Area Woman Demands Medal For Heroic Rescue of Disgusting Thing She Totally Hates

Jason Storch, Mouse Trapper M.D., caught himself another one this morning. He was quite proud of himself. The dog and the cat, on the other hand, were all nonchalantly hanging around the trap, waiting for me to put their kibble down, COMPLETELY UNFAZED by the live mouse SITTING RIGHT THERE in a clear plastic box, and did not seem to be all ashamed of themselves and their utter uselessness. 

Also! This: 

 
Is EVEN MORE BULLSHIT.

That's a dishtowel covering up today's Gladware-encased rodent offering, on the front seat of my car, as the whole "release" bit of Jason's catch-and-release plan fell to me this time. ME! 

Technically, Jason offered to take care of the mouse...later. Like, "I have to go somewhere around 4 p.m. so I'll do it then" later. I pointed out that while it's fine and great that he's so determined to trap the mice humanely and all, there's something about keeping the things trapped in cheap plastic containers all day --wallowing in piss and shit and probably terrified out of their feeble stupid tiny poop-pellet-sized disgusting brains -- that strikes me as kind of cruel. 

(Also cruel: My suspicion that he likes keeping the mice around because he thinks the look on my face and the involuntary creeped-out shoulder-spasms I get each and every time I walk into the kitchen and see the container on the counter are really funny.)

And so that's why I -- the sole non-lunatic in a household of males that have all been completely brainwashed by the Disney animation establishment -- ended up taking responsibility for freeing the awful creature in a field near Noah's school. 

(The whole drive there, Noah kept trying to understand WHY I don't like mice, mostly by asking me if I liked mice or not over and over and over again, trying to wear me down and get me to say that I did. And wear me down he did, because I finally gave up and told him that yes, I like mice just fine when they are OUTSIDE, but that I don't like mice in my HOUSE. Or CAR. Or FOOD STORAGE CONTAINERS.)

(This half-truth is still probably better than the colossal outright lie we tell him about "sending the mouse back to his family" when we talk about setting them free, because I know full well that the mouse's family [and likely a litter of blind naked mole-rat dependents] are totally back at our house, inside of our wall.)

So after dropping Noah off at his classroom I snuck over to the edge of the parking lot with my dishrag-covered offering and set the mouse free. I watched it sit there for awhile before bounding (BOUNDING, HE HONESTLY BOUNDED, IT WAS GROSS YET ADORABLE) over to a tree to clean itself off. 

 

Freedom! Terrible, blinding freedom!
 
I drove off and then found myself worrying about the mouse -- God, maybe I should've walked over to those bushes so it wouldn't be left so far out in the open? Or over there, where it wouldn't be so close to the street? Quick, scan the sky for hawks! Should I go back and try to like, corral it someplace else? 

The mental image of myself, running (OR BOUNDING) through a field by the side of the road, trying to ensure the relative safety of a MOUSE, possibly while banging the lid and bowl of a thoroughly befouled Gladware container together, snapped me right back to curmudgeonly reality, which was: That thing should count its goddamn blessings already. 

 

FUCK YOU, MICKEY. GOOD LUCK NOT BEING EATEN.
 

AND THEN!

My weekend got EVEN BETTER, if you can believe it. 

After staggering downstairs in search of coffee on Saturday morning, I was greeted by the usual sight of Jason making pancakes for the boys. 

Oh, and this, sitting on our kitchen counter:

BELIEVE IT.

I took one look at that tiny pointy seizing rodent poop monster -- on my COUNTER, in my GLADWARE, which once held CHRISTMAS COOKIES -- and turned around and marched right back out.

Noah climbed down from his stool -- and his breakfast, which was also on the COUNTER, just INCHES away the scratchy disease-ridden furball -- and chased after me, imploring me to come look! Come look, Mommy! He's our FRIEND, Mommy! Don't worry, Mommy, it's just a little mouse, and he's a friendly mouse, Mommy. 

He took my hand and pulled me back into the kitchen, where Jason was practically on the floor laughing at Noah's earnest reassurances (the very same patch of floor where this very same blinky jumpy dwarf rat thing had been brazenly skittering around at all hours of the night for weeks, BY THE WAY).

I indulged Noah and looked directly into the big bulging eyes of the furry helldemon and said yes, he seemed like a very nice mouse.

"His name is Any," Noah said. "I love him."

I glared at Jason and asked him what kind of trap had finally caught the vile bald-footed sewer-dweller and he showed me a collection of humane traps he'd picked up at the hardware store. "I've had to put new bait in them a couple times because he kept going in there and then getting back out. Last night he finally got stuck." 

He added, "He REALLY likes peanut butter."

I poured a cup of coffee and eyeballed the pocket-sized ball of plague, who was up on its hind legs, trying to nibble on the airholes Jason had punched in the lid. The container already had a unbelievable amount of mouse shit in the bottom.

