The Average Blogger

Bugged

So, last week the Young Prince was off school, and he spent huge chunks of time in my office.

Today, he returned to class. So what did I do? I took the day off. Because that's just how I roll.  I'd rather have a day off by myself than take a day off with my kid and -- I don't know, do something mildly entertaining, if not outright fun.

This is not really the case, of course. It just sort of feels that way.  Actually, I took today off because I was looking around our place yesterday and was completely overwhelmed with how much stuff Really Ought To Get Done Right Frigging Now Today.  Those brush piles won't move themselves, you know! 

So I was all set. I'd work my usual 5 a.m. to 10, then as soon as someone else logged on for work, I'd go put a dent in all this yard work and maintenance and bleeblah.

Except at 10, I got up from under my laptop to find all my little ant friends had come out to play in my kitchen. 

I'm extremely exasperated with this. There I was, congratulating myself that we had finally accomplished an Easter where we didn't have an infestation that meant we had to throw out half the candy before the kid even knew it was Easter,  and the little buggers had gone and done an end run around me into my pantry.

So, I thought, at least I have a good blog post.

Then I saw on Facebook that friggin' everyone has friggin' ants. 

Oh, well. Misery, company, all that.

My main problem with ants is not so much dealing with them in the immediate crisis.  It's kind of irritating, and they are a pain to get rid of, but I don't fiddle around with it.  I don't really hold much hope for ant traps or organic deterrents or whatever.  I am a drown-them-in-poison girl.  (Yes, even in my kitchen.  And yes, as a matter of fact I do love my kid just as much as you love yours, so don't even start in on me about killing him with DDT or whatever. It may be that I love my kid more, because I will not give him a bowl of cereal that turns black when you add milk.)

(I had a roommate who suffered that fate. I don't think he has been able to eat Lucky Charms ever since.)

No, my problem  -- and I'm sure I'm not alone -- is the psych-out after-effect trauma.  I can shower three times and still feel them crawling on me.  I get a tickle in my throat and I'm sure I've swallowed one that's trying to crawl back to freedom. I get all heebiejeebied if the wind blows a little and my hair hits my neck funny. Urgh. 

The YP is not nearly as put out by all this.  He tends to ignore them -- and attract them, by creating crumbs. The only real acknowledgment he has given them was to tell me my sweeping up wasn't working:  "Mom, you need to bug-spray your broom. Half the dirt in your pile here is crawling away."

I guess I should be grateful he isn't setting them on fire with a magnifying glass, right? Or maybe not?

So I sprayed my kitchen down, then scrubbed it. Sprayed every ant trail and entry point I could find on the ground floor, then scrubbed up those. Then I went outside and pressure-washed pretty much the whole house. (This is not a reaction to ants. This was on my stay-home agenda in the first place.)

And now, it is 3 p.m. and my feet hurt and I have showered and I'm basically done for the day. I'll be knitting if you need me. Those brush piles are gonna have to move themselves. But I've got my can of Raid handy, just in case.

A Wonderful, Awful Week

Cookiefest 2010 was delightful. I think I've got the whole thing down to a pretty smooth process now that lets me actually enjoy the prep and the party, and even the cleanup, a little bit.

Congress, however, sucks.  That is all.

If they ever leave and I can stand to be near a computer for non-work-related purposes, I will post more. Meantime, I leave you with this: Another bat turned up in the kid's room Monday night. The exterminator arrives today to tell us we officially have bats in our belfry.  Around the same time, we are getting a shmancy new huge TV set for our bedroom -- which means even if the room is exorcised, the kid will never go in there again anyway, so I'm not sure why we don't just let the bats have it.  

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Our Ongoing War on Wildlife

So, last week's highlight: Another bat found its way into our house.  Our new cats are not as clever as Old Shaysie was, though, and this varmint was not so dumb as the one that got itself stuck in the door. Not Your Average Blogger had to take this one out -- and he did so, unassisted.

It all started in late afternoon. I was outside trying to fix the lights on a recalcitrant Christmas decoration when the Young Prince came flying out of the house. "Mom mom mom there is a bird no a bat well something FLYING in my room!"

"There's not a bird in your room. Come on."

There is SOMETHING! And it is FLYING! "

Then I vaguely recalled hearing the cats going a mite crazy in the room over my head while I was flipping through the mail -- but that had meant nothing at the time because they are constantly chasing each other around the house. So, hm. Went up to look, and yes, he was right.  There it was, hanging all ugly and batlike and upside down from the heating vent over the kid's bed. Shudders. We shut the door while I pondered what to do.  Called my grandmother, since I knew she'd dealt with bats in her house, and she said, "Well, it takes two of us -- your grandfather pins them with a tennis racquet and then I scoop them into a container as he gradually lifts the racquet." 

