Assorted Epilogues

I.

Jason, the last man standing, is down. I repeat, THE HUSBAND IS DOWN. He is by far the least disgusting patient, at least, and his illness has resulted in absolutely nothing I had to clean up.

II.

But! Noah is fine. Ezra is also, finally, oh-thank-God fine and at back at school today.

I don't think I need to tell you that, humor and poor-poor-me snark aside, I was really, really worried about that one. I have never seen any of my children that sick, for which I know I am lucky, because it obviously could have been so, so much worse. He's lost a ton of weight and is still sleeping approximately 18 hours a day, but last night around dinnertime he asked for scrambled eggs and meatballs and macaroni and steak and polenta and cheese and chicken and was basically grabbing anything from the fridge he could get his hands on to eat. A jar of mustard! A pomegranate! Parsley! Whatever!

(Except for what's left of the raspberries. Those are being pointedly ignored.)

Ike is improving but probably needs another day to be back at 100%. I'm still washing a lot of diapers. And if you, like Jason, wonder why in the world I wouldn't cut myself a break and use disposables in the meantime, I will give you the Official Party Line, which is that the disposables equal blowouts and give him a rash.

(That's sort-of the truth. The rest-of-the-way truth is that I seekritly ordered some more diapers and doublers that I absolutely 100% did not need but just plain waaa-aaanted so this allows me to wash and prep them faster all seekritly-like. "What? Those? We've had them for ages, I don't know what you're talking about. Go back to bed. YOU'RE CLEARLY HALLUCINATING.")

III.

No word from the school re: the lice issue. I like to think that they are waiting until they have had time to have an Official Emergency Response Strategery Meeting and can respond with a concrete and satisfying Serious Business Is Serious battle plan, but the more likely reason is that my email read like it was written by a crazy person at the end of her fucking goddamn rope. 

IV.

Last night some animal(s) got into our backyard and attacked a bag of trash we'd left on the patio table. (Stupid, yes. But I have an excuse: Carrying it across the yard to the covered trash receptacle would have required me to put on shoes.) The mess was epic. Wrappers and plastic bags and various bits of grossness were everywhere, and unless I felt like dealing with approximately 1,237,942 requests from Ceiba to go OUTSIDE OUTSIDE OUTSIDE throughout the day so she could eat some Shitty Plastic Wrap^TM remnants, I had no choice but to -- sigh -- clean it up right then. 

So that's how I ended up in the backyard at 7 am this morning, in my pajamas and rainboots, picking up every individual paper towel befouled during the original Raspberryhorkgate 2012, every shop rag and pair of underwear I'd decided was too unspeakable to even deal with laundering, and other assorted disgusting momentos of this weekend. Again. For the second time. That is some next-level, insult-to-injury, Alanis-Morissette-style-irony karmic bullshit, right there. 

V. 

The babysitter offered to stay a couple extra hours today, in case I had any "work" I needed to "catch up on." 

I fibbed and said that yeah, there are a couple things I need to do. And while a lunch out alone, a pedicure and maybe some aimless wandering around the mall aren't exactly "work," at this point I think those things all practically come with a prescription. 

How Bad Was My Weekend

...let me COUNT THE WAYS.

I cleaned vomit off the top bunk.

I cleaned vomit off the bottom bunk.

I cleaned vomit off the bunk bed ladder and the floor.

I cleaned one child's vomit out of the hair of another.

I cleaned up after the world's grossest fucking diaper, BAR NONE.

I cleaned up...the crib. Enough said.

I cleaned vomit off the wall of the nursery, and the rocking chair.

Also my brand-new, dry-clean-only sweater that I was stupidly wearing because that was before reality set in and all hope was shattered into a million disgusting, crusty pieces.

I called the on-call pediatrician to find out if I needed to take my terrifyingly listless, still-unable-to-keep-solids-down-after-72-hours toddler to the ER or not. 

I went to the store for more Pedialyte only to realize I was standing in the stationary aisle, staring at sympathy cards and slowly going mad with fever.