The plan was to drive out to the deep 'burbs that day to take the boys to a splash park, and release the skittering itchy shifty-eyed beastrat in the fields nearby. It took us a bit longer to get ready than we thought, and when I went back into the kitchen to pack up some water and snacks, I noticed it was sitting completely still, curled up in the corner.

"OH SHIT," I thought, and poked the container. It jumped up in a panic and started racing around so hard the container moved and I did an involuntary girlscream and jumped back about four feet. It stared at me through the festive red plastic lid. I stared back. 

I noticed it had eaten all the dog food Jason had so kindly provided for it a few hours earlier. 

I went to the pantry and pulled out a box of Cheerios, and God help me, I peeled back the Gladware lid and quickly tossed a couple bites of cereal inside. I debated putting a little water in the container too but thought that might just scare it more than anything. It stared at me some more.

"I still DON'T LIKE YOU," I hissed at it. "Just so we understand each other."

I think maybe it nodded. Or else it was just the beginning stages of some rodent-bourne palsy that will one day wipe out humanity. Either way, I think it got my point.

***

We drove a good 20 miles away and released Any the Mouse in a park, near a dumpster by a soccer field. The Gladware went directly into the dumpster. Now let us never speak of this again. 

Building a Better Root-Vegetable-Based Mouse Trap

So about the mouse.

It continues to elude Max's completely uninterested clutches, and Max continues to not give a flying fuck. 

Last night Jason and I heard something crunching on kibble in the kitchen, along with a metallic clang -- like one of the pets pushed the food and water bowls together while eating. 

Except that -- you guessed it -- both of the pets were sitting on the couch, with us. Jason jumped up and cautiously peeked around the doorway, but the intruder was already gone. I proceeded to have a full-body attack of the itching creepy crawlies while Jason checked the humane traps (I KNOW, OKAY) that he'd placed behind the stove at the assumed point of entry.

The good news is that a mouse had gone into the trap. At one point or another. The bad news is that he'd clearly had no trouble CHEWING HIS WAY OUT.

"So, that's that." I said. "We'll get some nice toxic traps that break their backs or fry their brains or something, right?"

He mumbled something while opening cabinets and pulling out casserole dishes or whatever and I went back to the living room. 

Turns out? Jason had a plan.

Behold. This was his plan:

For those of you who have no idea what you're looking at (which I imagine is EVERYBODY), you are looking at the cat food dish, hidden under a mixing bowl that has been propped up with a wine cork and weighted down with a sweet potato.

I'm just...gonna sit here for a minute and let you re-read that last sentence a couple more times.

I swear. I SWEAR TO GOD. This actually fucking happened.  

After laughing my fool head off and taking some pictures, I opted to go to bed. I mean, the evening could ONLY go downhill at this point, right?

At 4:30 in the morning, we heard -- OH YES WE DID -- yet another metallic clang. A more...forceful sounding one.

I poked my husband. "Did you hear that?"

He had. I poked him again. It was a congratulatory, high-five kind of poke. 

At first he said he'd deal with it in the morning, but I worried that perhaps the whole SWEET POTATO thing was maybe not entirely fail-safe, like what if the potato rolled off the bowl and the mouse can like, MOVE the bowl around like a little hamster-wheel and we go down there tomorrow morning and can't find it? 

(4:30 in the morning, you guys. And I'm fretting over the mental image of a POSSESSED MIXING BOWL skittering all over my house.)

Jason got up and went downstairs to check his trap. He returned a few minutes later.

"It wasn't the mouse," he reported. "It was Max. He was just sitting there, staring at the bowl, like, what the hell?" 

"I'm sorry," I said. "That would have been pretty awesome if it worked."

"Yeah."

"But seriously, you've got to let me nuke the bastards next, okay?"

"Okay."

 

(Sweet Potato Helmet Army Man Says Hold Your Ground! Fire When Ready!) 
 

Dear Cat

We need to talk.

 
Oh, don't look at me like that. You know. YOU KNOW EXACTLY.

Look. Cat. You've been a fine cat. For almost...wow...12 years now, you've been a very fine cat. Very affectionate and cozy and face-nuzzly and such. And I can't tell you how happy I am that you remain so healthy and spry and feisty after almost 12 whole years. 

Like the other night? When you were rolling around on the bed being all adorable and I decided to record a little movie of your adorableness but the dog felt all left out and whimper-y on the floor so I picked her up and put her on the bed and you were immediately all OH HELLLLLZ NO BITCH THIS BED AND TUMMY RUBBIN IS MINE and proceeded to lunge at her head like a cheetah in a nature documentary? 

Exhibit A:

Yeah, that. While not the adorable pet video I originally had in mind, I was still pleased to see you can still get all aggressive and feline-like, when you feel like it. 

