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The will to live

I have a friend who conceived her child in the recovery period of a very invasive surgery to remove some fibroids. She had been told not to conceive, and she did not think it was remotely possible.  However, 8 weeks after her surgery, she missed her period, and lo and behold, and she was pregnant.

We talked at a point very early in my pregnancy (she has since given birth to a healthy baby) and marveled at the amazingness that is God’s work in creating babies.  I told her that I didn’t think this one would make it very long, that I considered it pretty much a ticking time bomb before my body rejected the new life inside it.  And my friend said – and I will never forget this – “the will to live is just so strong, Rachel.  Never stop believing in the power of the will to live.  These little babies – life wants to live.”

Now, she can say that, because her baby made it in a stitched-up uterus (and I mean, barely stitched up – they conceived 6 weeks to the day of the surgery).  So far, I can say that, although we have a long, long, long road ahead of us.  For other families, though, I cannot say that – it’s not that the will to live was any less, but the circumstances were just not right.  Something interfered with that will to live – chromosomes, or exposures, or a million other things.  But to think of the many, many pregnancies that continue despite horrific odds is quite daunting.

I think about this a whole lot, especially in the recent weeks, when we had the appointment to discuss the fetal ECGs we will have (because my body makes antibodies that cause congenital heart block) and then, a week later, my bio professor, discussing the various nuances of heartbeats and such, flashed up an ECG of a second-degree heart block.

The kind that my poor kid might have.

The kind that, actually, is desirable, compared with 3rd-degree heartblock, which would be fatal.

The kind that will certainly challenge whatever will to live our kid seems to have.

(I started to cry in the middle of the lecture.)

(Thank you, God, that there are literally 200 people in the lecture hall.)

We will start our fetal ECGs on April 9th.  We are praying for a healthy heart in the meantime.  (Don’t you like how I pepper my random prayers in these posts?  For 32 weeks, and for a healthy heart….?)

Fast forward to today:  there is just SO MUCH dust in our house that I decided to escape to a coffee shop to study (obviously going very well, thankyouverymuch…I’m working on it) and in an effort to get a TINY bit smarter, got some tea.  Some caffeinated tea.  Mostly because I know that I am fully incapable of drinking an entire cup of tea, so the max caffeine going in would be minimal, and it *might* make me smarter.  Maybe.

Anyway, I’m sipping my tea, thinking how awesome I am for drinking an entire HALF CUP of tea (really, I suck at drinking hot drinks – I usually use them to smell something yummy and warm my hands) when I decided to maybe check out the ingredient list on the type of tea I selected.

People, I am an idiot.

The tea has CLOVES in it.  That is really bad!  Cloves are really bad!

I mean, I didn’t KNOW that ahead of time, but seriously?  Seriously?!?  I am a reasonably intelligent, educated person, and who the HELL drinks TEA without checking the ingredients against a big huge internet database of What Not To Ingest?!?

The only saving grace I can think of is that I didn’t drink much of it, and really, it’s not MUCH in there – probably not even as much as what might be in some apple pie (right? Please tell me that’s right).

But still.

I mean, I’ve been having Braxton-Hicks contractions already (!!) and I don’t really need to encourage things in that area…

But then I think about the kids I used to work with – I used to work in a prenatal cocaine study.  I was blinded to the kids’ exposure status, but half the sample was exposed to cocaine, cigarette smoke, some alcohol, some marijuana (actually, the MJ made the kids smarter – no kidding) (there are probably some confounders in that particular finding, so this would really not be a suggestion to go out and hit up some weed) – anyway, the point being, the kids were exposed to a LOT.

And they were, for the most part, perfectly HEALTHY.

The will to live.

I am really, really, counting on it.

Damn cloves.

Our Bunker Hill

We won!

I actually wrote this long post about how I had nothing in my head, and then I realized I had a post in my head that is actually slightly less boring.

Our mice drama is most likely over!

I have these funny pictures from our times with the mice.  We are actually still living in hiding (aka in our guest room!) but we have yet to catch a mouse and we’ve yet to see any additional evidence since closing up all of the holes, so we think we’ve won.  Yay, us!

