fucking mice.

I am, like, really bad at this.

Anyway.

I flew to Missouri for Thanksgiving. While there, Liz and Zeb found a nest of "infant" mice underneath this Korean Hutch we've had for a hundred thousand years. They saved them: pink, blind, hairless, squeaking, and squirming, in a glad bowl for me to take care of when my mom and I returned from grocery shopping.

So, what did I get stuck with doing? Dumping the bowl of infant mice, that Zeb was so proud of saving, out in the front yard. And when I close my eyes I can still picture them squirming as they tumbled out of the bowl onto the cold wet ground. I hope they didn't take too long to die. I sat in my room cringing at the thought of what I had done.

Thinking: The Hunter Edition

Minerva Q. Halloweencat, why did you bring this dead mouse, complete with mouse trap still attached, to us? Do not even try to take credit for this kill.

Spring Cleaning

I got an email from blogger about their new Blogger in Draft thing, and while playing with it I accidentally set my blog to look like this. Whoops! It's pretty nice though, right?

I have been struggling to hold onto my anxiety lately. I find myself unraveling with less external influence. It doesn't take much to set me off, and then I find myself in a screaming while cleaning frenzy. Today, for example, I woke up around 9:00 am because I was hungry. I got up, got dressed, and somewhere between putting my contacts in and brushing my teeth, I FLIPPED MY SHIT. When I got to the kitchen I put the dishes away, loaded the dishwasher, started directing the kids to doing this and that and the other. I cleaned the stove and the microwave. I cleaned the counters. I cleaned the vent on the microwave. I had the kids clean the fridge, clean windows, clean the front of the stove. We cleaned off the bar, moved the kitchen table downstairs. We vacuumed the living room, and then the formal dining room which we then cleaned out and ate dinner in for the FIRST TIME SINCE MY PARENTS BOUGHT THIS HOUSE IN 2004.

Yeah. It was kind of out of control. The house does not even look the same with the kitchen table downstairs. The kitchen looks massive. It is nice and easy to navigate in. Also, since we rearranged the living room and added my futon and recliner and coffee table, we've managed to keep it cleaner and more organized. At this point, three rooms in the house are pretty well taken care of. We do need to clean out and organize the bookshelves in the living room, but that is really all that is left in those three rooms.

Once we get those sorted, we plan to start on the family room/Phillip's room and my room. Since I am going to move my stuff down into Jason&Liz's old room in the basement, Phillip will get his old room back and then my mom will have the family room to, you know, use as a family room. That room is going to be the worst because it has a bunch of my shit, a bunch of gardening shit, and then a bunch of Phillip's nasty nasty nastiness. Plus, whatever grossness the kids left there when my mom wasn't watching them while I was away at camp last summer.

So, yeah. We are harnessing the power of my anxiety to do our spring cleaning.

OH, and hilariously, when we were moving the bar to clean out behind it and spray for ants/spiders I found a dead mouse. Rural Missouri, you are a mess.

Micecapades

The last few days it's been incredibly cold in the big MO. Well, okay, not cold. It's been incredibly COOL. No false information here. Anywho, as what I can only presume is a direct result of that change in temperature, the mice that live in the family room that was once an outside room and is now closed in and serving as a spare bedroom/Kashmir's shitroom/tv room/general shit room have lost their damn minds and started running about. In a house. With humans. AND CATS!!!!

I was walking through the kitchen Saturday night when I noticed that Jude was paying awful close attention to SOMETHING. I followed his line of site and saw a baby mouse lying about a foot away from him. The mouse was not moving, so I immediately assumed s/he was dead. I moved closer and saw hir move a few inches. At this point, I immediately called my mother, not because I was scared OF the mouse, but because I am a big ole softy and was sure that if I picked hir up, I'd try to keep hir. My mom picked the baby mouse up in a plastic sack and handed it to me to take outside.

Now, you have to understand, blog, I have been a bit of an emotional wreck lately. My anxiety is out of control, I hadn't been sleeping well, and I am just generally lonely. Hopefully this will explain what happened next. I crouched down to tip the mouse out of the bag into the FREEZING cold wild (I am serious. It was below freezing Saturday night) and the mouse just sat there, shaking and staring at me. I immediately picked hir up, clutched hir to my chest and started BAWLING and telling my mom I couldn't put it out, that it'd die and could I PLEASE OH PLEASE KEEP IT?! PLEEEEEEEEASE?!

Yeah. It was bad. She relented and told me I could keep the baby mouse (SQUEEEEEE!) and we called Samantha to have her come home to help me find an aquarium/terrarium for hir to live in. While waiting, the mouse and I sat in the aforementioned family room, me whispering comforting thoughts to the poor shaking thing. It was at this point that I heard a scratching noise across the room and see that both Jude and Lucy are stalking a brown paper sack in the vicinity. I walk over, baby mouse in tow, open the sack and see that it is full of toys. And another baby mouse. I know, it was intense!

Once Samantha arrived, she punched holes in an old ice cream tub. We lined it with paper, lettuce, tortilla chips, and peanut butter. I took an old medicine cup and cut the BULK of the top off to make a shallow dish for water. I set the first mouse in the new, but temporary home, while Samantha attempted to catch the other baby mouse who was trying to JUMP out of the brown paper sack. I grabbed the feisty mouse and placed hir in the tub with hir sibling.

They thoroughly enjoyed the peanut butter! Shortly thereafter, my mom noticed that Cooter had something in her mouth. Upon inspection, I discovered that she had captured and killed ANOTHER baby mouse. She was carrying hir around in her mouth and showing off to Lucy and Jude.

I couldn't be mad at her because I love her too much! Anyway, it was at about this point that I realized I was being irrational and that keeping the mice would be out of the question. I decided to harbor them until the morning at which point it would be MUCH warmer and I would be able to release them in the field next to our house GUILT FREE. While sitting in the family room that started this whole debacle discussing my intentions with my mother, I heard a scratching sound in a chest of drawers that all three cats had taken post around. We went through all of the drawers and in the top drawer, once full of the seeds for my mom's garden, we found another damn baby mouse! We pulled the drawer out and when I tried to catch hir to add to the tub of mice, the wily thing jumped out of my hands and ran across the room where s/he probably still is as we speak.

I released the two I kept in the tub the following morning and felt like I had done a great deed. Samantha informed me I was a monster and condemning them to death. HA. WHO IS IRRATIONAL NOW, LITTLE SISTER?!