Which brings me to my point: If you're still obviously so up for a good tussle, why the fuck do we have a MOUSE, a mouse in our KITCHEN, a mouse that comes OUT OF THE CABINET at night and sits NEXT TO YOUR BOWL and EATS YOUR FOOD and OH MY GOD, it's a goddamned RODENT.

(IN OUR HOUSE!)

Look, Cat. This isn't even the first mouse. We had one last year. Something I discovered when I pulled a baking sheet out the drawer under our stove and oh look, MOUSE TURDS. Do you remember that? You were at least vaguely helpful that time, what with all the INTENSE STARING you did that signaled to us that one of the sticky traps we set out had captured the mouse, the mouse that my husband (YOUR FATHER!) then refused to kill and kept trying to get me to LOOK AT IT and then he spent 20 minutes carefully removing the stupid thing from the trap before putting it in MY GOOD TUPPERWARE and being all, "Noah! Look! It's Ratatouille! Let's go get in the car and set him free somewhere so he can go back to his family!" 

And then we got in the car and he asked me to hold the container in my LAP and I yelled at him to put that thing in the TRUNK because NO, I wanted NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS. And then we drove to a goddamned field and he set the goddamned thing free and you know, I bet this is the same goddamned mouse, not that I'm going to check its little foot pads for signs of past sticky-trap trauma or anything. 

Look, Cat. I gave you a pass last year because I thought the mouse was staying in non-cat-accessible places in the house. But now it has been brought to my attention that the mouse has been spotted OUT AND ABOUT, AT NIGHT. (Spotted by my husband [YOUR FATHER!], who again, did not respond to the sighting by like, throwing a fucking shoe at the thing or doing anything USEFUL, but instead just came upstairs and woke me up and was all, "HEY. GUESS WHAT I JUST SAW.")

Seriously. The thing comes out and eats your food. From your bowl. A bowl that we have since moved the fuck off the floor, and I can tell that pisses you right off from all the plaintive yowling you do every morning because meoooooooooowwwww I'm too old and lazy to jump up on a chaaaaaaair to get my fooooooood meeeeeeeooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwww halp meeeeee somebodeeeeeeee rooowwwlllll.

You know what, Cat? Tough freaking love. Do your job and get rid of the mouse and you can have your stupid bowl back on the stupid floor. What? I sound angry? I am. Almost 12 years, Cat. That's how long I've been feeding you and paying for shots and letting you sleep in my armpit and I didn't even TELL the Internet what you did to us while we were in Jamaica, going on a three-day hunger strike at the fancy expensive Pet Hotel, causing us and our emergency contact much stress and panic while we tried to find a pet sitter to go get you on goddamned SKYPE because we didn't even have a PHONE down there and then you were FINE and were just being a DIVA and after all of that, you're telling me you won't even TRY to kill ONE LITTLE MOUSE that is, for the record, EATING YOUR FOOD? 

You're kind of a disgrace, Cat. 12 years of face scritches and unlimited catnip have made you soft. I'm guessing there's not much to be done about that at this point. Except maybe this:

 
Love,

Person With Opposable Thumbs Who Knows Where The Treats Are Kept, Bizzitch

It's Like a Toy Store That My Children Haven't Visited Yet

I'm not sure there's anything more futile than spending significant chunks of time, energy and money on organizing a room that is guaranteed to get thoroughly trashed again in a matter of hours*, but damn, it's satisfying.

*Minutes if they've had frosting.

 

Satisfying in the fleeting way that Snickers bars and McDonald's fries are satisfying, but still. 

 

Jason was impressed with my preschooler art-project gallery, having been unaware that I'd gone out and bought special hangers for everything. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd been struck with the idea randomly at 11:30 pm and just grabbed the nearest box of thumbtacks.

 

Whatever. Thumbtacks were good enough for my New Kids on the Block posters once upon a time, I THINK they're good enough for a fleet of two-wheeled rescue vehicles that I Am Very Sure My Child Had Very Little To Do With.

 

(Though I think I hung at least one of these pictures of our house and the Jamaica house upside down, so perhaps some tape would have been a wiser choice. I get points for the airplane right? That you can make go back and forth? I thought of that all by myself. I should totes open a gallery. Or get a cookie.)

 
I'm sorry to report that the Isle of Sodor did not fare too well during the room overhaul.

 

The monorail supports were repo'd, a victim of stalled neighborhood gentrification.

 

Plus a bunch of fucking hippies moved in, with shit like wind turbines and solar panels and potable water containers, but it turned out that all they were really growing on the "living roof" was pot.  

 

"We shall rebuild!" pledges Thomas. "We have a helicopter and cranes and tank engines. Plus a will to succeed and plenty of short-length curved track and female-to-female connector bits."

