And so it begins. Again.

Our lease is up at the end of February. We determined long ago that we need more space. But in addition to space, WE NEED A VERMIN FREE HOME. Yes, it's been 3-4 months now since we trapped our last mouse and I've enjoyed not having to see them dead or dying on a glue trap - the body count reached 9 from August to September - but still, I can sense them. I can even hear them from the living room when it's quiet at night rattling about in the poison under the stove. I live with the creeping feeling that I will be encountering one every time I'm the first one down the stairs to grab Leila's milk in the morning. Thankfully, as Cesar leaves so early during the week, I'm usually only first to the kitchen on the weekend, but still, I turn on every light downstairs and try to make my approach heard so that any critter that may be lurking about can scamper out of sight. It is not a fun way to exist.


I was having a bit of sixth sense that I'd face an unwelcome house guest Friday night. I was sitting on the living room floor watching Cars with Leila and I looked down to see what looked like a dropping. I said ew, Leila, don't touch that, I think it's mouse poop - she looked at it and said, I think it's a rock - I went to get a tissue and picked it up and indeed it was a pebble, so score for Leila, but I had found a true dropping a week or so before...and incidentally, the phantom "Mr. Mouse" is Leila's "notme" - any query of who spilled a bowl of Parmesan cheese on Mommy's carpet, or who took all the pictures off the refrigerator, or who spread three packs of cards out across the floor... receives an "um, I think it was Mr. Mouse."


Anyway...cut to the chase. I stagger downstairs at 7:30 yesterday morning in PJs and glasses, barely round the corner to the kitchen and see the horrific sight of a glue trap in the middle of the kitchen floor bouncing about as a little brown mouse struggles to free itself. It took me a second or two to process, but I only froze briefly in my tracks before running up the stairs to wake Cesar to deal with it. I explained the delay in retrieving milk to Leila and cowered in her room with her while he extracted the poor beastie. She didn't seem troubled in the least as she told me "I like mice. I think they're beautiful." "Yes sweetie, but only when they are outside." "Yeah, not when they're in the house, only when they are outside...." Ugh! With this cycle starting again, I'm not only on a desperate quest to find suitable housing and break our lease, but also exploring whether I'm owed damages from our property manager for post-traumatic stress!!

Oh, and I squashed two bugs in the house this weekend that looked suspiciously like stink bugs. I didn't get a whiff of anything rank, but that could have just been because my trusty swiffer/bug squasher stunned them so quickly. Get me out of here!!!