Mice Are Not Nice - A Sequel

The gauntlet has been thrown. This. Is. War.

Every Friday, after my preschool kiddos leave at noon, I get the room ready for Monday morning by changing the helper chart, the letter of the week poster, and the weekly Bible verse poster, all of which requires me to get in a wooden cabinet that sits against the back wall of my classroom. This is also the location for our Circle Time. I sit on a little chair about 6 inches away from the cabinet when the kids are at Circle Time. I keep my stereo and cds on top of the cabinet. I get in the cabinet daily for such things as birthday pencils, dry erase markers, and stickers.

Inside the cabinet. Well, half of it.
Looks innocent enough....

I opened the cabinet door today and caught a whiff of - mouse pee.

GAHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Looked a little closer and saw the inside of the cabinet was liberally sprinkled with mouse poo. HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT EARLIER WHEN I WAS GETTING OUT A BIRTHDAY POEM?!

Smarties detritus

The first thing I noticed (after noticing the poo) was a bag of Smarties, which had only been in the cabinet for a week, with a hole chewed in it (stupid mouse - the bag was OPEN). Smartie wrappers and Smartie mess everywhere. 

Little mousie nibbles on Smarties.

Armed with latex gloves, paper towels, spray cleaner and bleach spray, I began taking everything out of the cabinet, shaking it over a blanket of paper towels to flush out loose poo, and then cleaning each item with the spray cleaner, followed by a liberal dose of bleach water.

It. Was. Disgusting.

It's a good thing I have no idea what'
these remotes go to.

Candy mess was EVERYWHERE, as was poo. And mousie pee, which is less visible but very vile smelling.

The little rodent wasn't happy with just Smarties. Oh, no, he also found a couple suckers that he took out of a box and carried about a foot away (isn't that a mile in mouse distance?), making a sticky mess. He also found a mini Tootsie Pop and opened THAT and worked on the sucker.

The little sonofabitch didn't make
it to the tootsie roll center
of the tootsie pop.

And then, the worst discovery of all. My penguin was violated.

He looks so sad.

Suckers stuck to his feet and one to his ass (not pictured). Poo not only on his feet (that IS pictured) but on his shoulder as well. HIS SHOULDER! THE MOUSE CLIMBED UP ON HIM AND POOPED ON HIS PENGUIN SHOULDER! And right before "P" week!

Two hours later, the cabinet was empty, the shelves washed and sprayed with bleach water. The candy and anything he peed on was thrown away. My poor, pitiful penguin got a shower in bleach water and was set out to dry. 

So, Mr. Mouse. Be forewarned that it was ONE thing for you and your friends and family members to get into the craft closet and make a mess there. But you have DESECRATED MY PENGUIN! Not to mention what you did to my Smarties, remotes, All About Me poster and ladybug beanbag.

My only consolation is that I know that SOMEWHERE in that building, there is a fat mouse in a diabetic coma, suffering from severe tooth decay.

Nonetheless, GAME ON, MOUSE! GAME ON.

Me vs. Machine: Part 2

An addendum to my previous post:

Verrrrry old building

Tonight, I decided to venture to the top floor of the Y to confront the elliptical machines there. Now, the downtown Y is in an ancient building, probably close to 100 years old. You get quite a workout just walking up three flights of stairs to the floor with the weights and cardio machines.

The top floor, I discovered the other night, has mood lighting. Yep. It looks kind of like an indoor mini golf course. There is a running track that loops through the middle, then tucked away in corners are some treadmills, ellipticals, and stationary bikes. 

I approached an area that held four elliptical machines. One was occupied by a woman. I climbed on a machine. And nothing happened. The control panel didn't light up. It was really dark up there, so I couldn't READ any of the buttons, but I pressed them anyway. I shuffled my feet. Nothing. So I moved to the next machine. Climbed on. Pressed buttons. Shuffled my feet. Aaaaaand nothing. 

Seeing me waving my arms at the machine and talking smack to it, the woman next to me said the machine would start up as soon as I started using it (which, in turn, feels like you're trying to steer a car after the power steering has gone out). After a small struggle, I got it going. But with every step I took, there was a loud squawk that sounded as if I were stepping on a bird. Even with earbuds in and music playing, I could hear the squawk, so I got off THAT machine and moved back to the first one I was on. I decided to watch a little tv instead of listening to music, so once I got the control panel activated, I turned on the little tv that is mounted on the top. Chose the Colbert Report to watch. Unplugged the earbuds from my phone and prepared to plug them into the tv. Aaaaaaaaand no earphone jack. Anywhere. Of course, since the dim lighting meant I couldn't SEE anything that wasn't a brightly lit LED message, I had to feel all over the control panel for a jack. Then I used my flashlight app on my phone and looked. Still nothing. I decided I wasn't cut out for the combination of mood lighting and elliptical machines, so I got down, gathered up my stuff, and moved back downstairs.