 

"What we don't have," he added, "is opposable thumbs. That's really our biggest obstacle." 

He continued: "Shit."

(Kind of not relatedly, it's WTF Tuesday at MamaPop Sparkle Motion. As in, WTF Were They Thinking, or, or WTF Is With Amy &The Train Set Thing, Seriously, I Don't Quite Get These Entries & Wonder If I Missed Something.)

The Frantic "Wait! Don't Go! I Have Thoughts!" Friday Round-Up

I had a photo essay planned for today, but my memory card reader decided to eat all the photos. NOM. POOF. Gone. No photos and no photo essay.

So now I'm facing the White Space Of Creative Terror with less than 20 minutes before I have to go pick up Noah from school. What should I talk about? AHMAHGAD.

I could talk about our roof, which you may remember started leaking in the wake of Snoverkill 2010: The Reckoning: Inconvenience Unleashed: the insurance guy came by yesterday to assess the damage.

Good news! There's only $650 in damage.
Bad news! Your deductible is $1,000. So. Good luck with your repairs.

Good news! Your roof wasn't damaged by the snow or ice.
Bad news! Your roof IS damaged, thanks to a certain snow removal guy who decided to get up there with a GODDAMN HAMMER. So. Good luck with THAT.

The insurance guy was really nice, so I felt bad for being a little "goddamn...I'll...hammer...fucking...getonyourroof seehowyoulikeit" at the end of his visit. Then Noah asked him if he was the Cowardly Lion. That was probably a little more awkward.

I could talk about Ezra and all the funny stuff he does, classic mommyblog style, like "Oh! He goes to the front door and says 'BYE' when he wants to go somewhere! He loves school buses and paper towel tubes! When I ordered some Indian food the other night he ran to his high chair and shrieked like a deranged howler monkey because he somehow knew there was food in the bag and I don't know if that means he's smart or I eat too much Indian food."

We're also trying to work on that whole "hands are not for hitting" thing, which is going only sort of okay. We've at least redirected his pint-sized rage away from living things and aimed at inanimate objects. I remember Noah went through a similar phase, at around...18 months? I want to say, though it is entirely likely that I am making that up. (If only I had a blog to write these things down! Or at least the energy and patience to search through that blog's archives!) It's kind of strange that two children who are never hit or spend time around people who hit still manage to pick up smacking as a default reaction to injustice. Inherent violence and aggression in humankind? Eh. Whatever. I'll tell you this: watching a toddler bitchslap a wall that he's just bumped into is HILARIOUS.

(INTERLUDE OF OH SHIT, I HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO GET TO THE SCHOOL THAT'S 20 MINUTES AWAY OH FUCK)

I could talk about the drive home from preschool, when Noah heard Bob Dylan for the first time. I was digging around in our basement for something the other day -- a stapler, I think, the one I swiped from my old office -- and came across a box full of Dylan CDs. At one point I must have boxed them up separately to denote their very specialness to me, and then promptly forgot completely about them. I've been busy. Buying a lot of Glee MP3s. 

Anyway! I ripped a bunch of them and put them on the iPod, and today "Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts" came up, and Noah snapped to attention in the backseat and attempted to hum the harmonica and bounced his legs and just had this LOOK that he gets when he hears music that he really likes. 

I asked him what color the song was. "I don't know!" he exclaimed. "It doesn't have a color!"

I played a couple other Dylan songs and the verdict was the same: He didn't know what color they were. So...I have no idea what that means, from a music or synesthesia theory point of view, but there you go: Bob Dylan songs don't have colors, but Noah sure likes them anyway. 

(INTERLUDE OF SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION)

Big things a'going on at Mamapop this week: we launched SparkleMotion, a community blog/discussion/Tumblr/Twitter/repository of many awesome things...uh, THING. It's really fun. You can join and post whatever you want or check out the funny photos/videos/links that Mamapop writers and readers post, and my goodness, does that sentence have enough slashes? SparkleMotion: the original model/actress, bitches. 

Also at Mamapop Proper, we're hosting our annual Oscars open thread this Sunday. It is an EXCELLENT party, considering you don't have to leave your living room and can say all the bitchy things about peoples' clothing that earn you the stinkeye from your more enlightened significant other. It starts at 7 pm ET. 

Uh. I think that's all I have to talk about today. Hooray for posting at 4:50 pm on a Friday! Ten minutes until quittin' time. (Which around here actually means: 10 minutes until Sesame Street is over.)

Downhill

So. This happened. And was...awesome.

"This" is the result of all that snow and ice on our roof finally starting to melt. Into our house. I repeat: AWESOME.