I came home and experienced some...digestive distress. 

I lay in bed and moaned at the ceiling fan while Jason baked the children COOKIES, since Noah was feeling so much better and Ezra...well, Ezra would probably be fine too, right?

I lay in bed and muttered feverish I TOLD YOU SO'S while Jason cleaned vomit off the bottom bunk. Again.

I cleaned up three puddles of cat vomit off my bedroom floor because why the fuck not, you useless lump of hairballs. 

I noticed my six-year-old suddenly scratching his head a lot, because ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.

I composed a pointed email to his school mostly to satisfy my need to tell another adult to DO something already. FIX something. HELP ME with something. I CANNOT SOLVE THE ONGOING KINDERGARTEN LICE SITUATION SINGLE-HANDEDLY OVER HERE, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE WE ARE ALL THE FUCK OUT OF CLEAN SHEETS AND TOWELS.

I treated, combed, shampooed, cleaned, sprayed, laundered, bagged, quarantined and combed again.

I called a different on-call pediatrician to find out if I needed to take my still listless, able-to-keep-some-solids-down-but-now-having-diarrhea-every-30-minutes toddler to the ER. 

I did not take anyone to the ER.

I got better.

Mostly.

Now I just have a really bad cold and a need to make up for about a million hours of sleep.

(But hey! I made the Huffington Post!)

Everybody else got better too.

Mostly.

So far, as of this minute.

It's been a good minute.

I'll take it.  

(Just like I happily took Jason's "I'm Sorry Everything Is Terrible, Go Take A Bath And Let Me Handle Things For Awhile Before You Have A Psychotic Break" gift of Lush and red wine. He really is SUCH a good one, misguided mid-onslaught baking attempts aside.)

 

WE ARE

Penn State.

Unfortunately.

I ran upstairs last night and shook Jason awake. JoePa! They fired JoePa! And then we stayed up for hours watching ESPN, watching the students wander aimlessly around downtown while the eternally-present-and-obligatory group of drunk dickheads smashed some shit up for no reason, just like they did 14 years ago for reasons I don't remember. We won? We lost? We were pissed about increased late fees at the library? I don't know, but it always ended with a couch getting pitched off a balcony and set on fire. FUCK YOU COUCH YOU ARE DRUNK.

We stayed up watching the Paternos step outside their house -- a house I remember driving by, and the whole car went reverently silent once it was pointed out, because it was JoePa's house -- to blearily thank the "kids" who'd gathered on their lawn, only to be completely flummoxed and shocked by the giant seething mass of media that swarmed their doorstep instead. Because they probably still don't get it, how big this is, how awful. That it's not that you didn't do "enough," it's that you didn't do anything. You didn't do anything. Nobody did. 

At 19 years old, I didn't know much of anything. I'd already attended and changed my mind about two different colleges already. I'd already lost track of how many times I'd changed my major and my career goals. I scored a dream job as a reporter at The Collegian and quit two weeks later. I thought maybe I'd try film, or literature, or social work. I didn't know how to get a fake ID but usually managed to get tanked regularly without one pretty well. I didn't get to go to many football games because I was broke and needed the weekend  hostessing shifts at The Corner Room and also liked having the job as an excuse when my parents asked me if I'd found a church yet. Beacause I didn't know how I felt about that anymore, either. 

But one thing I know -- hindsight be damned -- is that if my 19-year-old self heard that there was a chance a child was being abused, she would have done something. If she'd been the one to round that corner in that locker room, there would have been screaming, kicking, hair pulling, something, to make sure that assault ended right then and there. If she'd been the one told about something possibly inappropriate going on, she would have hit 9 for an outside line to the police instead of to the office down the hall so it could be handled internally. No. Because something. You have to at least do something. 

And I didn't need college to teach me that. 

We are Penn State.

And we are soooooo disappointed. 

AND THE CHEESE TRIANGLES DON'T GO THAT WAY EITHER

It's been a...well, it certainly has been a week. (Said with deep, emphatic, eyebrow-raising emphasis.)