I felt like an old pro when I clambered onto the elliptical this time.

I tried sticking my phone in my sports bra instead of my waistband, as suggested by my friend Dawn, and my boob tried to make a phone call. Phone went back to waistband of my yoga pants and only fell down my leg one time. Progress.

I did learn something (besides that my eyes are too old to operate machinery in dim lighting). I discovered if you think you're all that, you do the elliptical without holding onto the machine. Apparently, this makes it easier to flirt with the weight lifters. That's okay. I out-boobed her. 

And if I had stayed on the top floor, I would have missed the young woman of questionable sanity in the weight machine room, sitting on a leg press machine in the corner, eating chips and drinking from a can of Pepsi, then shoving the leg press with her feet and then allowing the weights to crash down when she released it. All of this was done with a variety of sound effects, none of which I care to think about ever again.


Best part? I made it thirty minutes IN A ROW on the elliptical machine without passing out. I. Am. AWESOME.

Me vs. Machine

Looking over my list of goals, it appears I stand a better chance of moving to Nashville WITH Jimmy Carter than I do of mastering the elliptical machines at the Y.

I've been on two different machines at two different locations, and I've been an "I Love Lucy" episode every time. 

In three days of workouts, I have fallen off the machine, knocked my phone off more times than I can count, gotten tangled in my earbuds, and tried to remove my fleece pullover with my earbuds still in my ears. I've stood on it, trying to figure out how to program something that has NO DIRECTIONS on it and talked to myself out loud. (I've also talked to the elliptical machine out loud to no avail - it's not coughing up its programming secrets). I've tried, nonchalantly, to look at my elliptical neighbors and see how THEIR machine are programmed, but I can't make them out. And they are pointedly ignoring me, perhaps even wishing I would just give it up and go home. (They obviously don't know me at all.)

I always forget to plug my earbuds into my phone and open Pandora until I get on the machine, then have to stand there and balance while pushing buttons on my phone (think balancing while having each foot in a different canoe). Because I don't have one of those cool arm bands to hold my phone, I have to tuck it into the waistband of my yoga pants (as yoga pants have no pockets). Then, at least once during my workout, sometimes more often, the phone works its way loose and falls down my pant leg, hanging by the earbud cord. Be assured there is NO graceful way to retrieve it.

I'm not going to go into the rest of the workout. How I forget that just because I can't hear anyone else while wearing the earbuds, they can certainly hear ME when I sing out loud. How, once you get the hang of the machine and think you're all bad ass, you find that you're panting after a minute and a half. And that each minute feels like about twenty. And that stopping is awkward at best, putting you squarely back in the feet-in-two-canoes scenario. And, if you forget that you have put your phone on the little ledge of the control panel because you were tired of fishing it out of your britches, then you might, MIGHT yank it off the ledge when you step off, violently popping the earbuds out of your ears and sending the phone crashing to the floor, usually landing right under the foot pedals.

I have only begun to fight.

It's A Goal, Not A Resolution

I hate New Year's resolutions. I think a bucket list is negative, since it implies that I am going to die and that's not something I wish to contemplate at this time. So instead, as one of my blogging heroes suggested, I am going to make a list of goals that I wish to achieve, if not this year, then SOME DAY. (There's a chance some of them might not really be considered "achievable" by some of you nattering nabobs.)

1. Achieve a well-toned body.  I was on my way there when the stupid cancer drugs that caused the stupid menopause and screwed up the stupid hormonal balance caused my muscles to go to mush. I WILL be back.

2. Go back to LA to visit. 

3. Meet Jimmy Carter.

4. Be a mentor for other women facing breast cancer, and especially so for women who are planning to have tram flap reconstruction. I am a wealth of information on that! 

5. Take my daughter to NYC to see plays on Broadway and see the Rockettes.

6. Make a decision on a paint color for my bedroom and then actually paint the room. It's only been 14 years since we moved here. I think it's time.