I always thought a leaky roof would look like it did in cartoons -- random slow drips coming out of the ceiling, to be caught with strategically-placed buckets in the middle of the room. Ours is more like a lovely cascading waterfall effect pouring through the paint in the window frame, as the wall above puckers and swells, and suddenly it's like, HOORAY! The whole side of this room is all squishy. How fucking cozy.

I won't bore you with all the repair details, except to offer this nugget of advice: If you ever need to file a disaster claim with your homeowner's insurance, do yourself a favor and try not to time it after any kind of...I dunno...ACTUAL DISASTER. Particularly a disaster that happened to affect more than say, four other people.

(CALL ME BACK, STATE FARM. I AM RUNNING OUT OF FRESH TOWELS. ALSO: PATIENCE.)

Oh! Just one more bit of wisdom: If you are among the millions of unemployed who might be all, prostitution isn't sounding so bad anymore, you may be interested to hear just how much money I had to pay some guy to get up on my roof and remove the rest of the snow. Which he did this morning, with a snow shovel and a goddamned hammer. Do you yourself own a snow shovel and a goddamned hammer? Then consider a career in post-snowpocalyptic highway robbery today! (After he finished our roof a woman came running across the street in her bathrobe shrieking HOW MUCH HOW MUCH? He then quoted a price $100 more than what we paid, which was already $100 more than what we were quoted over the phone yesterday. It's a real growth industry!)

***

So enough about my stupid fucking roof. That is stupid. Let's talk about the Olympics.

I love the Olympics. I watch every blessed minute of the coverage, except for the Profiles In Olympic Courage fluff pieces, about how anyone can become an Olympic champion provided they dedicate themselves to a sport full-time by the age of four, along with other benefits like a shitload of money and a parent who JUST SO HAPPENS to be a two-time Olympic champion in the same sport WHAT ARE THE ODDS.

Yeah, those things. That's when I get up for more snacks.

But anyway, I've discovered I've got a bit of anxiety problem on behalf of the athletes. I'm not so worried about falls and crashes -- I don't like those, but you know, they happen and stuff. No, I am absolutely petrified that one of the following things will happen:

1. An athlete will neglect to put on their goggles, helmet or other safety gear before starting down a course.

It FLIPS. ME. OUT. to see them there, all poised and ready to go, with their goggles or face mask on top of their helmet. (And don't even get me started on the people who wait until the last minute to attach a dangling helmet chin strap put it on put it on PUT IT ON.) I am seriously a crazy bundle of nerves for them, twitching and writhing and itching at myself because oh my God, they must be thinking of a million other things, they're totally going to forget their goggles! I would totally forget my goggles! Oh Jesus, is there someone there reminding them? Because I would need someone there to remind me. I would probably hire a special full-time safety-equipment check person. I wonder if anyone would hire me to that? Because I would be good at that job. Hell, I would do it for free because PUT ON YOUR GOGGLES HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.

The minute the athlete successfully puts on their goggles or fastens their helmet, I am immediately calmed and no longer concerned about them in the slightest. Go ahead and wipe out on those moguls, baby. You're all good.

2. A skier or snowboarder won't be able to stop at the bottom of the course and will crash into the little boundary fence-thing.

Yes, because after demonstrating unparalleled skill on an amazingly difficult hill, an Olympic athlete is TOTALLY going to be all, "OH MY GOD, I FORGOT TO LEARN HOW TO STOP! HALP!" Yes, I am probably projecting my own terrible skiing experiences on them. One of which may or may not involve running over a seven-year-old. Who was standing still. Possibly inside the lodge. Whatever. You cannot prove a thing.

Bait, Switch

Every morning Noah sneaks into our bed. Well, he thinks he's sneaking, though of course we're usually awake by the time he's noisily swung open his bedroom door, padded into the bathroom and made a terrific racket with his stool and potty seat and cheerful morning greetings to the monkeys on the shower curtain, wandered down the hall while clutching his latest Lego creation, shedding and retrieving blocks along the way...but then he arrives at our bedside and holds his breath and caaaaarefully and quiiiiiiietly climbs and over us, jabbing us with elbows and knees while he caaaaaaaaaaaaaarefully and quiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiietly takes his place under the covers between us. "I love you too," he murmurs, even before we've said anything.

Jason gets up first while Noah and I stay in bed for as many extra minutes as I dare, nuzzling and snuggling until his feet are no longer icicles against my shins. I cannot think of a better way to start the day, although would it kill him to go downstairs and brew me some coffee first? I mean, really.

This morning was no different. He crept in and coaxed some big bear hugs from a still barely awake Daddy, then rolled over to my side once Jason got up. He was a bit extra talkative, saying something something about his friend? His friend liking a parrot? I assumed he was talking about his Lego people, who are all currently kept inside his recreation of the house from Up, complete with sails and windows and an appropriately damaged foundation that is SUPPOSED to be like that, did you not see the movie? God.

