Decisions, Decisions

  I took the girls to a dentist appointment after school. There I learned that I had rescheduled the appointment and we were 9 weeks early. Obviously I felt thrilled about this and drove home in a foul mood. Getting all 3 situated at the table to do their homework, I threatened all with slow painful extremity extractions if anyone ate Halloween candy, fought, cried or whinned while I went upstairs to take a shower to soak my head.  Sometimes all I have left is to wash anyway the anger, annoyance and general pissiness I feel when I stuff up my job. I've had quite a few stuff ups recently and while the co-owner swears he is not looking to restructure the organization, no matter how much I plead, I've been feeling really down lately and needed to quickly alter my mood.

While in the shower I opened the window so I could listen outside to downstairs for indications of anarchy and chaos. Some quite mutterings of "Kill you while you sleep" and "I'll tell everyone at school who you're in love with" floated up to my ears. This is a good thing. As anyone with a kid old enough to crawl will tell you, silence is never to be greeted cheerfully. Silence means they are actively trying to keep quiet so they can cover somethg bad up.  You drop and run when its quiet. The other end of the spectrum is total blood letting and keening, that's not good either.  It's painful on the ears, a bugger to clean up and the neighbors can get peckish.

This playful preamble to war is exactly what I need to hear to know that I still have 10 minutes until First Blood is drawn; plenty of time to do a hair treatment!

When the shower ended I was reminded again of the power of Mother Nature though.  I turned off the water and reached down and picked up my towel. I am not legally blind but I'm close. My vision is 20/400. Well in the US it is, I have no idea what the measurements are in Australia- damn metric system. Hold your hand up in front of your face and pull back about 6 inches (Aussies, use the many free conversion apps available to see what that is in centimeters) at about 6 inches things get fuzzy and beyond that its all blurry shapes. 

However I can see well enough in my light-colored tile bathroom when a black, fuzzy shape the size of a sausage roll goes scurrying across the floor and out the door into my bedroom.

I find that in situations like this while screaming doesn't help per say, it can be cathartic. If nothing else I exercised my lungs fairly nicely. When I stopped screaming and the sobbing subsided a bit I was able to crawl out of the tub and find my glasses and put them on. Ironically the cat chose that time to saunter in and demand supper. He and I seemed to have a failure to communicate as my stuttering, hiccuping, sign language gestures pointing him to my room didn't convey the proper message.  He took it to mean,"Crazy broad isn't pouring the kibble now, I should probably groom something" Ever eager to please, Monty began beautifying himself.  My hero.

I moved a few things around and made a half-assed attempt to find the creature...lizard, mouse, rat, land shark, whatever the Hell it is.  I couldn't see it. So as the only responsible adult in the house I did the only socially acceptable thing.

I went downstairs, found Teddy and made him go look for it. Sure some of you do-gooders might balk at me sending in a kid to collect something that scares the Hell outta me. You might even be a bit judge mental and say that I should handle it on my own, like an adult.

Whatever.

I sent my first born up the stairs and turned my back on the whole mess. I give him credit, he didn't flinch. Of course by this time he'd have walked across broken glass surrounded by all the Year 6 girls screaming One Direction songs in order to get away from his sisters. Yes, I took advantage of that. Judge all you want. I'll sleep just fine. Or at least I would have if another, fundamentally more problematic.

He didn't find anything. No creature at all. This creates a real difficult situation for me.

My dilemma isn't that he couldn't find it.  I can just sleep on the couch tonight until I'm sure the little bugger is gone, no problem.  No, my problem is figuring out whether or not to tell the girls about my intruder.  If I do, Connor will become hysterical and will be terrified that whatever is up there will get her.  She will fixate on the creature not being located.We are looking at least 3 or 4 nights straight of her waking up sobbing, which will slowly dissapate over the next few weeks. No one is going to be sleeping well for a very long time.

On the other hand...she will never set foot in my room again and my 6 am "Just wanted to say hi to the cat" wake up calls will stop. I will be able to take a shower without one of them barging in to see what I'm doing that's taking so long. I can go into hiding on the weekends with my iPad and not be interrupted every 30 minutes with," I miss you Mommy, I haven't seen you in weeks," My bedroom will become my own sacred DMZ.

As God as my witness I don't know what to do.

Interesting Habits of Wildlife in Australia or Why I Now Use Baileys as Cream in My Tea

My morning began as most do in my house.  I opened my eyes and immediately grabbed the precious - my iPhone, and began checking news, weather and of course, Facebook.  I know, I have a slight addiction problem.  I really don't care.  The girls came barging in to rat each other out, cry about having wake up, complain about the global economy....actually not sure about the last one, to be honest I stopped listening about 30 seconds into the melee.  I shooed them out so I could get dressed.  About 15 seconds later Connor came running in, "Mommy, do you know the tall curtains we have downstairs?"  Yes Connor, I've heard of them.  "Well, um, well, there's a mouse on top of them!"  O-kay.  Quite honestly, I was not expecting that.  But then again, I couldn't say it was impossible.