I'm all jumbled up inside, unable to put the not-so-good stuff into words and the not-that-terrible stuff into a humorous context, like: usually a story about an overflowing toilet during a playdate should be good for some pathos, right?

Except when the overflowing toilet overflows twice (because said playdate wouldn't stop flushing it over and over) and floods the basement bathroom at the same time, and this happens right after you learn that your kindergartener was sent to the principal's office that day for behavior problems, and then came home and declared himself a "loser" because of it and begs you to "sign [him] out" of kindergarten, and "sign [him] out FOREVER"...

And right before the cat starts vomiting all over the house and taking random bloody shits in the kitchen...

Which turns out to be an extreme yet ultimately run-of-the-mill reaction to SOMEONE accidentally grabbing a similarly-labeled-but-actually-different bag of cat food at the store, which is a relief...right up until the moment you exhaustively collapse into your bed...and discover that oh, the cat puked there, too...

And then the baby wakes up at 1:15 am, like he's done every night for almost three weeks straight now.

Mix in some of the aforementioned life stressors, a couple of poetically timed diaper/potty incidents from the other two children (AND the dog, who has suddenly developed an aversion to crapping outside first thing in the morning because it's too chilly, or something), a full-moon-like and across-the-board increase in temper tantrums and sibling conflict AND ALSO the triumphant return of my period, and that pretty much brings you up to speed on what the last couple days have been like. A classic slow-burn sneaky hate spiral.

And while usually my first instinct to most of those things would be to curl up with my laptop and CAPSLOCK my way into some insight or catharsis or even just a "let's keep things in perspective, first-world-white-girl" punchline, this week I mostly just want to hide under the covers until everybody promises to JUST STOP POOPING ON ME FOR 15 GODDAMN MINUTES, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. 

Of course, we all know that's not gonna happen anytime soon. So I think I'll just take a couple deep breaths, hope that tomorrow is better and then stare at this picture for awhile instead.

LICE!

And that's all I have to say about that. 

(Except OMFG.)

(And maybe SEND WINE.)

(And OLIVE OIL. And COMBS. And BLEACH. And perhaps an ATOMIC BOMB.)

(Because SERIOUSLY, he crawled in BED with me this morning and we were all cuddling and snuggling and talking about stuff and...why are you scratching your head so much? Lemme just peek under your hair for a second and HOLY GOD GET OFF MY PILLOW UNCLEAN UNCLEEEEEEAN!)

(Are you itching now too? Good. I pretty much came here just to make that happen.)

It's Like Winning the Lottery Only More Contagious-Like

Because I am pretty sure this pregnancy JUST WON'T COUNT without at least one unwarranted, after-hours trip to Labor & Delivery, I went and diagnosed myself with pre-eclampsia last night and called my doctor's answering service in a panic. 

I'd had a headache all day that was getting worse by the hour, and I was feeling increasingly woozy and tired and out-of-it. My body was a mess of weirdly unspecific aches and pains in my back and sides and shoulders and maybe my abdomen or maybe my uterus, I don't know, it just allll hurts, and I was having these really ridiculously violent coughing fits where I would basically cough until I threw up. By the time I realized I was ALSO running a fever, I was convinced that I was dying of pre-eclampsia or HELLP syndrome or an acksploded gallbladder or something else bad and awful and very dramatic, I am sure. 

The on-call doctor returned my call, listened patiently to my moaning and agreed that the headache in particular was disconcerting. I put on my shoes and made a mid-air thumb-wrestling gesture to Jason that completely baffled him, even though I don't know HOW it could have been clearer that I wanted him to text our babysitter to find out if she could come back and watch the boys because WE were going to the hospital. I mean, DUH. 

Then the doctor asked me a couple other questions and it was my turn to be baffled, because she was asking about things that were totally NOT on any pre-eclampsia checklist I'd ever read on the Internet, and I'd totally read at least five or six that day, but I answered them anyway while mentally assessing the hospital-ready state of my underwear. 