But alas, I was the only adult home, and the more I thought about standing on a bed, trying to whack a flying creature to the ground and then somehow maneuvering it into a bag, the more absurd it sounded. I asked the YP: "You want to pin it down or bag it up?"

The YP: "What? Me? NEITHER. Let's wait and let the big man deal with it."

Me: "The Big Man? This is what you call your dad now?"

YP: "That is who he is. And he can get rid of the bat."

Well. I heartily agreed. So we shut the door and put a towel under it, and left the cats in there to hunt. I went up a few hours later -- and the thing was gone. Not dead, just vanished. The cats were sprawled out on the kid's bed, but no rodent was to be seen. Not under his bed. Not up in the boxspring. Not under his dresser, in his closet, behind his bookshelves.  I moved his stuffed animals looking for it and found nothing. I then moved on to examine the closet, and nearly had a heart attack when the kid started shrieking as one of the toys fell off the shelf and hit him in the back, sending him flying out the door and down the stairs convinced he was being attacked.

NYAB came home and likewise scoured the room. Nothing.

Needless to say, after all that, there was no way the kid was going to sleep in his room that night.  Sigh.

My schedule is such that I often pass out for the night around the same time the kid does.  Which is why I was upstairs blissfully unaware when NYAB, after making the rounds of checking on his sleeping family, wandered back downstairs, saw the thing flapping around the living room, and whacked it.

I'm still a little creeped out wondering how it got into the house, and I am a lot creeped out at how it got from an upstairs bedroom to the downstairs living room when it was GONE, FREAKING GONE, because the only answer I can come up with is the heating vents and that is just not something I want to think about as I fall asleep at night right in the path of the air current. 

In other news, Christmas packages are all mailed! The decorating is done!  (Twice, even. NYAB and the YP decorated the family tree on Saturday while I worked, and then it fell over -- we suspect the bat-less cats -- so the YP and I undecorated and re-decorated on Sunday.) Baking is in full force and I'm in a mood where I might even try cinnamon rolls this year!

Next Sunday, come hell or another goddamn weekend session of Congress, we are having our cookie party.  Are y'all coming?

More Life Changes

So, about a month ago, the effin' squirrels in our yard once again went for their favorite dessert and chewed a hole in my car's fuel line. This is the third time my car's fuel line got a hole ripped in it, so it's old hat, a familiar drill.

Except, we own Saturns.  And Saturn, apparently, has stopped making fuel lines.  None, nowhere, not gathering dust on any shelf in the nation.  I suppose I could have told my mechanic to pull one off a junker in a salvage yard, true.  But then some other discontinued part would have broken, and I just don't have the time, patience or energy to deal with a Frankencar.

So we bought a new car.  We bought a Prius.  It's the first foreign car I've ever bought, and it's only the second New Car I've ever owned. We doubled the mileage on it getting it home from the dealer.  We fill the gas tank once a week instead of three times. It has a speaker plug so the iPod plays directly through the speakers without needing a radio tuner. It has satellite radio, if we want to sign up for it. It's a cute little car, and astonishingly roomy. We went to Costco and got our entire haul into the trunk without having to put the back seat down. It is also astonishingly tall. It is as tall as I am. I find this odd. 

And we park it in the garage, by god. Where the squirrels can't get it.

My mother says I'm disowned. This from a woman whose father said she was disowned for not getting an Irish setter. Huh.

All in all, not a bad purchase.  I'm quite fond of it.

WTF, Alfred?

Who am I, Tippi Hedren? This is the second day in a row I've been besieged by birds, and all that hyperactive flapping and all those sharp and shiny beaks combine to make me nervous. They are loud suckers, too. Pictures don't begin to do justice to the real thing.

Princess Margaret and I Have Something in Common...

Yesterday, I threw a shoe. 

Not with my hand. Like a horse does. Get the joke now?

My riding mower got totally bogged down in the mud. See, I have a back yard and a front yard and with all this rain the grass is outrageous in both. 

The problem is, there is a low spot with actual running water that runs between front and back.  And I have to get the mower across that slough of despond.  Usually I get very sloppy but succeed. Yesterday, not so much.  The mower got stuck, I got out to push, and the strap on one of the crappy sandals I was wearing completely ripped off as I was bracing against the machine.

I gave up and took off both shoes.  Which promptly sank, and I'm not even kidding. I have no idea where they are.

At this point, the mower was irretrievably stuck and I was helpless. NYAB was not home. The YP was playing on the driveway. 

