Hi, everyone. I had a spectacularly terrible week, kind of, and I cried a lot and felt really angry and I don't really want to write about that here at the moment, so I'm going to write about some other things instead because it still feels like a good night to write something.
We are supposed to be in the midst of a spectacular wind storm here in the Pacific Northwest. To be fair, lots of areas are; we just left West Seattle, where we ventured this afternoon to do a little kite-flying on Alki Beach (Matt and Isaac) and cozy beverage-sipping and reading (Mom and Suzannah). By the time we'd had dinner, wandered around inside Easy Street Records, and had dessert, we ducked through some pretty impressive sideways rain on the way to our car. But our neighborhood is relatively quiet, if wet.
I'm mostly grateful, because every time we have a terrific storm I'm a little afraid that the enormous tree in our front yard will topple over and crush our house. Matt reminds me that our tree has been firmly rooted in our yard for decades longer than we've walked the planet and it has survived a storm or two. Also, during the truly spectacular wind storm of 2006, we lost power for several days. We had a baby and a freezer full of breast milk. The baby fared much better than the milk, which I had to pour down the drain. I cried bitter tears, and when I revisit that moment, I'm still not okay. (In 2010 we lost power for about an hour during a snow storm. I had another freezer full of milk for Isaac by then, and I distinctly remember telling Matt that either we make sure to get that liquid gold on ice or someone would damn well have to start drinking it.)
I do love a good storm, though. Two years ago Matt and I had a beautiful overnight at the ocean on our anniversary, and a December storm at the coast is a fabulous thing to witness when one can duck inside a cozy little cabin with a book and a good drink and company that loves the same thing. I don't think we're going to witness anything like that tonight. However, we did get to see the weather turn from eerily still to impressively gusty in a couple of hours, and tonight our kids are in jammies early and watching a movie, and I'm sipping wine and writing this and enjoying the fact that I made sure every last bit of laundry was done in case we do lose power for days, which looks unlikely at the moment.
I did have Matt stop and buy ice on the way home, though, just in case. And we may or may not have exchanged words on how "necessary" that might have been, and I may or may not have said fine, let's not even worry, and I hope the power does go out and we have to throw away all our food, so there, and then because I am a totally rational person I said that if the power does NOT go out and he says something smug about that then I might just throw away all our food anyway SO THERE. (There's a reason I have a pair of socks with the words "Dealing with me must be fun" on them.)
Speaking of Matt, two weeks ago this happened: he pulled me into the hallway and said in a low voice, "I have something to tell you. I've been putting it off, because I didn't want you to freak out."
During the time it took him to finish speaking those two sentences, I was absolutely certain he was going to tell me that he was leaving me, that he had lost his job, that he had cancer, that I had cancer, that all of our parents were dying, that somehow all of our money was gone, that he had discovered some very expensive structural issue with our house that would require us to tear it down, and/or that we had to move.
What he said was, "I'm not totally sure but I think I saw a mouse run into the laundry room this morning."
I wanted to laugh, because after all of those other things that blazed through my obviously unhealthy brain in two seconds, it was a huge relief. The relief was short-lived, though, once I realized that we actually would have to tear down our house. I am not exactly afraid of mice, but I also don't think I am emotionally capable of handling a mouse infestation at this particular moment in time.
I said as much. I think Matt made some sort of attempt to soothe me. I started googling (which is always, always a terrible idea) and determined that our house was obviously full of mice, and they'd found a hole in the dryer vent and it was just all over. I announced that they can fit through a hole the size of a pencil eraser and so there was just no way we could even fight it.
My dad, who had a workshop in Seattle and was staying with us for the weekend, said, "Oh, for Pete's sake. Have you seen any droppings? You don't have a mouse infestation."
(I was already flinging cereal boxes out of the cupboards and Cloroxing my cabinets, which were devoid of mouse droppings, but that was beside the point.)
Now, my parents come from farming folks, and they know how to deal with a mouse without getting all hysterical about it. My dad remained maddeningly calm while he said, "Here's what you do. You buy this particular kind of trap. They sell it at WalMart; we'll pick up a couple on our way home from dinner. You'll set two, with a bit of peanut butter. And if there is even a mouse in your laundry room, this will get him by tomorrow morning."
Matt listened to my dad and bought the traps.
I sent hysterical texts all over the place.
To Becca, I wrote "MATT IS PRETTY SURE HE SAW A FUCKING MOUSE RUN INTO OUR LAUNDRY ROOM. We can't find it. Probably we have to move."
To Kyanne: "I THINK THERE IS A MOUSE IN OUR LAUNDRY ROOM. My dad is being calm. I said to we had to tear down and rebuild, and that's 'silly.' I randomly bleached some cupboards."
She wondered why I thought there was a mouse. I replied, "Because Matt is pretty sure he saw it. Like the actual mouse. Pretty compelling." Later that night we all went to the Old Spaghetti Factory after Suzannah's soccer game, and since the wait was forty-five minutes Matt took the kids for a walk and my dad and I sat in the bar. My text to Kyanne: "Fyi I am drinking my first gin and tonic in six weeks in front of my dad because MOUSE."
It gets better, of course, because the lingering cough I thought was merely the remnant of my cold led me to google hantavirus, which then led to googling "Mortality rates of hantavirus," which led to me texting my mother with the unfortunate news that what I thought was a cold was in fact something far more sinister, and her response led me to believe that she was not taking me seriously. Figuring I had about a 50/50 chance and nobody even cared, I stormed off to bed, where of course I did not sleep. Early the next morning I crept out of bed and went to check the traps. The one we'd set next to the kitchen garbage can was empty. The one in the laundry room was not.
I ran back to Suzannah's room; she was already awake and reading in her room (of course).
"Suzannah!" I cried. "The mousetrap worked!"
"Yes," she said. "I already know that." She didn't even look up from her book.
My dad was up as well. "I saw it," he said, "but I didn't throw it out because I wanted to make sure you saw it. If I'd told you the trap had worked but you didn't actually see the mouse yourself, you'd accuse me of making it up just to stop you from freaking out." Turns out my dad knows me pretty well.
After examining the mouse a bit more closely, I decided it was too fat to be just a regular mouse and was, in fact, a mouse full of babies, which led to more googling, which led to me loudly announcing that mice can get pregnant every single month and they mature in a few weeks, and that had better be the only mouse, but I was going to make sure. So Matt moved everything out of the laundry room (Everything! And he had to move the washer and dryer out from the wall so I could really get back there, too) so I could inspect and scrub every corner. I feel like I keep a pretty clean house, but that laundry room hasn't been so thoroughly scoured in years.
No one else seemed flustered. My dad said he thought it probably just darted in the back door when it was left open for too long, and that I probably didn't have to worry about hordes of mice filling our laundry room via the dryer vent. He recommended leaving the two traps set for a couple of days, and if nothing showed up, I could relax.
We haven't seen any mice since then, and I haven't found any droppings. But this morning my son pulled out his art supplies, sat at the dining room table, drew and colored a picture of a mouse (really a pretty good one), cut it out, and poked it through the bathroom door when I was in there this morning.
"Hey," I said (because for crying out loud, I haven't been to the bathroom by myself in a decade). I heard his gleeful little chuckle as he ran away, calling, "Daddy! I know how to scare Mommy!"
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