RIP, number 8

After a week with no sightings, another mouse met his match in our garage. As soon as it's available, I'll be planting peppermint around our garage to hopefully ward off his friends. But there wasn't any at the Home Depot. No, I have not gone to the nurseries to find some. I'm not even sure where there are nurseries. Nurseries are places that will make me want a house so I can grow all the terribly delicate hothouse plants that I could never grow in Colorado, like angel's trumpet*, plumeria, and French Lace roses. I'll find some eventually because I'd like to have more pots in containers (although I'm doing a pretty crappy job of keeping the ones I have alive).

A seems over his cold now, which is good. We had had a couple nights of really delicious sleep, but last night was awful and I am tired today. A's had one nap so far this morning and more are coming. I'm going to see if we can get a trip to the zoo in this week.

* It's fascinating what you learn when looking for a link. I found a couple warnings not to plant it saying, "My friend made tea out of this and died." Since I'm not Julie, I can honestly say I've never had the compulsion to eat something I grew that wasn't an herb or a veggie (or that I ran across outside somewhere). I would never make any of my ornamentals into tea, for example, even the lavender and roses. Anyway, angel's trumpet is apparently hallucinogenic and some dumb-asses who thought that would be fun have died ingesting angel's trumpet. So when I get some, don't be smoking it, you wild and crazy types.

More sleep. No more mice.

No more mice have appeared. This is a good thing.

We went to see the X-Files doctor today, and she said his cold was a cold. We'll just have to live with it, with breast milk and a cool mist humidifier. No worries unless he can't breathe (!) or spikes a fever. She gave us a prescription cream for his diaper rash (which gave me an excuse to be at Trader Joe's to buy gingersnaps). He's 18.5 pounds officially, for the weight watchers.

A and I start swim lessons Monday. It'll be seven weeks of excitement. I got A swim diapers (reusable) yesterday, and next I'll have to turn my attentions to my own bathing costume (oy vey--why did I buy a bag of gingersnaps today?).

Does an application of prescription diaper cream count if he pees on it immediately?

Latest mouse count: 7

But none in the last 24 hours, I think. No sign of them on shelves and whatnot.

My car's back and the cruise control still doesn't work.

A is sick (head cold probably picked up in Colorado) and I'm still waiting for the triage nurse to call back to tell me whether or not they need to see him. Since I'd like to get his swim things outfitted today, I'd really like them to call back soon so I can figure out the rest of my day.

And it's really hard to buy infant international airline tickets online.

Julie, you don't want to read this

Right now the mouse count stands at three, two in the house, one in the garage. We need to go out for more traps now. Bait of choice: cream cheese.

C got to bed past 1 and A woke us up every hour until 7, so he's home today with us on the logic that sleep deprivation equals bad code and definitely bad driving.

The cable guy came out and offered two horrible solutions, neither of which will meet HOA standards. It's a dickens of a day here.

Wonder of wonders

I woke up not half an hour ago (still fully dressed), changed the yelling little baby with the wet pants and laid him down in the crib, then went in search of my husband. He was still cleaning post-mouse-calypto. Shelves were bleached, items on shelves were bleached, and he'd taken out three bags of trash of expired/questionable foods. But he said with a wicked, sleep-deprived and slap-happy grin, "I caught one of the f*ckers."

Happily, not with his bare foot. He set a trap in the garage behind the freezer and there went Mr. Mouse. Cats were fascinated. Like I said before, they're lovers, not fighters.

This is not the most amazing part of our evening. C says to me, "Where's the boy?"
"In his crib."
"Is he sleeping?" We listen. Silence.
"Must be."
"Did you swaddle him?"
"No." Beat. "Let me go see if he's alive." Yup, sure enough, A's rolled over on his tummy and gone to sleep his sweet self. Makes you want to sing some Fiddler.

There are weekends that are super and there are weekends that seem to take a death spiral. This one seems to be the death spiral variety. But I have good reasons!

• My car's cruise control didn't work after the mechanic replaced the turn signal/hazard lights button assembly, and it's still not working. So that has to go back Tuesday for a replacement piece. The mechanic tried to tell me that it was just an old car, and I said, "Well, it was an old car with a cruise control that worked before you replaced the turn signal assembly, so..."
  
• We went to the Baby Hellhole twice to look at high chairs, eating equipment, Earth's Best baby food, and convertible car seats. We ended up getting a high chair eventually. Target didn't carry the high chair we wanted, fine. I don't think we're looking forward to A having solid food. Actually, we're not looking forward to stinky poop. He's not starting solids until he's at least six months due to allergies, but we thought he would enjoy sitting in a high chair at mealtime with us.
• Yesterday I got myself two treats at Bread and Cie, but discovered the woman had given me not an almond croissant but a bear claw. The bear claws have coconut, which I'm not fond of. The something else I got was okay but not fabulous.
  
• I've got a new book on making your own baby food which is scaring me more than anything else. The woman has gory examples for everything bad you could consider happening to a baby, from eating drain cleaner to scalding a kid with hot beverages. It's not the uplifting read I expected it to be. I finished it and am trying to decide if I want to use her recipes as my main source or if I want another book instead.
  