He sort-of half-laid on my head, so I could just see over his shoulder when I finally opened my eyes and squinted against the brightness...and the giant-ass stink bug sitting contentedly on his shoulder, about two inches from my eyeballs.

An unholy sound came from my throat, probably something like GAAAAAMAHGAWDHUUUUUUUHHHHHHH, while I attempted to both scream and gasp at the same time, frantically and half-blindly swinging at the vile thing several times before making contact...sending it ass-over-ass-like-head...directly onto my child's face. Years of practice with these bugs (DO. NOT. CRUSH.) saved poor Noah a instinctive face-slap, since I knew, even in my half-asleep haze, that it needed to be flushed intact lest we bring about yet another onslaught of dozens. Plus, the guts really, really smell.

Grabbing a tissue, though, was beyond my problem-solving capacity at this point, and I only succeeded in violently flicking the bug off his face and into the vast unknown. Probably behind the bed, to be hunted with the ShopVac later.

But right then, I could do little more than collapse back on my pillow while Noah wailed about the loss of his PARROT, WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PARROT. I buried my face and shuddered and announced that it was high time to get out of bed.

When I went into the bathroom I realized I had an amputated stink bug leg stuck to my face. 

Anyway! The end! That was my morning. I'm just sharing because I love you. Come give us a cuddle.

PS. Doctors Without Borders, American Red Cross, Hope For Haiti.

My Infestation, Let Me Show You It

A couple years ago, shortly before we moved from DC to the Stupid Suburbs, my recently-transplanted-from-California friend sent me a camera phone photo and a hysterical text message.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FUCK YOU EAST COAST

The picture was of the most hideous insect I had ever seen. Including the time I found a cockroach in my bathtub.

(Although cockroach encounters are almost like a bizarre form of street cred for City People. It reaffirms that yes, I am so hardcore in my desire to Walk To Things (translation: Starbucks) that I am perfectly okay with spending half a million dollars to live in a 800-square-foot hellhole.)

Anyway, this bug was ugly. It was obviously some kind of beetle but the kind of beetle that would eat ladybugs for lunch and then poop out some kind of flesh-eating disease. All over your face. While you slept.

I texted back.

HOLY FUCK KILL IT KILL IT I AM THROWING SHOES FROM HERE.

My phone was silent for a few minutes. And then.

FUCK IT CAN FLY IT CAN FLLLY FUCK

And a few minutes later, she called.

"Cilannnnntrooooo!" she wailed.

"WHAT?"

"Cilantro! I squashed it with Skip's shoe and now the whole room smells like rotten goddamn cilantro."

(Skip is her husband.)

We both got on our computers and started Googling "cilantro smelly rotten egg beetles" and quickly determined that it was a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. A nuisance bug accidentally introduced to our continent from China, like a plague of mass-produced lead-painted Thomas trains. And we learned that by squishing the sucker inside her house, my friend had essentially broadcasted to every other stink bug in the area that her house was a nice warm place to infest.

"That's stupid," she said. "That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Come to this house, bugs! They have shoes! It smells like death!"

Then she fell oddly silent, and asked if she and her son could come over for awhile.

"Amy," she whispered. "There are like, five more of them on the outside of the screen door. They're just...sitting there."

"Oh my God," I whispered back, for some reason. "Grab your keys and the baby and get out of there. Don't worry about anything else. We have diapers and blankets and you can borrow clothes if you need them. Just GET OUT OF THERE."

When she arrived, I immediately told her about the time I found a cockroach in the tub. To this day I will never understand why she moved back to California.

***

And now we live in the suburbs. And every fall it's the same disgusting thing. Stink bugs all over the outside of the house and window screens, waiting, plotting, inevitably finding their way inside. Mosquitoes, too. They sense their imminent wintery death and go completely berserk in September, biting you through seventeen coats of DEET, making every trip outside to drop wine bottles in the recycling bin an exercise in terror. This year, we have a nest of yellow jackets in the flower bed right outside our front door and Jason found a dried-out snakeskin near our dryer vent. And then there's the fucking CRICKETS. And then! Three days ago I noticed some other giant (HUGE) mysterious beetle-bug-thing on one of our windows, and as I have considerable problem-solving skills, I simply closed the window to trap it, because it just looked entirely too substantial to crush with a tissue. As of right now, the thing is STILL NOT DEAD YET.

It's all so gross, this stupid nature.

This year seems like the worst one yet, though. Almost Hitchcockian. The stink bugs just all simultaneously APPEARED yesterday. I noticed one on the crown molding in the living room...right as I heard the telltale buzzing of another one taking flight behind me behind me don't land on me don't land on me gaaaah. I lowered the window shades and HOLY FUCK, they were everywhere, just sitting there. First-floor windows, second-floor windows. I checked all our screens for points of entry and armed myself with the Shop Vac. 