In the meantime, I took some pictures of our lives when we moved out of our bedroom and closed up all of the holes… (If you think this is boring, you should have seen the post that I didn’t publish).

So the last time I wrote about the mice, it was just a long post about all of the drama surrounding our mouse fight.  However, here you can see it in pictures!

So first we totally cleared out the closet and placed traps baited with cat food and honey everywhere.  This meant that our cat then had to eat on the kitchen table.  We’ve spent a long time convincing her (with strategic water bottles) that she did not need to be on the kitchen table, so this is a kind of a PITA, but, alas.

However, she was not psyched to get back on the table.  So this is how she ate the first night:  on the floor, with Little monitoring her every move:

(See how well he listens to us?  “Leave it” is the best command ever!  And see how well they get along?  That is just natural took a year of painful training.)

Then we had to replace the dishwasher, and we found evidence of their entry points, which necessitated cleaning out our major corner cabinet (where we store all of our random kitchen utilities:

This cabinet is HUGE.  So huge, in fact that it fits DB, shown here filling the cabinet’s holes, supervised by our hairy children animals:

And, in fact, it actually fits both Little AND DB:

And that is it.  After living with our appliances splayed all over the kitchen, we finally put them back in the cabinet and we haven’t seen a mouse since.

I never thought I’d say it, but I am running out of things to talk about.  And that is saying a lot, because I typically have verbal diarrhea, in case you didn’t notice.

Anyone?  New topics?  I plan to cover abortion and the Patriot Act and HIV/AIDS for AIDS Day (yes, I will do it, Christine) when I have more energy, but I am exhausted right now.  Brainless topics are always welcome

Little cute mouse: I hate you.

It’s all out war now.

The neighbors saw a live one this morning.

We found their route in our kitchen from the dishwasher to the bedroom via our cabinet.

We have depleted 2 bags of steel wool and 3 cans of GreatStuff in our mission to get the mice out, and yet, none of our 35 traps have deployed.

Our place WREAKS like Peppermint Oil. First I bought the Peppermint Extract, and then I bought 100%-don’t-use-during-pregnancy-aromatherapy (whoever uses this for that purpose is insane) Peppermint Oil. Which is supposed to help with headaches, but is making me nauseated.

Our current theory is that they escaped upstairs once we bolted down our holes, and the upstairs neighbors are not so swift at their holes, so that’s where they’re hiding. Except that the upstairs neighbors are mildly OCD and I have no doubt that the mice will quickly become bored up there.

I’m hoping they’re so bored that they run away outside, but I am a little worried that they’ll be stuck in the walls, fornicate, and chew on wires or something. I am a little bit in favor of throwing some D-Con into the wall so that they all shrivel up and die, but since we don’t know how many are back there, I’m a little wary (also a little wary of killing a neighbor pet – the downstairs cat is a farm cat mouser. Yeah, that neighbor. I’m way too nice.)

Argh.

I’m also pretty sure that I am the only person who reads my own blog! Hee!

P.S. This is filed under “overwhelming fears” because that is where the mice story started, but they are no longer overwhelming. No, the current “overwhelming fear” is that a) they won’t get caught, and we’ll have a total infestation, or b) one of our animals will get stuck in one of the 80,000 snares we have around our small place. We have babygates, but…accidents happen.

But overall, I realize that I am being melodramatic. At the same time…ewww. Mice. Ewwwwww.

Shock and Awe

So…our adventures with Mighty and Mickey are long from over.

Last week, I saw that mouse, right? It just careened in from the kitchen into the hallway, in front of me, spun around, and hauled its little butt out of here.

Or so I thought.

That night, I woke up to screeching. In the walls. In our bedroom.

The next day, I went ballistic with Peppermint Extract (*Note: this is not the correct type of peppermint to spread, but I was desperate), and we replaced the dishwasher, which conveniently also broke the same day. (Basically, this weekend was devoted to dishwasher replacement and rodent fighting.) Upon removing the old dishwasher, we realized hat we forgot a hole back there, so we closed that up.

