Success!

Success at last! After a week of being taunted by a very clever mouse, he has been dispatched! Thanks to the husband who carefully set traps around in my car. I tried but snapped the crap out of my fingers and gave up the thought of ever having a nice quiet ride into work ever again.

Now come the hard questions. Did it hurt when he died? Does he have a family waiting for him? Why was he so cute? Aren't they supposed to be vile and disgusting? It makes it easier to kill them when they are. Why am I feeling badly about killing a mouse? I'm going to make a big jump here, bear with me. I think it's empathy. We can argue until the cows come home about whether the mouse had feelings. Some would say that animals can't feel, that humans are the only creatures intelligent enough to feel. But I disagree. My best friend growing up had a yellow lab named Sarah. We would catch her looking at herself in the mirror in my friends bedroom and when we called her on it, she would crinkle up her ears and drop her head and you could see embarrassment on her face. I have friends whose cats ignore them when they've been gone for a few days. They are mad that they were left alone. I watched a video segment about a young leopard who makes her first kill. It was a baboon. When the cat takes the dead baboon up into a tree it realizes that there is a day old baby clinging to it's dead mother. Instead of killing the baby too, the leopard picks the baby up and starts to lick it and cuddle up with it. With cameras everywhere and YouTube showing all the videos that people take, you don't have to look far for examples in nature of empathy.

Unfortunately, they are getting harder to find in society. Heinz Kohut said, empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person. I can put myself into the "life" of the mouse in my car. But how many times do I put myself into the lives of the people around me? I could argue that the mouse is easy to be empathetic towards. For one, he's a mouse. So he'll never disappoint me. And so often the people around me can. But what kind of relationship is it if there isn't some disappointment. Some sadness. That all leads to growth and in turn better relationships. The one with the mouse is static. Especially since the mouse is dead. So I take that thought away from this whole ordeal. To try to be more connected to the people around me and less so to the things that can't react back to me.

RIP Ethan"the mouse" Hunt.

Eek, a mouse!

So I'm driving in my car the other day and at a stop light I look down and I see these little black things on the floor. My first thought is that I must have eaten an everything bagel in the car at some point and gotten poppy seeds on the floor. Logical, right?

Roll forward to Monday. I am eating toast in the car on the way to work.

I know, you are sensing a pattern here. I have never been a morning person. I have no problem laying in bed until noon. It doesn't hurt that we have a really, really great bed. I have the alarm set for 6:50 am and then a second one set for 7:00 am. I hit the first one. I let the second one go as it is tuned to the radio and not an annoying buzzer noise. I listen to the headlines, the traffic and the weather, then I turn it off and turn on the TV. Good Morning America. I pick up my phone and check email, Facebook and Twitter. I check The Daily Puppy. I check the national news and play a quick game of Word Warp or Words with Friends. Usually by this time it is 7:30. I roll over and re-fluff my pillow. Look out the window and wonder why I wasn't born into an incredibly rich family, where a maid would be approaching my room right now, to pull back the curtains, bring me a tray with tea and fresh croissants and OJ and then go run my bath. I ponder this for another 10 minutes and then I curse myself for again waiting so long to get up. So now I'm late, plus I have to pee like crazy. After my morning ablutions, I slap on my makeup, get dressed, run downstairs and throw some bread in the toaster. Grab something for lunch and then jump in the car and head to work. It's not the best system, but I kind of have it down so it's what I go with.

So Wednesday I notice, on the paper towel that I had carried my toast on when I got into the car and had left on my passenger seat, no longer has toast crumbs on it. It has mouse turds on it. One corner is chewed on and there is a pee stain. I guess I should be grateful that he peed on the paper towel and not on the leather seats. But regardless, I have a mouse in my car. And is it in my car all the time? Or does he sneak in at night while the car is in the garage, eat my toast crumbs and then leave in the morning? It is what I wanted to believe.

So out come the traps. The are "humane" traps that don't cut the thing in half when the mouse springs it. I load them with peanut butter and put 2 of them in my car.

Thursday morning goes like this: see above paragraph for morning ritual, coat on and plastic bag in hand to pick up deceased mouse(s). I cautiously approach my car and open the door. Trap is where I left it, no mouse. I check the second trap and find the same. When I pick them up I notice that there is not a lick of peanut butter on either one. Crap. I mean, yes crap. There is more mouse crap in the car, too.

Thursday night: Husband has purchased old-fashioned wooden mousetraps with snappy metal spring on them. I lather them up with peanut butter and put them in the car, almost snapping off my fingers several times before I get them set.

