I know, I know...I'm a horrible blogger. I have practically vanished off the scene for the past four months. But thankfully, I have the most wonderful excuse. We moved. That pretty much sums everything up right there. The riggors of packing, cleaning, unpacking, packing, cleaning and unpacking again (yes, we had to move twice in two months) leave one (especially me) with little to no time to do the things I love to do (like take a bubble bath and blog - not at the same time, mind you). But new material is always at my fingertips. Like now for example...
Things in the new house are relatively good - except for the mice!!! YUCK!!! Evidently, they lived here first and are not too happy that we have taken over their field. So, they are eating through the weather stripping and making themselves at home. Actually, I think we only have one POW in the house - they seem to like the garage - which we never enter any more. The other night we sent the kids upstairs to get ready for bed and they came running back down all freaked out saying they saw "something". We tried to blow it off. Chuck asked Gavin "what exactly did you see, describe it" (without trying to put words in his mouth of what he thought it was). So, Gavin said "I saw it run down the stairs and jump off, it was kinda small and black and had like 10 pointy hairs and a tail". I'm like, "you sure it wasn't a cricket?, I'm sure that's all it was" and Gavin was like "No, I'm pretty sure it was a mouse".
Chuck and I just lost it and started freaking out. We are huge scaredy cats when it comes to rodents of any kind. We immediately went out and bought some mouse traps and set them in the house and garage and lived with the hibbie-jibbies for a few days. We went for about 4 days without a sighting. Until this morning. We were obviously living with a false sense of security it seems.
I was on my hands and knees doing something on the floor and out of my peripheral vision I see something scampering across the floor. It was gray, not black. Oh how I wished at that moment that God could transport me directly to my bed and my bare feet wouldn't have to walk on the defiled floor that my nemesis just passed. I ran around the corner and leapt onto my bed with cell phone in hand. I planned on staying there until help arrived. I quickly called Chuck, who just got to work (it was like, 6:30am) and begged him to come home immediately to rescue me. The kids were safe up stairs - I, on the other hand, was in imminent danger.
Needless to say, he was a tad bit frustrated. :) He wouldn't have had to come home, mind you, had we had more than one car in our possession (that's a whole other blog). We were told the only way to solve the mouse problem (that's putting it mildly, I would rather call it the "black plague"), would be to lay out mouse poison around the premises of the house and in the flower beds. Problem is, we hadn't had a chance to run out and get any yet. So, Chuck stopped and picked some up and came home with an arsenal of weapons in hand, ready to conquer our enemy. He came home and looked behind sofas and tables and beds and much to my chagrin, couldn't find my little furry "friend". But the traps were set, so I once again a nice false sense of security calmed my queasy tummy long enough for him to go back to work for the rest of the day.
I swear I wanted to throw up once I saw the thing. The kids of course, think this is very funny. That mommy could be scared of something so small and cute and furry. They have just finished be brainwashed with the movie: "An American Tail" and can't seem to see those little critters the same way I do. When I told them that I saw the mouse that morning and that Daddy was coming home to "take care of it", the immediately started into their "aw Mom, don't do that, we want it as a pet". My obvious response was "NO WAY! Fish are pets, dogs are pets, cats are pets - mice are NOT pets - EVER - in this house". I believe I got the point across.
Upon further research, we think the way our little mousey pooh got in was through the opening in the bottom of the front door where the weather stripping had been chewed away and the thresh-hold was not high enough. They've since come to fix that and we've set many a trap and bait outside and in the garage which apparently are working. But this one little critter in the house, he must have a higher IQ.
We ended up having to upgrade our weaponry. We moved up to the sticky traps. We had been told that we would hear him "screaming" once he gets stuck - I'm sure that ghastly sound will haunt me the rest of my life, but I'm prepared to live with that. We can see he's trying to get back into the garage thru the utility cuz he's trying to eat through the weather stripping again. Hopefully tonite will be our last night with our uninvited little guest. Of course, this greatly saddens the boys. :)
UPDATE: Mission Accomplished - Noise not heard! :) (probably cuz I was sleeping with my hands covering my ears that night.)