That night, I heard something eating the cat’s food, only the cat was sleeping where she always sleeps: on my head. I got up, looked, nothing there. (Then I started to seriously think that I was going insane.) I placed 5 kibbles in the middle of the floor as a test, went back to bed, and when I woke up – kibbles were gone. HOWEVER, my test was stupid, because I also dumped out the cat’s food at the same time, so she was hungry and meowing, and *she* might have been the one to eat the test kibbles…so I wasn’t sure what to do.

(However: there was wetness about the cat’s food. EWWWWWWWW mouse urine ewwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Yesterday, I looked down at the wall in our room, and realized that there was a hole the size of a quarter in the floorboard, and it led directly under the wall to another hole next to the closet (a hole that DB said could not possibly go anywhere…when do women get the “always right” intelligence? Pre- or post-motherhood? I think mine is already fully developed). So I took steel wool, stuffed it into both holes, and listened as the mice scratched and tried to get out of there.

Oh, you think I’m kidding, but I am not.

The final straw was yesterday, right as I was getting ready to leave to take an exam – I decided just to *check* behind my shoes (which are in the closet, which is a rather large room we will convert into a nursery when appropriate, which also currently houses the cat’s food). I don’t know why I decided to do that -but oh my goodness.

I found the nest.

IN! MY! SHOES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These damn mice were living like Club Med in our closet!

So last night, it was Operation Shock and Awe.

I bought 30 traps: one electric shocker one, 26 snap traps of varying quality, and 2 massive glue traps for rats.

We threw out almost all of my shoes, which were tainted with mouse excrement and who knows what else. (No worries – I hadn’t worn most of them in about 4 years, and they were mostly Target specials that were on clearance that I never liked, but attempted to like because they were so cheap.)

We cleared out anything else on the floor.

We put the cat’s food on the kitchen table – a feeding method I am disgusted by, but consider the lesser of two evils. Oh, and she is no longer allowed to eat when we’re not home. Poor kitty.

And we. set. traps.

We opened up the holes I stuffed with steel wool, and surrounded the holes with traps.

DB made a little bowl of aluminum foil, and we filled it with cat kibble, honey, and a trap. We dipped cat kibbles in honey and placed them on each of the snap traps, and surrounded the Old Country Buffet with snap traps and glue traps. Then we lowered the baby gates so the animals couldn’t get in, moved out of our room into the guest room (mostly because I could not bear to hear the snapping at night – I was so convinced we’d wake up to at least 30 mice this morning) and shut the door to kill them all.

Guess how many mice we caught?

ZERO!

ZERO!?!?

So now we are flummoxed. Just how many mice do we have here, anyway? We’ve closed out every. single. crack in this place now! We’ve checked our previously closed holes! We’ve set baited traps!

Any ideas? I am wondering if maybe the Peppermint Extract did a better job than I realized and drove them away, but I am just now finding the evidence of their stay? Except that I could hear them in the walls yesterday, and rustling in the food bowl the other night.

How often do they eat, anyway?

And I am so petrified that those squeals I heard the other night were from a mommy mouse making a family.

Did I mention how freaked out I am by mice?

Do they not like to eat where they poop? Because we put the Old Country Buffet right where they poop, but now I’m thinking that we should just put snap traps where they poop and OCB where the cat’s food was.

The cat, BTW, is furious. She’s been kind of ornery for the last few weeks (probably because she is sharing her food with mice, and they have been peeing in her food – I couldn’t figure out why she wouldn’t touch this small area of her food bowl!) but now she is downright livid – we kicked her out of her food, she has to climb up on the table, and she has to share her water with the dog (we are now living in half of our living space, and there is no other way to do it. Plus, she doesn’t seem to really care that much). When we first got the dog, she ripped all of her hair out in an anxious protest – I am very concerned that she is going to resort to that now, too.

Except I’d rather have a bald cat than one with a snap trap stuck to its leg.

So everyone who wrote me about mice: what am I missing? Why didn’t we get any? Don’t they like honey and cat food? And peanut butter? And in any event – we have so many traps that it would take a VERY observant mouse to get across the closet floor without hitting one! (I set one off accidentally last night and screamed. It is really hard to avoid them.)