Friday morning goes like this: see above.....caution has gone out the window at this point. I open the car door. Unsprung trap. No dead mouse. And not a speck of peanut butter! What the hell kind of mouse is this? I picture some Mission Impossible type set up with the mouse repelling down from above the trap using all kinds of equipment to allow it to know how much downward pressure it is applying to the trap. This is a friggin' genius mouse!

So now we arrive at Friday night. Traps are set again. This time I have really crammed them with peanut butter, so that little rodent bastard will have to really work to get it all off. I have also set them at the lightest possible setting. This mouse will have to be made of air to not set this trap off! So now I wait.

However, if this doesn't work, is anyone interested in buying a slightly used VW Beetle? It's pretty clean, except for some poppy seeds on the floor.

Shoplifting

So, apparently there is a difference between being robbed and being shoplifted from. It's true. I found out the hard way. A couple of years ago I was asked to call the police because we were being "robbed". So I did. After a few minutes on the phone with a very nice police officer, a swat team descended on our building, busting through the front door, guns drawn. Everyone was on the floor. They swept the building in search of the offenders. Long story short, it was very scary and pretty chaotic. Come to find out, if you say you are being robbed the police assume there are weapons involved. If, on the other hand, someone walks into your store, picks up some merchandise and puts it in their pocket and walks out, that is just shop lifting and they won't send a SWAT team to your store. Hmmm. You learn something new every day.

Fast forward to today and we are being robbed, er, I mean shoplifted from again. Even with big signs all around saying that the building is equipped with 24 hour video taping. Some idiot comes in and walks out with stuff that doesn't belong to him. Police still come, but not as fast. Take my statement and give us a card with a case number on it and tell us to call if anything else happens. Here's what happens. It throws the whole workplace into a tizzy. Some of us are totally freaked out about it. Some seem like they couldn't care less. Everyone talks about it and rehashes what happened and what they saw and what could have been done to prevent it. Truth is not much. If someone is bold enough to come into a business that is bustling with people and cameras and still try and steal something, there probably isn't much you could do to stop them. The fact that he didn't have a gun or knife is a blessing. The loss of merchandise is a small price to pay for the safety of customers and staff, however frustrating it is to have stuff stolen. It does suck that people, for whatever reason, feel that they have a right to take what doesn't belong to them. But that type of behavior dates back to the garden of Eden, I guess. Besides, it will give us something to talk about for the next week!

Grandchildren

Grandchildren.

Something I never thought I would want and now, strangely, I desperately crave. Seems like all my friends are becoming grandparents. It is amazing to me how fast I have gotten to this stage in my life. I remember like it was yesterday, turning around in the minivan to look in the back seat and seeing three little faces staring back at me. At the time I remember feeling shocked at how fast I had reached that milestone. Wasn't it just a couple of years before that I had gotten married. And just a short time before that, graduated high school. My first job. My first car. My first boyfriend. My first dog. My first...

No one tells you when you have your first baby how soon you'll see her go through her firsts. How soon she'll move away and get married. If they did, how differently we would treat life. We spend so much time focused on the 'stuff' of life. A job, a house, a car. After the past few years of seeing family members die too young, you change your opinion on what really matters. Family, friends, love. Those are the things that really matter. Those are the things we should be working on, day in and day out, to make stronger. To make sure that those people around us, the ones who really matter, know how much we love them.

I'll turn 50 this year. I can't believe how fast that has gone. I have lived more than half my life already. My prayer and hope is that I will spend the rest of my days focused on what really matters. My husband and children. My friends and family. And, god willing, grandchildren.

chaos, part deux

So that chaos continues. I spent Friday night with my son, painting his new bedroom. We are switching some rooms around in our house and he is moving downstairs. The room looks great, although he has a lot of organizing to do.

So you know when you start a project it always leads to a bunch of other projects. Well that is what happened today. Painting, moving furniture, doing electrical, running cable and ethernet to my husbands new office upstairs. Moving books, shelves, pictures and furniture. And it's still not done. The dining room and living room of my house looks like an episode of "Hoarders".

On top of all that, I also found time to bake a coconut cake for Easter tomorrow. It is a recipe that my mom found in Food & Wine magazine. It is really good, lots of cream cheese frosting and flaky coconut. It's my homage to my mother. Easter was never really her holiday. Christmas was. But we are getting together with my sister and her family and my dad tomorrow, so a little bit of my mother will be there too.