"Yeah...I'm pretty confident it's NOT pre-eclampsia. I'm actually gonna say that sounds an awful lot like the flu," the doctor said. 

"Ohhhhh," I said. "Yeah. Now that you say that..."

And then: "But I already HAD the flu. In JANUARY. And it's APRIL. How do you get the flu in APRIL? For the SECOND TIME? And...and..."

"Yeah," she responded. "That's some really lousy luck. Lemme call in a prescription for Tylenol with codeine for you."

In summary: 

Wake me up in June, maybe, fuck this, the end. 

53 Hours

We went to the mall on Sunday, mostly because it was officially Too Damn Hot For Life outside and had run out of other indoor time-killing options. Life lesson time, boys: If you get bored, just go somewhere and buy shit you don't need for awhile.

Anyway. The lights flickered once. Twice. We decided to leave, let the power go out and lead to mass looting at Build-a-Bear. We noticed it was raining really hard through the skylights, but by the time we got outside the sun was shining again.  

The only evidence that a tornado had touched down nearby was...well, there were a lot of leaves all over the ground.

Oh. And shit like this:

 

That brownish...thing? That's the underside of a really big tree that just up and fell over. It peeled off a nice layer of the earth's crust and mantle on its way down, and yes I said MANTLE because BOO-YAH GEOLOGY 101. Preparing me for moments like this and not much else.  

(My drive-by cell-phone photography skillz: YOU LOVE THEM.)

Not surprisingly, we lost power as a result of the storm. As did over 300,000 other homes in our area, which I swear is like, an actual high-density area where actual real people live and work and DVR their favorite TV shows and poop using fancy modern indoor plumbing, as opposed to McHillbillyville, USA or something. I get the sense that Pepco power lines are held together by little more than popsicle sticks and electrical tape and chewed-up gum from all the third-party contractors they hire EVERY TIME we get one of these huge county-wide outages, and each repair leaves everything a bit more rickety and outage-prone than it was in the first place. 

Last time it took 84 hours for our power to be restored. This time we only lost power for about 53 hours. Fifty-three! That's nothing! And the temperatures during the day were only about 90, 91 degrees tops. I don't even see the point in blogging about any of it. What do you take me for, some kind of whiny brat urbanite with no coping skills, or something? 

(DON'T ANSWER THAT.)

Unlike the winter outage, this one at least wasn't...scary, like we all going to contract pneumonia and then get into a terrible car accident when we try to drive to the hospital for medicine for our pneumonia because our fingers fell off from frostbite already scary. This outage was mostly boring and sweaty.

Noah: Mommy, can I watch a show?

Amy: No, sweetie, there's no power, remember?

Noah: Okay. I will watch a DVD instead.

Amy: Um, can't do that either, bud. 

Noah: Okay. How about...the Star Wars game?

Amy: New rule of thumb, Noah. If something 1) lights up, 2) has buttons, or 3) is at all possibly remotely fun, it requires power, and you can't do it right now. 

Noah: Okay. Can I play with your phone?

(And yet, just a few hours later, after the boys were in bed and Jason and I prepared to watch a DVD on his charged-at-work laptop, I totally went I KNOW! We can still catch the Mad Men premiere! You just have to rent it on iTunes or something! Why don't you do that? What? Oh. Right. Never mind. Yeah, we can just watch Idiocracy again, I guess.)

I kept trying to get work done at the coffeeshops and such, but so did everyone else from the 300,000+ powerless households. On Monday I drove to Jodi's house to bask in her recently-restored electricity, only to have it go out again after an hour and a half ("HAAAAA SO LONG SUCKER," I cackled as I left, gaining strength for future evil superdeeds from her misfortune). 