So I throw on my shirt, and head down the steps.  We get halfway down the steps and Connor starts screaming, "See, See, See!!!"  Well, no.  I don't.  I bend down and peer over the railing and look about 15 feet away and damn it all, there it is.  The Australian Hopping Mouse.  It's about the size of an American Field Mouse only it has bigger ears and it hops like a kangaroo.  Only it has a problem.  It's on top of the curtain rod located near the top of our extremely high ceiling.  I think about 14 feet. 

Of course Connor is the one that sees it. I would have come downstairs and missed the little bastard completely.  But not Connor.  Nooooo.  She saw it because there was Monty sitting on the floor staring up at it.  Monty must have brought it in to play with and it got the best of him and ran up the curtains.

Ok.  So now I have a problem. 

1. I have a damn live mouse stuck inside my house.
2. It's waaaaayyy up high and no real way to get to it.
3. Ted has already left for work.
4. Connor is starting to slowly become unglued and turning into Sybil.
5. I have not had any tea

Right.  I called Ted on the train for suggestions.  Captain Genius suggests throwing cat at mouse.  I was actually glad that he then went through a tunnel so it cut off the stream of profanities I vomited at him.  Note to self: come up with alternative meanings for words for Tessi.  So I get Teddy up and ask him if he had any ideas.  Poor kid, he also needed tea and needed a few minutes to figure out his name and what the Hell I was talking about.  He offered to go up the ladder and try and get it.  Now, before the good mothers of the world start crying fowl at me sending my child to face the demon, bite me.  Go ahead, call me names, turn me in.  I don't care.  It was him or me and I chose him.  He offered.  It wasn't coerced.

The next twenty minutes was quite possibly the most calamitous of not only my life but I dare say, most peoples lives. 

I get the ladder and Teddy and I begin the process of unfolding it.  It's one of those 600 different position ladders and the two of us, plus Tessi "helping" we finally get it set up to have Teddy get the mouse.  Teddy starts to climb towards Mickey and then Connor bellows, 'KOOKABURRA!!!!"  I start looking around the living room because I'm sure it's come in too.  But no.  She's pointing out the window.  So Teddy, Tessi and I, like the lemmings we are stop, turn and walk towards the window.  Sure enough, there's a Kookaburra outside.  It takes me a full 20 seconds before I realize, "Jesus, we LIVE here, we see Kookaburras all the time!  We have to get the mouse!!"  Back at the task at hand.

Mice, no matter what continent they are from, do NOT like having strange people try to pick them up.  This mouse started running back and forth along the curtain rod squealing it's head off.  At one point he slipped and fell down a bit onto the upper window sill and Teddy (I helped!! I herded it with a long pole) was able to coax it onto his hand and he started the climb down the ladder to take it outside.  Sadly though, the mouse decided to bite Teddy (no broken skin) and then Teddy yelling, flinging the mouse back onto the curtain and the bastard scurried back up to the top.

I've sent the girls out of the room to damper the sound of the screaming, Monty is running back and forth trying to glare the mouse to death, Sasha starts barking at a neighbor walking down the street and that's when I noticed that Teddy's new Siamese Fighting Fish wasn't moving.  I run over, "Oh Christ, no!!  Don't' be dead!!!!"  Then Teddy comes over, "He's not dead, I taught him to do that"  What?  I look back, the damn fish wiggles 1 fin....twice.  Then stops.  Then the other fin...twice again.  Then he starts moving for real.  What. the. Hell. Never mind, I've got Mickey running around 14 feet above my head.
This is when we learned about the hopping.

The mouse began running along the curtain rods, and then hopped between them.  All four.  Back and forth. Speedy Gonzalez here is racing along the rods and when he gets to the end he hops to the wall, bouncing off onto the next rod.  It was like watching those people in LA who spend time bouncing off of walls to climb up buildings.  He's running and hopping and squealing, did I mention the squealing?

I get the super long broom and head towards the window and that's when I noticed that Damn Dog has peed on the floor.  For the first time in my life, that was not the most horrifying thing in my immediate area.  So I race to the window, Teddy has repositioned the ladder, has climbed up, catch reach so I put the broom by the mouse just to stop him from running.  Speedy smacks into the broom, falls off onto my sewing machine and stops cold.  I fling open the sliding doors and put on my best Dave Winfield stance and swing for the cheap seats.  I moved him 2 feet but at least he's by the door.  Teddy pops him outside and chases him out into the bush.

Connor comes out of hiding, "Yea!! We got the mouse!"

I looked at her, didn't say a word and went into the kitchen and poured my tea.

I'll admit it.  After I took the kids to school I went to the shops and bought champers and a tub of chocolate frosting.  Judge all you want.  I'll be sitting in the corner and blinking a lot.