Also, we seem to have a difference of opinion between DB and I: I bought Peppermint Oil today (the real kind) and I am conflicted about whether to put it down now. He thinks that we should wait until we catch one. I think that we should put it everywhere we live (kitchen, living room, guest room) and leave the bedroom as the Valley of Death filled with Kibble and Honey. Any thoughts?

Help! Again! Help help!

P.S. Yes, I called an exterminator.

No good, very bad day

Wow, was I in a bad mood yesterday. Holy moly. I even peed on a stick*, I was in such a bad mood, because seriously? Is it even NORMAL to be in such a bad mood? It just got worse…and worse…and worse. And now I am going to write about it, because maybe in hindsight, it is a little funny. Plus, I just got out of going to the dentist to have my teeth fixed again – not because I don’t need to go (I really do) but because I just…didn’t want to. (I had 5 fillings filled last week and I am in agonizing pain now. Advil works wonders.)

So…bad days?

1) Aforementioned pain. You know it makes you mean, too. OK, maybe not, but DAMN I am in pain without the miracle that is ibuprofen (yay ibuprofen!). I am never again going to get top AND bottom fillings. Nosiree, I am going to get top, heal, then bottom, heal. At least that way my bite will be less mismatched, and my marriage will be saved.

2) No job. Yeah, this one is a PITA. I *really* want a job. Like not a job that is on my couch (although I will admit – the location of my current job is enviable, until I cannot get in touch with the people I need to from my couch). I am a little depressed about the job market now and I feel as though I will *never* have another job (and at the height of the agony that was yesterday, I decided that it was a terrible idea to go back to school last fall. I’m not sure how I feel about that now.)

This was augmented by the conversation next to me between two 22 year old girls in physics – “I work at [major medical center where I, Rachel, have been trying to work for a while now - on four separate job-search occasions in this blessed city].” “Oh, really? ME TOO!” “No way!”

WTH? How can they get positions in these places and I cannot?!?!? Am I really that unqualified? Seriously? (This attitude would make you think so, huh?) Then I overheard the one girl say that she was a pharmacy tech – and not to knock pharmacy techs (actually, I know nothing about them, or the competition to get that type of job) but that was not a job I was competing with her for, and I felt a teeny tiny bit better

This moves into the death-spiral of thinking that becomes me:

3) I have No Skills. No, seriously. How am I going to *get* a job? What are my marketable skills at this point?!? I have none. Actually, no, I can tell you if your child is on the autism spectrum, which is a valuable skill for a remarkably tiny population (despite what you hear on the news). Let’s just say that I have a serious hang-up about my lack of skills and value in this world.

Also: I know a lot about adoption. Oh, wait, I forgot, it’s not possible to get a job in that field. So maybe we should edit this to read: I have Skills, but they are Worthless.

4) And I really want a child, which would make me feel a bit better about being on my couch, because *that* is a *very* valuable job (raising a child). But oh! – no! – not possible right now.

5) And the FBI REALLY should give up that cash. Working for The Man = entitled to get upset when The Man bails out the fat dudes on Wall Street, lets innocent people default on shoddy mortgages, renders REALLY innocent people who are RENTING from the property owners HOMELESS, and fails to pay those who put their asses on the line in a country that we shouldn’t be in in the FIRST PLACE.

(I’ll tell you how I really feel about that! Ha!)

(To be fair, it is only 15 days after the money was expected, and perhaps this was a pipe dream that it would come on October 1st, so perhaps it is not late after all. However, it seems awfully damn late. If you ask me, it is really friggin’ late, considering DB returned in JULY).

6) I got a parking ticket even though my meter was paid, because I fed the meter. I hate you, parking attendants.

7) The ceiling in my kitchen is leaking over a place that has no water above it. (??)

8.) For the XXth night in a row, my car would not start. This is a source of extreme annoyance at this point. The effing car has dementia – it sundowns every. night. It runs just fine all day, and then at night – the battery dies. We carry a self-starter to jump it whenever we need a jump. It’s, like, regular life with this car (which is not THAT old). WTH does the car do this?!?