My mother in law loved Easter. She loved seeing the kids in Easter outfits and giving them baskets and candy. She won't be there tomorrow, either. It is strange celebrating holidays with both moms gone. They were the ones who really held the family together for the holidays. Now that job falls to my sister and myself. And I admit that I'm not as good at it as they were. I tend to let it go until the last minute and then I find myself making coconut cake at 10 o'clock at night for the next day. Oh well, at least we'll have some. I'll have a bite for you, mom!

Changes. They're good, right?

It seems that my life is in a constant change of flux. I didn't used to mind it. In fact, a lot of the time I would bring it on myself. In the almost 30 years of our marriage we have moved 8 times. And we have been at our current location the longest, almost 15 years. So the reality of that is, 8 moves in 15 years! That's a lot of packing. And unpacking. Although, I know for a fact that there are boxes in the basement of this house that have never been unpacked. Wonder what that means. I hope there is nothing in there that I need!

We moved into this house when the kids were still small. Now they are grown. One has moved out. One more is on her way. One is still hanging in at home. But we have had other house mates as well. A sister in law, left a widow by the unfortunate death of my husbands oldest brother. She stayed with us for a couple of years. Then more recently, my husbands parents lived here. It seems strange to think that after years of having so many people (lets not even get into the animals!) living under this roof, we will almost be empty-nesters.

Going back to the unpacked boxes for a minute, we have also accumulated stuff from the sister in law and the parents in law. Duplicates, triplicates, in some cases quadruplicates of towels, blankets, sheets, dishes, silverware and knickknacks. Furniture, books, photo albums and pictures. What am I supposed to do with it all? And how do you make the decision to throw away someone else's stuff? There are memories attached to all of it. I guess I could pack it up for my kids and my niece. But then you are back to storing boxes of packed up stuff. Maybe every house should come with a storage unit. That way you could just put it all in there and lock the door and when you are gone, it's someone else's job to go through it all and determine what to keep and what to throw away.

We do like to collect things, don't we? Shells from a beach, shot glasses from different airports, thimbles, pictures, coffee mugs. And every time I have bought something from somewhere, I've really, really liked it. I've been so happy to bring it home and show the kids or company the souvenir from our trip. And yet a short time later, it seems to lose that luster. It becomes just another coffee mug in the cupboard along with the 30 others. And then you realize that you don't need 30 coffee mugs in the cupboard and you start weeding them out. And sad to say that a lot of the time, the one you thought was so special, ends up in a box heading for the Goodwill.

So can we make smarter choices in the things we choose to be our souvenirs? Ones that will last a lifetime without having to be packed away? I'd like to see the store that sold those!

Snow in April

So it's April 18th and it snowed today. Snow that stuck, not just flurries. But even if it was just flurries, it snowed today! April 18th! For god's sake it's almost May. Enough already.

This winter has seemed especially long and especially cold. It seems that each progressive year feels that way to me. Probably just me getting older.

There are a lot of things about getting older that bug me. I used to have perfect vision. I could hear when someone left a TV on in the other end of the house. I could sleep through the night without having to get up to pee. And speaking of peeing, now I can't sneeze or cough without peeing. All of my body functions are failing me!

I know that all of that is just part of growing older. And a lot of the time my joints and muscles ache like no body's business. But I can't get my brain to seem to understand that. Most of the time it thinks I'm still young. Oh, it takes me longer to find a specific word sometimes. And I can't write and talk at the same time anymore. But most of the time I think of myself as still in my early 20's instead of my late 40's.

I have had conversations with my dad and he feels that way too. I am beginning to wonder if your brain ever truly catches up with your body. Maybe it's a self defense mechanism. Like if your brain felt like it was old, your body would just give up.

So it's snowing and cold and yet daffodils are coming up in the neighbors yard and buds are out on the trees. So I guess spring really is here. It is such a beautiful time of year. I love watching how everything starts turning green and lush. It is a hopeful time. A new beginning. It's like the world letting us start over again. I hope that this year I'll be able to focus more on good things than bad. That I'll spend more time with the people I love and less time worrying about things that I can't change anyway. That I will take the time to appreciate the world around me and the beauty that is in my life instead of complaining about my large thighs or flabby arms. Because really, life is so short and most of us have such a small sphere of influence. And what's really important has nothing to do with how much money you have or how skinny you are or what kind of car you drive. What is important is to love each other. Support each other. Hold each other up. Enjoy more and stress less. Maybe this year I'll do things better.