We have a service contract with a pest control company, and twice a year they come out and spray for termites and check the perimeter and windows and set out little sticky traps to see if we can figure out how the fuck all these bugs are getting in and twice a year the visit ends with a baffled shrug. 

Yesterday, I think I cracked the mystery.

(Oh hey, if you're still reading at this point but are like, itching from head to toe a little bit? You might want to finally cry uncle and bail.)

So ever since the Great Fertilizer Dog Buffet Debacle and subsequent shutting down of the Canine Liver Contingent, we've been diligent composters. Yesterday, however, I left the pile's offerings (bruised section of peach, apple core, lettuce) sit out on the kitchen counter for juuuuust a bit too long, as we've yet to buy a suitable indoor container. I went to toss a banana peel on top and OH MY GOD, a fucking mushroom cloud of fruit flies sprang from its depths. I gagged and grabbed the nearest bowl (Sorry, Dora the Explorer), swept everything into it and bolted outside to deposit it in our composter.

(EXHIBIT 28430290 OF WHY HIPPIES ARE STUPID, DAMN DIRTY)

As soon as I opened the back door, the stink bugs attacked. Five or six of them flew towards the opening at top speed. I shrieked and slammed the door shut. The motion once again disturbed the flock of fruit flies who were following me and my bowl of mush like the Pied Piper, and a stink bug ricocheted off the door frame and landed on my hand. I dropped the bowl and shrieked again, and the bug fell off my hand...and into my shoe.

(Gardening clogs, okay? That I promise I only wear for GARDENING. And picking up dog crap. And fine, maaaaaybe taking Noah out to the school bus sometimes but it's just because they are usually right there by the door and that's just really convenient.)

At this point I probably looked and sounded like I was being attacked by bees. Or sharks. Or hell demons. I kicked off my shoe and sent it sailing across the yard and stood there for another three or four minutes shaking my limbs and hair and clothing while gasping out stuff like "ew ew ew ew ew shit shit shit."

When I stopped to catch my breath and retrieve my shoe and Dora bowl (opting to allow the compost to stay where it fell, providing all kinds of essential nutrients to the wood of the back deck), I made the mistake of surveying the back of our house.

Stink bugs. Everywhere. On the brick, on the windows, on the gutters. I slooooowly reached for the screen door handle and I SWEAR, they all fired up their wings, ready to attack. 

I dashed in as fast as I could, slamming the storm door closed (AND LOCKING THE DEADBOLT, BECUZ I ARE SMARTER THAN THEM BUGS). I walked over to the sink to deposit the bowl...and felt something on my ankles.

Two mosquitoes. I smashed them, leaving smears of blood on top of the already-forming welts.  (FOUR BITES, already. FOUR.)

And that's when I noticed something in my hair. Multiple somethings.

You guys. They rode inside the house IN MY HAIR.

By my count, THREE OF THEM. I have since vacuumed up one, another is MIA (shakes hair shakes hair shakeshair), and I have cornered a third one inside the living room blinds, unable to coax it quiiiiite close enough to where my vacuum can get at it.

No, seriously:

The way we live now.

(And just for the sake of completeness, besides the two mosquitoes that used my ankle as some kind of illegal border crossing van, minutes later I found a third one, BITING MY BABY ON THE FACE. Without thinking, I smacked it off him [AND THUS, HIS FACE], which shocked him so much that he did the whole heartbreaking face-melting-sobbing-real-tears thing, and then STILL woke up this morning with EIGHT gigantic angry red bites on his face and legs. Obviously, the suburbs are dirty, disgusting and absolutely no place to raise children.)

Weekend Vignettes

For reasons that I believe can go mostly undocumented, we thought the dog had salmonella on Saturday. We found stray mussel shells from a disastrously ambitious dinner scattered in the yard; puddles of sick scattered pretty much everywhere else. She's actually just fine, but I just wanted to mention it anyway because I had to clean up a LOT of barf. You know. Just in case Ceiba ever reads this website one day. I cleaned up your barf, and I didn't like it. And now you never call! Ingrate.

*They ALL DIED before we could cook them. I set them on a paper towel for ONE MINUTE and every goddamn mussel decided to commit ritualistic suicide rather than face the hot pan of death. I was going to drown you in WINE, you bastards. WINE. We should all be so lucky to die such a death.

***
In other best-left-to-the-imagination news, we have a mouse in our kitchen. And clearly, the most useless-ass pets EVER.

***

Scene: Every Saturday Morning In Our House, Ever

Jason: Anything you want to do today?

Amy: I want to go to Ikea.

Jason: We're not going to Ikea.

Amy: (dramatic flailing)

Fin.

