused why she didn’t just let me have brown-brown hair. She must have smelled polyurethane fumes and concluded I was high.

Here it is. As you can see, it’s not brown. But it’s brown-er. She left some of my blonde in there. I like it. What do you think?

 

Have I also mentioned that I’m leaving Saturday to chaperon the 5-day 8th-grade field trip to Washington DC? Jon will be staying home with the two younger kids.  I have advised him that when I return and ask how things went, under no circumstances is he allowed to shrug his shoulders and say, “It was easy.”

Which is his way of saying, “It was fine.  There was no need for you to worry about us.”

But sounds to me like, “Anyone could do your job.  What’s the big deal?”

Pray for me, as we will be travelling several hours by bus, sleeping in a room with three teenage girls, and eating an abundance of fast food–the likes of which my stomach hasn’t digested in probably eight years.  No lie.

And finally, I can’t end this post without giving a shout out to the Louisville Cardinals for winning the NCAA Basketball Championship. I am mostly clueless about sports and rarely follow a team. But I have to say, the energy in this city the past few weeks has been contagious. That and the fact it is sunny and 80 degrees here and the trees are starting to bloom. It’s a great day to live in this city. Even with mice and fumes.

Q4U: I’ve given plenty to discuss. Now let me indulge YOU. What’s on your mind?