Mice, salt and Santa/ham

OK, so we will go in order here. Mice. Mice seem to be a problem year after year for us. I am not a particularly messy person. I do a fairly decent job cleaning up, no food or excess crap laying around my house. Yet the mice just seem to gravitate to it. We do have a farm that backs up to our property and you know, corn field = mice. They just cross over our property line and realize they have hit pay dirt when they enter our home. Cause we have lots of good stuff for them to eat. Dog food and cat food just out. Yea, I know, out in bowls waiting for them to stuff their little cheeks full(or is that hamsters?) whatever. They have a veritable feast here. They get in my pantry and I find bags of potato chips and packages or Ramon noodles gnawed on. Nothing is too good or not good enough for these little field mice. They are apparently not particularly picky. They eat anything. So we have had mice for quite some time. Basically since we moved here we have battled them. Putting out traps with peanut butter, hoping they will take a bite and SNAP! off with their heads. Yea, that's right! I am happy for them to be dead. I do not shed a tear. Not a one! So last night while I was making dinner, Mikey opened the laundry room door and immediately slammed it shut and ran out of the room in a panic. Yea, he is a little bit afraid of mice. Has to do with the time when he was like 7, his hamster escaped and ran over him when he was on the floor playing PlayStation. Scared the crap out of him. Been afraid of rodents ever since. Can you blame him?? So anyway, after I stopped laughing (if I haven't already established this, I am one of those mean parents that enjoys seeing my kids flip out from distress brought on by rodents), I told him we would deal with the mouse problem once and for all. Of course, cocky as I am, I called my friend Trudi and told her all about the mouse Mikey found and how he was scared by it and I was just laughing! I told her that I would not even flinch if a mouse ran right by me. They are just cute little dirty rodents, nothing to be afraid of.. After I hung up with Trudi, I opened the dishwasher to load some dishes and wouldn't you know it, there was a freaking mouse in there! What the??? I swear it ran 2 inches from my fingers! I jumped back and slammed that door closed and screamed like a little girl! OK, so now this is war! So I called Mike at work and told him what had happened and that we need to find any and all entry points in our house and close them. So Mike stopped at Ace and picked up some traps(like 8 of them) and some poison and some spray stuff that you spray in the hole and it closes it up. How great is that? So he took care of setting traps and putting poison out all over the place(only where mice could get to it-not pets or kids or husbands or anything). No sooner did he put the traps out and we heard a snap! Yup, got that little bastard. Wont be running over my dishes anytime soon. Or anytime, actually. So there you have it. The mouse saga. Hopefully we will effectively prevent any new mice from entering our home and if there are any still in here, well good luck you little mouse! Your gonna need it!



Salt.... Every morning for breakfast I have half an everything bagel with veggie cream cheese and a slice of bacon on top. It is yummy! But I am out of bagels so this morning I decided on an egg sandwich. Not just any old sandwich either. I chopped up a little red pepper, a little mushroom, and scrambled it into a nice and purty. It was cooking perfectly. The toast was done and I was about to put on a little slice of cheese when I decided a little s&P would be just the thing. Sprinkle, sprinkle went the pepper. Then a dash of salt. Sprinkle................Dump! went the salt. Huh? What the? Who the ***beep*** took the ***beep***ing lid off the ***bleep***ing salt shaker?!?!??!?!!! OMG! I dumped an entire salt shaker of salt right on top of my wonderfully cooked scrambled egg. I was so pissed! Now I knew, without a doubt, that my wonderful husband(dork) took the lid off the SALT and didn't put it back on. Now the question was why? Why did he take the lid off of the salt? Who does that and why? And if they do that, why not put it back? Simple questions right??? So that is how I started my morning. Turns out in my husbands quest to close all entry points for the mice, he pulled the stove out and the salt lid fell back behind the stove(I still do not quite get why the freaking lid was taken off to begin with) But since it fell back there in the mouse turds, he decided it would be a good idea to put it in the dishwasher before putting it back on the salt shaker. Why, I don't know since the mice seem to think our dishwasher is their "Old Country Buffet". So he put the lid in the dishwasher and stuck the shaker up on the back of the stove where we keep it. But when you are standing there at the stove, you cant see the top of the shaker, only the bottom. So when I picked it up sprinkle a DASH of salt on my eggs, I had no idea the lid was missing. GRRRR!!!! Anyway, I threw that egg away and made another and all was forgiven (but not forgotten-just you wait Mike, when you least expect it....)



After breakfast I had to go to my kids school because today is the day Santa visits. Since I am president of the PTO, I figured maybe I should be there to give out the 300+ gifts(books) to the students. So I travelled around with Santa for a couple of hours visiting classrooms and handing out books. Then I went to my sons classroom to help set up for the luncheon his teacher had planned. It was really nice. He made a ham and all of the parents brought in side dishes and cookies, etc. It was delicious. After the lunch we cleaned up and I headed home. I am really tired. I still have to wrap a million gifts and make dinner and well, you know the drill. All the stuff that needs to be done. But I figured since I helped out at school I deserved a little treat. So I am having a beer. Yup, you heard me right. A nice, ice cold beer. At 2:00 in the afternoon (it's 5:00 somewhere). And it is going down nice. :)



So there ya go. Mice, salt, Santa and a ham. What a day!