9) My neighbors sent us all an email: “DB, thank you for all of your hard work. Love, us.” Which is really effing annoying, since we BOTH did the work and they know it, and it was a low blow, and I am just beyond hurt. And I want DB to go downstairs and punch them, but he won’t.

10) DB won’t resort to violence against parking attendants, the car, HR staff, and my downstairs neighbors.

11) Seriously, people who try to link Obama with William Ayers? SERIOUSLY?!? Go after the Reverend Wright stuff and alienate your teeny-tiny inner-city electorate, but AYERS?!? Who is a renowned education researcher?

12) SERIOUSLY, McCain? “Obama is…he’s an Arab.” “Oh, no, ma’am, he’s a decent family man.” Did you seriously suggest that the two are mutually exclusive?!? And are you seriously not going to clamp down on the evil rhetoric emerging at your rallies except when the press is there to give you a sound bite? SERIOUSLY?!?

I think I’m running out of complaints now. I realize that these are little things and I should be grateful for the big things and really, seriously, I usually am, and I will be more positive soon.

*OBVIOUSLY it was negative. I HAVE AN IUD. Although we own stock in EPT, because even a smart person without a normal job tends to read too many things like this despite the fact that it is totally ridiculous (not that I doubt those people. I just think there are very few of them.)

(Also, I realize this post makes me sound like a egomaniacal crazy woman. Yesterday’s post was a struggle and a half to put out nice things about the world, and then the day just got worse and worse, and you know what? I feel better now. Thanks for reading. Love, me.)

Making decisions

(I just vomited a little in my mouth.)

D-day is rapidly approaching. Decision day. And I am really, really, really conflicted.

So I’m not sure how much I can share with the internet. Most of this will probably have to be password-protected, because a lot of my debate is location-specific, and I just. don’t. know. Aagh.

But on the first pass, sans password…

If you have been reading my blog a little bit, you will probably have noticed (because for 3 months, it was all I could write about) that I took a few hard-science classes this summer: gen chem 2 (which was, frankly, the most hellacious class ever) and organic chem (the whole year). I managed to fit them both in roughly sequentially by taking them at different universities.

In general, there are very few reasons for an old person (me, and yes, 29 is old in this arena) to take these classes: either s/he is crazy, or s/he wants to become a vet/dentist/physician. Hopefully, I’d fall into this last category (not crazy) who wants to become a physician.

However, last fall, I finally started – after a three-year hiatus doing various types of clinical research, including research on autism (as you will see from some of my opinions previously – really, my whole resume is in the categories on the left <—-) a doctorate. A research doctorate. At a fairly prestigious university, although if you ask me IRL, I will do anything in my power to avoid identifying the school that I attend because I feel as though it’s not only prestigious, it’s pretentious. I realize if I stay there I need to get over myself, because I’m there, I’m getting a degree there, and I am spending a whole lot of time there. But that’s another discussion.

So with that background, here are my three options:

1) Stay with my program and pretend that the undergrads were all a really, really, really long, bad, dream inspired by my husband’s foray into a war zone;

2) Ditch my program (get a master’s degree), cling to the hope that is medical school, and complete the rest of my prereq requirements (bio and physics – no, seriously, I did not take a single science class in undergrad, unless you could “physics for athletes” (not what it’s called, but I certainly got to know the entire football team that way) or oceanography, aka the world’s second worst class (behind this gen chem class this summer)). Have a baby (by “have”, I mean either birth or adopt. The world of international adoption gets increasingly concerning, international governments are increasingly less excited about adopting to parents with chronic illness – no matter how minor – and although we are warming up to domestic adoption, we just….do not…know. But attempting to conceive is a source of stress all unto its own). Pursue medical school admission next fall, and attempt to matriculate at the ripe old age of 31.

(ouch.)

3) Ditch all higher education and – gasp – get a job. Actually, I will get a job this fall with either routes 2 or 3. The grants that fund my other jobs are drying up, which is probably good for my decision-making.

OK, so here are all the things I think about:

1) Kids. We want kids. We want kids bad. We are old (DB – mid-30s, I’ve mentioned my own far too many times at this point). We went to a pet store the other day, just because I haven’t seen a pet store that actually SELLS ANIMALS in the longest time (and I was appalled!) and there was a little mini schnauzer in there. He was SO CUTE! And I have never seen DB so smitten by a living thing before.