On Tuesday I brought a big-ass wall outlet splitter with me and very politely asked a woman hogging an entire precious outlet with both her laptop and cell phone if she minded if we expanded the outlet's use for everybody, and...actually, it turned out she DID mind, a little bit, as she testily informed me that Panera had "a lot of other outlets" so she "didn't see the point" in using the splitter. When I mentioned that the plugs were actually all full and a bit more in demand than usual because of the power outages, she was like, "power outawhah?" but finally unplugged her shit for 10 measly seconds, then purposely replugged everything in so her chargers covered up more than one plug, just so no one else could use them. I did not like that lady, very much, and thought to myself that she deserved to get blogged about. So. There. 

(Our power came back on last night, but I brought the splitter again today because there are still thousands of people still waiting for theirs. I was heralded as the Smartest, Nicest Person Ever. Which is MORE LIKE IT, INGRATES.)

Anyway. What the outage lacked in DRAMAZZZ, though, it certainly made up in DOLLAH BILLZ, because this is the current state of our once-packed freezer:

 

Okay, for dinner tonight, your menu choices are grated cheddar cheese, some fancy farmers' market flour that you have to keep in the freezer for some reason, a plastic ice pack and those weird flaxseed/spelt waffles that nobody likes. 

THRILLING UPDATE: I'm Still Awake

Who needs sleep? Apparently: ALL OF US. Heavens, but we are a sleep-deprived bunch.

I have a confession: After I wrote yesterday's entry, I was secretly sort-of sure that last night would be different, and that I'd make it through the night without waking. Because! Of course it would! I WHINED TO THE INTERNET ABOUT MY PROBLEMS. That's usually a one-way ticket to a mea culpa the next day about "oh hey! never mind about that thing after all, all good now." 

Ha. Yeah. No.

Instead, because I'd been soooooooo emphatic and smug-ass confident that falling asleep "wasn't the problem," I was awake and wild-eyed until well after midnight. I woke up at 4:30, fell back asleep around 6:15 or so, only to wake up 15 minutes later because the cat decided it was time for a snuggle. I DID NOT PARTICULARLY AGREE.

But seriously, THANK YOU for all your comments and sleep aid ideas. I am definitely going to try several that came up the most (melatonin, tryptophan, anxiety/task lists), possibly see a sleep specialist that local reader Allyson recommended, and I will report back. I know! Sit back down! You're going to sprain something from all this excitement and anticipation.

(My mom emailed me yesterday too, and said "PLEASE be careful about Ambien," which in My Mom's Speak is pretty much the equivalent of me screaming at you guys in all caps and adding lots of OMGWTFBBQ!!!!ONE!!1!!s at the end. It's just how she is. Turns out both she and my dad have taken it at different times, and both of them experienced all the crazy sleep-walking and furniture over-turning and memory-loss stuff you hear about. AND had a really hard time sleeping without it, even after just a couple nights. So...I don't think so, especially since prescription medications and I have not exactly been a great combination in the past. [I'm always the patient who gets that one weird less-than-2%-of-users side effect, like the time I tried the birth control shot and spent the next 72 hours walking into walls and tripping over microscopic cracks in the floor.} Although the idea of like, sleeping and organizing the basement at the same time sounds pretty cool. I'm guessing I wouldn't do anything productive though. I'd probably just pull clothes out of my closet for awhile and then go outside to hurl juice boxes at cars.)

(No, I don't know why I made that whole thing a parenthetical. I tend to do that more when I don't really have a firm grasp on what I plan to write about, and start interrupting myself with random thoughts.)

(And then I feel the need to explain myself, like that. And like this.)

(And again!)

(OH LORDY IT'S GONE OFF THE RAILS NOW.)

(WE PROBABLY ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.)

In summary, I am still tired, but grateful for a fresh list of suggestions. Although it's a shame that "more chocolate pudding cups" wasn't one of them. Although I'd like to see anybody try and let that stop me. 

Who Needs Sleep

backfromthebeachomgzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Everywhere I go today, I am stepping over laundry baskets and suitcases. I think they are reproducing, like tribbles. We didn't take that many suitcases to the beach in the first place, did we? So why are there so many damn suitcases now? Suitcases. Suitcases! 

I haven't been sleeping very well. And I think it might be starting to show. 