7. Finish my son's scrapbooks before he graduates this spring. And since I'm, oh, about 9 years behind, this MIGHT be considered one of those unattainable goals.

8. Move back to Nashville. In lieu of this, then visit Nashville way more often than I do now.

9. Figure out Twitter. The learning curve is a steep one for me. Although I totally didn't get Pinterest at first, either, and now I'm one hell of a pinner, so there's hope.

10. My husband recently pointed out that pretty much everything I eat has a bar code, as in I eat a lot of processed food. So, instead of just PINNING vegetable recipes on Pinterest, I'm going to make an effort to actually cook and eat them. (He also says potatoes don't count, which is a shame, because one-third of the veggie recipes I have pinned do, indeed, include potatoes.)


Ready, set, go!

Out With The Old, In With The New

Buh-bye, 2012! Can't say I'm going to miss you much.

This is not a good picture.
We're cuter than this, usually....

You brought me some good stuff, like bringing my person back into my life, reminding me often that I have two very bright and witty children, introducing me, via my friend Dawn, to Philosophy Amazing Grace (I should be paid by them for plugging their products so much).

You also brought me some crap. Well, really, one big ol' piece of crap that you dropped in the middle of my life, where it proceeded to ripple outwards, ring upon ring. 

I walked into 2012 with cancer, although I didn't know it at the time. I'm leaving 2012 without it. Okay, without my boobies, too, but that's all good, because I have the new ones now (they're AWESOME - have you heard?). And the flat stomach. 

In retrospect, I guess ALL those ripples weren't bad.

But I'm done now. Keep your crap, 2012.

And bring it on, 2013. I can take it.

This Is My Winter Song

What would you think if I were to tell you that I really hate the week between Christmas and New Year's? 

After all the anticipation, the parties and events, the endless sweets, the shopping, the stress of getting the gifts just right, there is such an emotional let down after the last package is opened.

Christmas decorations start to look pathetic to me. Driving around town, I see wreaths looking bedraggled, strands of Christmas lights drooping, outdoor holiday displays in disarray. The sky and the landscape are all in shades of gray and brown, making it difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

It's downright depressing.

And then my personal soundtrack during this time of limbo plays this song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. The melody is haunting and causes me to feel cold down to my very core. And that's without even paying attention to the lyrics, which I don't because they are so very sad.

Come on, New Year. I'm waiting.

Well, I Certainly Learned Something

Things I have learned while cleaning out a preschool craft closet located in the very bowels of the church:

Mice are not nice, contrary to what cartoons may suggest.

NOT. CUTE.

"Good enough" really isn't good enough.

100+ year old buildings have many, many nooks and crannies in them.

Mice do not like rice.

But birdseed? That, they like. A lot.

If everyone treated everything like it was something precious to them, there would be less closets to clean out.

Please don't look in the closets at my house.

For some tasks, there just isn't enough chocolate.

The storage container companies should get together and make their lids interchangeable. 

If nearly everything from INSIDE a closet is piled OUTSIDE a closet, completely blocking the only exit, and if I should HAPPEN to see a mouse where I wasn't EXPECTING to see a mouse, I can find myself on the other side of that pile of closet contents without knowing how I got there.

Leaving LOTS AND LOTS OF BIRDSEED in a closet without putting it inside tightly sealed containers means you're just ASKING for it.

Powdered heavy-duty latex gloves suck all the moisture out of my hands.

Which is a conundrum, because they also make my hands sweat.

Glitter doesn't vacuum up very well. Neither does ultra-fine play sand. Using a crappy vacuum cleaner doesn't make it any better.

Know how to make yourself really aggravated? Take a container that has the contents of a large bottle of glitter spilled inside it and then accidentally dump it on the carpet.

There IS such a thing as saving too many empty baby food jars.

Whatever horrible, disfiguring disease I might get from breathing in mouse poo is still better than the claustrophobic feeling I get when wearing a mask over my nose and mouth.

If I had a dollar, no, even just a PENNY, for every grain of rice in that closet (most of which has been dyed every color of the rainbow), I would be writing this from a warm, beachy kind of place.

And, in case you are interested, the current tally is Mouse 3, Dyanne 1. Just remember, she who laughs last did NOT get caught in a glueboard or trap.

(Okay, yes, I DID get my gloved hand caught in a glueboard while I was working on the closet. I'd have just glossed over that if it weren't for the fact that I had several witnesses see me do it.)