• This morning we had to be up and at 'em by 8AM for the cable guy who is going to re-wire our dish to make the HOA happy. I'd been up since 5:30, unable to sleep after A's last feeding. Cable guy looked at what we wanted him to do and said he'd have to get his supervisor out to look at it. That can't happen until tomorrow morning, of course.
• Mistah C then went to Bread and Cie again after the cable guy was here this morning to get me an almond croissant, then had to return once he was there and realized he didn't have his wallet. So that was a long time on the weekend with just me and A alone. It was an awfully good croissant, though.
• Mistah C spent dinner prep time on the phone, which put me into dinner-prep mode. The kitchen was covered in dirty dishes (it doesn't take much with our kitchen) but all of that needed to be cleaned up before I started prepping raw chicken so everything wasn't covered in chicken bits. So dinner was pushed out until late (even for us).
  
• Then I discovered mouse droppings all over the pantry shelves and that was it for my patience for this weekend. We are going to get the landlord to call in an exterminator now, although that should be fun with cats and baby and me around.
  

C's cleaning up the mouse droppings. A is sleeping. I am reading Under the Tuscan Sun until I feel better. Oh, and this week, we may be setting up swim lessons for A.

Action! Adventure! Girly screaming!

That's right, folks. I had myself a full-on girlie panic attack here in the household today. It's Niles' fault.

I was on the phone with Julie. While I was on the phone, I noticed my sweet white kitten paying particular attention to the right side of the refrigerator. I even went to find a flashlight to see if I saw anything unusual. I don't. Niles is rapt.

A's still sleeping when I get off the phone. I am about to sit on the couch to fold the last of Master A's laundry when Niles skulks through with a mouse in his mouth. I shriek. I yell. I don't even know what I yelled because I left my brain for a minute to yell and yell. My throat is still sore from all the yelling. (A slept right through, btw.)

Niles runs to the stairs and drops the mouse. It runs away. He catches it and looks at me with the mouse in his mouth. The mouse is wriggling. Niles is running with the guilty "I've got something good" skulk that means he's trying to get somewhere inaccessible to me as quickly as possible.

Now, it has always been a topic of postulation around these parts since our cats are unusual and ill-bred for life alone in the cruel world (not that any cat should be, but our cats are particularly ill-equipped with the pretty but unsubstantial coats), what would happen if one of them got a mouse. When I grew up, we had cats who would bring home stunned mice to train their kittens to hunt. We would inevitably find half-chewed mice later. I don't think Niles' mother taught him to hunt. This is what Niles does with a mouse: bats at the mouse, picks it up with his mouth, then puts it down again so he can run after it again.

But, back to me and my screaming. I run and get a bowl because I figure I'm going to have to catch the mouse. A bowl seems like a fine idea to me since I can slam it over the mouse and then figure out what to do. Niles takes the mouse up the stairs. He drops it a couple steps from the top and the time it takes him to pick up the mouse again gives me enough time to overtake Niles.

Now we are in the hallway at the top of the stairs. Niles has the mouse in his mouth. I think, I wonder if the mouse is still alive and the mouse blinks at me. Blinks. (I was almost tempted to use bold there, but I didn't.) Then it wriggles around and nips Niles. Niles lets go of the mouse and it runs into the corner. I'm trying to figure out how to clamp the bowl on the mouse when the mouse makes a break for it and runs the other way. Niles picks the mouse up and runs into my office with it.

My office has the activity gym for the darling baby (still strapped into his bouncy chair and sound asleep). Niles comes within a foot of the activity gym and drops the mouse. The desire to protect A's plaything is greater than my desire to trap the mouse so I flip the gym up on the futon and lose sight of the mouse.

The mouse is gone, somewhere in my office. So now I panic for real. I can't find the mouse; the baby's downstairs and I don't know if I have to take the cat to the vet. I don't know if we all need vaccines for hantavirus. I am seriously freaking out.

I call my husband and have a dickens of a time trying to even communicate that I have actually seen a mouse at close quarters. I'm incoherent enough that he takes his lunch to come home and mouse hunt with me (and talk me down). I close the office door and stuff a towel under it.

Then I call Julie back to ask for a vet's name so I can take my poor Niles in for a checkup since he's been nipped. I look carefully at Niles at this point (who is skulking by the fridge hoping for another mouse to play with) and don't see any blood but I'm still pretty panicked. Then I call the vet, whose receptionist is sure I should take my pet to the emergency room until I tell her there's no blood. Well, no blood, probably fine, don't worry about it. I make an appointment for a checkup for both cats with the vet for next week to assauge my bad-pet-guardian guilt. I put a piece of cheese in the bowl and put it in the center of the room as mouse bait. I think about rigging a Survivorman-esque stick and rock mouse trap but I have no stick.

C comes in the door just as A is waking up. He goes looking for the mouse to no avail. Every closet and room in the house is between the mouse and freedom. So he looks for the mouse point of entry and discovers none where there were before, so the mouse must have come in the garage door. Niles eats the cheese in my mouse bowl/trap.

We're about to head out for real mousetraps, so I go upstairs to get my money and find Niles investigating the towel in the doorway. I look at the towel and there's Mr. Mouse. I start yelling for C. I sound like Basil Fawlty in the fire drill episode. (Mouse! Mouse there!) He looks at me and says, "Where should I put it?" I dump out a plastic lidded container on our bed and bring it to him. He dumps the towel in and slams the lid, trapping the mouse. My hero!

We take the mouse outside to the woods and set him free. C called me later to say that we'd done a proper Sopranos warning: had our cat rough up the mouse, then let him go so he could tell his friends not to mess with us.

Now I'm tired and plenty embarrassed about behaving like a girl. But we don't have a mouse in the house so it's okay.