***

You probably know by now that I eat pretty much everything. Food is my hobby, since I don't know how to knit and dislike standing for long periods of time. I'm actually trying to think of something that I won't eat. Wait, okay, I've got it: raw onions, Cool Whip, head cheese. Tongue as long as it still resembles a tongue. I used to not eat rabbit -- because you know, bunnnnnnies! -- until we moved to the suburbs and a goddamn rabbit ate all my flowers and now I will eat the hell out some rabbit. I will eat that rabbit, if my dog ever stops gnawing on diseased mussels long enough to catch the stupid thing. (Hey, here's a recipe!)

Saturday night I ate pork cracklins for the first time -- fancy cracklins, apparently, since they were served on a charcuterie board alongside wee little pickles -- and for the first time in ages I was completely flummoxed by a food item. It was salty, crunchy and aggressively unhealthy -- my top three most favorite adjectives for food -- but OH MY GOD, IT WAS SKIN, RECOGNIZABLE SKIN, THERE WERE VISIBLE HAIR FOLLICLES. I could FEEL the skin-like texture on my tongue, I was Homer Simpson, sampling from the regenerative bacon buffet in the Garden of Eden.*

So instead of eating them, I lined a few up on my arm and asked Jason to get another few orders because the restaurant was chilly and I wanted a cardigan. Jason was all, "give those back, they're delicious."

*If you know what I'm talking about here, congratulations! We can be friends. We'll eat some deep-fried skin and then go get ice cream.

***

On Sunday, we went to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Noah loved everything about it, except for the animatronic Chuck E. Cheese, whom he eyed warily from the table, nervously eating bites of pizza. When the costumed Chuck E. Cheese (who was missing one furry glove for most of the proceedings) showed up, we had to retreat to a safe distance.

Noah: THAT BUNNY NEEDS TO GO AWAY.

Amy: He's a mouse, sweetie.

Noah: THAT BUNNY MOUSE NEEDS TO GO HOME.

***

As we drove home, Jason and I had a 20-minute unironic conversation about minivans and the many, many attractive features they offer. We're certainly not in the market for a new car or anything, but Jason rode in his coworker's Odyssey and like, maaaaaan, that thing was sweeeeeet. You don't even have to fold the stroller or anything. I remembered the same thing about a friend's minivan in a fit of retroactive lust, shaking my head at my naive young ATTITUDE towards minivans, back when I knew NOTHING about the world and what happens to all your "adequate cargo space" once you have two children.

Amy: I mean, just THINK of all the stuff we could buy at Ikea!

***

We never made it to Ikea. We went to the Big Box Baby Store instead and bought additional baby gates, because our 9-month-old does not have the sense God gave a bunny mouse. While shopping, I was approached TWICE about the Ergo carrier and whether I liked it (yes, oh God, yes), what age I started using it (31) (haaaa, I'm an ass), and then approached again by someone trying to decide between two different floor gyms and which one was better (is it for your baby? no? okay, get whatever one blinks and makes noise.)

Less than an hour after that, we stopped at Whole Foods and a timid young thing in high heels asked me what the difference was between brown eggs and white eggs, and if she hard-boiled the brown ones would they like, be the same? With a white part and a yellow center? She then admitted that this was her first grocery-shopping trip out on her own, and I noticed that her shopping list contained the instruction to "open egg carton and check for broken shells."

Amy: Wow, I must look like, really extra helpful today, or something!

Jason: I think it's more that you just look so much like a mom.

Amy: Do I look like I drive a minivan? Because I don't. Yet. Seriously, the back seats FOLD INTO THE FLOOR, OH MY GOD.

***

We've been pricing up laptops for awhile now -- the Macbook's motherfuckingboard was going to cost a motherfucking fortune to fix, plus it seemed like the water damage was pretty damn catastrophic, and the repair couldn't guarantee that other inside-techie things hadn't shorted out -- and I was resigned to buying a cheaper non-Mac, because. Well. Cheaper. I officially put off the purchase waaaay too long, leading to lost posts and enormous amounts of frustration once the mouse key broke, randomly moving the cursor to different parts of the screen while I typed gaaaaaaaaah kill.

So on Thursday we went to the Big Box Computer Store and I glumly pecked on some keyboards and finally declared one "pretty okay." I knew we could get it cheaper online though, so we didn't buy it.

On Friday -- before any of this other stuff happened, even though Jason probably knew it was a pretty safe bet that I would make stupid jokes out in public, that I would bug him about taking me to Ikea, that I would wander around stores looking like a frumpy, frizzy, minivan-lusting mom -- he came home from work and pulled a brand-new Macbook out of his briefcase. I was stunned.

Jason: You use it every day. It's what you do. It's important. You should have the one you want.

Our anniversary is in a few days. Eleven years. Our life is nothing like the one we thought we'd have once upon a time.

(I still have the one I want.)