This, to highlight that we really. want. another. dependent. Preferably one with two legs, versus four (it can have four temporarily).

(We didn’t get the puppy. We would never do that. Pet stores = SO BAD!)

2) Kids, but I wanted a new bullet point.

Trying to conceive and staying in my program would be a major challenge with the impending written exam in May…given my health issues and the potential for things that would preclude my ability to sit for that exam on THOSE DATES (and if I miss THOSE DATES, I need to wait another year!) Adopting – well, I guess with adopting the biggest concern is the finances. We want to be able to afford adoption and with DB’s current salary and option 1 (staying in my program), it will be really, really tough. Plus, we would probably adopt a child with some special needs, which would increase the expected cost of caring for the child (plus, let’s face it – kids are crazy expensive).

Kids, part 3: caring for them.

We run the significant chance (I won’t say risk) of having a special needs child, either a biological child on the autism spectrum or a child with other needs by adoption (and as someone who strongly believes in attachment parenting, we expect even a “typical” child who joins our family through adoption have some adjustment.  Adoption is a loss, and we understand that…so while that seems not relevant, actually, it is).  I want us to be able to provide for our children’s needs, both financially (in terms of services and care) and emotionally – and if that requires me to stay home with them, so be it. I’ll be honest: I’d rather work at this point than stay home with our children – I’d rather have that balance – but if we have a child with special needs, I do not know that I’d trust another caregiver to deal with meltdowns and picky eating.  I am a little bit of a control freak.

3) Money. Oh, money. So here are the facts with money:

a) Until I take that written exam, I cannot get more money for my degree. So delaying it by a year has incredible impact, beyond what it would be in any other doctoral degree program.
b) DB cannot take a second job because the FBI prohibits him from working a second job. I will not get started on this particular rant here, but let’s suffice it to say that the federal government does not pay that well BUT the burden of making enough to do things like adopt (which is admittedly expensive) lies with me, his intrepid and hardworking spouse with two part-time jobs and full-time school. (Just saying.)
c) Med school is a LOT CHEAPER than this degree.
d) Oh how nice it would be to have a salary for the next two years! (Option 2 and 3)
e) (In little font) I would make more money as a physician than a researcher. (Emphasize little font!)

4) Jobs:

a) I have been doing research for the last 5 years in three different topics and with 3 different functions. I have designed studies, created protocols, written assessments, administered assessments, and analyzed data. Oh, yeah, and I’ve written grants.

I would rather eat worms than commit to research for my entire life.

I have a clinical degree! It is not one that inspires a lot of confidence in my abilities, but I have one! And I never pictured myself doing research for my life’s work. Yet – somehow – I am getting a research degree. (Does that make you think? It makes me think to write that.

b) I COULD use my Ph.D. to do consulting or policy work. However, my policy professor told me that I should leave the program and pursue a degree that is more likely to make change in the world – law or medicine. I respect this professor immensely and I don’t think that she would want to know that this is how I’m interpreting her thoughts – but at the same time, it gives me pause for thought.

c) I love clinical work. If I had to commit to one or another – analysis or clinical work – it would be clinical work, hands down. But I could do clinical stuff now without another degree at all.

d) I would like a job that allows me to do clinical work AND research if I choose (that would be medicine, or option 3, and probably less so option 1, because once you have this degree you are pretty much pigeon-holed).

5) The Bureau: Yes, it gets its own bullet. Because it has its own effects on my (yes, my) career choices.

We are required to move anywhere they want us to. Which could really be an issue for, oh, say, RESIDENCY.

DB and I want to live together for our marriage.

I cannot pursue a tenure-track position because what’s the point? -if we move. Plus, um, I just vomited a little in my mouth again. So now we know what I think about that.

I need to make enough money to support our needs in conjunction with what they pay DB. This means I would like a career where I can move anywhere and become instantly useful. There aren’t many of those careers around. (FWIW, I always tell DB that the best job for me would be a preschool teacher or a nurse. If only I liked preschoolers more…but nursing has not been eliminated yet.)