Going to sleep is no problem. Not even a little bit. Staying asleep, though, is impossible. I wake up every night around 3 a.m., like clockwork, sometimes even shaking myself awake in the middle of a dream for no discernible reason. And while I used to be able to roll over and go back to sleep, more or less, now my brain clicks on within seconds, all "OH CRAP NOT AGAIN I'M AWAKE QUICK DON'T START THINKING ABOUT THAT THING YOU HAVE TO DO OH DAMN IT ALL TO HELL NOW I'M THINKING ABOUT IT."

And then I start involuntarily composing blog entries and columns and emails or maybe just trying to remember if Mel Gibson actually made any movies I'll miss now that he's...well, YOU KNOW. Do I have a topic for Cafemom this week? What about topic number 4,234,209 for AlphaMom? And Jesus, my own blog, has anything remotely funny happened? Should I scan something? Post a video? What's that noise? Oh my God, I have to email her! Did I reply to that thing? Do I have to pee? Do I really have to pee or just maybe a little and it's not worth getting up for because then I won't be able to get back to sleep and what's that noise and oh  I know I'll sing 99 Bottles of Beer On the Wall to myself like this 99 bottles of oh I know I should post that video of Ezra banging on the crabs with a mallet at the restaurant because that was pretty funny 98 bottles of beer on the wall...

And. So on and so forth, for at least a couple hours, Sometimes I'll fall back asleep, about a half hour before I need to get up anyway. Sometimes I'll get up and try to get some work done, though not surprisingly the few things I've managed to produce at that hour have never, ever actually seen the light of the publish button. (Probably because they resembled the paragraph right above this one, only with a lot more typos and EVEN LESS PUNCTUATION IF YOU CAN EVEN IMAGINE THAT IS POSSIBLE.)

Most of the time, I just lay there, trying to shut my head up and go back to sleep, preferably with the least amount of tossing and turning, since I've started waking Jason up a lot during these fits. He's always sympathetic, but also a zero-to-wide-awake sort of sleeper. If I wake him up, he's up for good too, heading into the office at 5 in the morning while I stubbornly stay put because DAMMIT, SLEEP! SLEEP!

(SLEEP: What, you think you can caps-lock your way into a nap or something? I don't think so, hooker.)

 

Things I've tried: chamomile tea, herbal sleep aids from Whole Foods, different vitamins, Tylenol PM and Unisom, all which seem to be more for the not-a-problem-for-me FALLING asleep, but do nothing for the staying asleep. Our mattress is fantastic and our pillows seem fine. I took long runs at night, then in the morning. No TV before bed. Some TV. Leaving the TV on. Early bedtime, late bedtime. White noise, ear plugs, sleep masks. Covers. No covers. Wine. No wine. Zero caffeine after 2 pm, then 12 pm, then down to ONE MEASLY CUP first thing in the morning which I am sorry, if you take that away from me I will very literally die and then come back to life and kill you too.

This has been going on for six months now. Six months of maybe three or four good hours of sleep a night, and I've always been a girl who needs eight.  And I've hit the wall, and hard. Some days I'm so tired that by lunchtime I literally have nothing left to give anyone -- forget phone calls or big work decisions or taking everyone to the park, I can't even muster up the energy for Facebook, or anything other than standing slackjawed in front of the microwave, wondering why the hell the inside thing isn't doing that...what do you call it...spinning...whirling...thing, only to realize I never hit the Start button. Ah. Yes. That. 

Over vacation I found myself actually reading a magazine ad for Ambien, even though I know I'd be too terrified to ever actually take it. (Continuing down my list of Top All-Time Irrational Fears: 1) Volcanoes, 2) Getting framed and/or wrongfully convicted of murder, 3) ripping my earlobe in half, and 4) getting tricked into ingesting hardcore drugs like meth or oxycontin and getting instantly addicted and living my life in the gutter or in jail with Lindsay Lohan.) 

Still. My kids sleep through the night perfectly and I seem to have completely forgotten how to do it myself. Halp? Plz?

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.