We want to live overseas. We can do this with the Bureau but requires some strategic moves by us (now).

6) What I really want: A job that contributes to the greater good of society, pays well, allows me to take time off to parent, expects a lot of me (has high expectations of me), allows me to grow as a person, lets me continue to learn. A job that (ok, nonChristians, avert your eyes) glorifies God. (A few years ago Wheaten College – which is a fairly conservative Christian college – was looking for coaches for the sport I used to do, and stated, “looking for those who ______ for the glory of God.” I thought that was the most hokey thing I’d ever seen.)

That’s all. So now that I’ve written all of that out, I am not one bit closer to making a decision. I wish I had more time, but somehow I do not think that more time would help me much.

Thoughts? I know a lot of you have significant others in medicine, or are in medicine yourselves…or do research…anyone? Or want to recommend a really inspiring movie that will help me get motivated to make a decision?

The other thing is….I read my musings from oh, say, May, when I was finishing up the second semester of the doctorate, and realize what I need to do. I just need to have the stomach to do it. So hopefully this long, boring post will serve the same function when I flunk physics and start wondering, “what, oh what, did I DO?!?”

Blech, that vomit taste. Going to wash the dog now. Woot!

Just one more thing?

Can I just say how stupid I feel to have a teeny tiny mouse cause so much consternation?!?

I think it’s more the fact that I’m scared of my condo association, but still. One (hopefully one. I always tell people, “It’s NEVER one”, but I’m so praying that I am wrong on that one) little, teeny, itsy, bitsy, mouse. Like something we put in a glass cage and keep as a pet. Tiny mouse.

When Little and I went outside to walk this morning, there was a bird hopping on the sidewalk with a broken wing. He was extremely! interested! in this bird, doing his little dance and tick-tocking his short tail.

Please know that I am not a mean person.

The bird was going to die anyway. I indulged Little’s interest – I let him at it. I want to know what he thinks he should do with a small animal. He likes to chase squirrels, but he’s never gotten good enough to get one. Here was a sitting duck, so to speak, that I could use for practice.

He SNIFFED it.

I’m not kidding.

I’m doomed.

Deceit

OK, it’s almost 3 am. I am a total loser. I am waiting for the mouse.

I am really, really, really tired.

My newest plan is to leave ALL of the lights on to trick the mouse into thinking it’s daytime, and therefore he needs to hide. (Preferably far, far, far away.)

I could tell you stories about how I panicked over a gecko in Viet Nam, only to realize that an entire family (complete with 2nd and 3rd cousins) lived in my room and cackled every night.

But I am tired. Maybe later.

I wish mice cackled so I would know if they were here.

Thoughts? Can I deceive the mouse?

Hickory dickory dock

…yeah, finish that sentence.

One of my friends (who is moving to Denver ) (she is also named Jen) came over tonight to help me move furniture for guests that are coming tomorrow night (also named Jen). We were talking and cleaning. I came upon a chocolate bar that has been on the counter for some time.

The bar had been nibbled.

Oh. My. Goodness.

(and no, that is not what I said in real life.)

I freaked out. We moved every appliance looking for how the eater of the bar might have entered the house. We found one dropping. We found a trail of foil and wrapper from the diligence of the rodent in eating the bar.

No mouse.

Oh. My. Goodness.

So I’m waiting. It’s almost 1 am. Isn’t that when the mice come to eat? Except that I do not know what to do once I find him. Hit him? Stab him? Shoot him? (No, that’s not an option. DB’s gun is locked up in at the academy.) What if he has friends? What if he’s been here for a while?!?!?

I am totally freaked out. My place is messy – it’s covered in papers – but it is not dirty. I clean all. the. time. Except that there have been many nights when I haven’t felt like doing the dishes, and probably didn’t run the disposal, and the thought crossed my mind, absently, that I might regret this, but I pushed it away.

Can we say “stupid”???

Jen was very friendly, helping move appliances and search for droppings. I can’t imagine I was a lot of fun to hang out with.

Help! Suggestions! What do I do with a mouse if I find him?!????

I’m calling the exterminator first thing in the morning.