"YP, c'mere!"
"OK, what?"
"Wait. Take your clothes off first."
"WHAT?"
"It's muddy. Get undressed, then come here."
"Well, OK." (Pause. Kid strips down.)
"YP, you can leave your underwear ... oh, nevermind. Just come here."
Mr. Dainty Paws picks his way over to me.
"Ewww. It IS muddy! Ew!"
"Yeah. OK, sit here and steer when I say steer."
"Which way? Make sure to tell me which way."

So he steered, and I pushed, and we looked like rednecks from hell but he did great and laughed most jubilantly when we got unstuck.  It was a good afternoon. Then he went and hosed off and played in the garage til his dad got home.

Meanwhile, this memo is the latest from the school. (On a much, much lighter note than past school dealings...)

"The purpose of this letter is to inform you of a disruption that occurred this morning during student arrival and resulted in a  delayed start to our instructional day. A goat somehow found its way on our school grounds. As student safety is our top priority, XX County Police, XX County Animal Control, and our School Security were on site to assist us with a safe arrival for our students. Buses were routed to the front of our building. I am pleased to report the goat was captured by animal control and taken safely to the animal shelter."

The letter goes on, but you get the point.  I kind of wonder what ancestors from one or two generations back would think of this.  Because me, I'm going, "Dude, you needed cops and animal control? For a goat? Was it rabid? Had it eaten a bomb? Because really, I could use a goat. You could have just called me and I would have showed up with a rope and a tin can and fed it and taken it home and made cheese."

Oh, well.  I guess I'll have to buy my own goat. Maybe I can pick this one up cheeeeeap!

What Is This, Hallow-Fricking-Een?

Average Blogger -- on Typepad since 2006 and still waiting for the logon page's "remember me" button to actually remember me on this machine.  Maybe a public shaming will work. Heh.

So, tomorrow we are going to New York for a whirlwind weekend visit.  Train ride, food, Guys and Dolls, sleep, train ride.

Which, coupled with the fact that Best Boss Ever let me work from home today, means I am doing laundry today. And that means it is my weekly Day Where I Notice the Basement Is a Mess.

Usually this means changing the cat boxes, sweeping up a bit, refilling the water softener salt bucket, and just doing a general inventory.  Well, I did all that today and then noticed that Gilda and/or Jane must be doing something to earn their keep -- or something -- because my laundry trolley, where I leave the bleach and dryer sheets and blabla was completely covered in mouse pellets.  Ewwww.

And a piece of insulation that ordinarily fits in the slats of the ceiling was mysteriously on the floor -- about three feet from aforementioned pellets, so I don't think the latter could have fallen on to the trolley at the same time the former fell to the floor.

So presumably, the cats heard a mousie in the basement ceiling and went after him. I hear the cats clattering around down there with some regularity, so I'm going to fervently hope they got 'im.  And I'm going to be grateful that it didn't occur to them to bring their victim up for a round of handball (pawmouse?) in my bedroom at 2 a.m., like Shays used to do.

I'm thinking all this as I head upstairs to get the wee hand-vac to clean the trolley. And then I think, Wow, these stairs are a mess too. I'll get the broom at the same time and sweep the stairs.

Well, the broom is in the garage.  And as any of you longtime readers know, the garage is fraught with peril. 

Wait, was that too obvious for foreshadowing? Yes? Sorry. Moving on. 

I open the door and grab the broom from its spot in a big wooden basket with a busted bottom. My blond wood broom. With the nice yellow broomstraws. 

And Something Black comes with it.  Black and Long. And Slithery.

And I scream like the girl I am, drop the broom, yank the screen door shut -- to keep out the bats, you know -- and shut the other door and hop around doing the EEEK OH EEK FFS EEK dance. And yes, thank you, I do know full well it is a harmless black snake and they're good guys and blablabla he wasn't as big as this guy and STFU I don't care he is in my garage and on my broom and I hate him. 

Then I call NYAB and insist he come home to Deal With This as wildlife is his damn bailiwick and not mine and I don't ask for much do I just come get the snake out of the garage and YOU LEFT THE DOOR OPEN TWO NIGHTS AGO AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!

NYAB laughs at me and tells me to take it up with Best Boss Ever, since he's the reason I'm working from home and was there for this little episode.  Harumph. Big help, he is.

I hang up with him and open the door and peek through the screen to see if the snake is still there. Yes. But he's not on my broom.  He's all collapsed in a pile in the bottom of the basket.

So I gennnnntly open the door and ease the broom out of the basket.  And open the garage door. And I tried to take pictures, but they didn't come out very well -- he's all in a bundle and looks more like a shredded bike tire, so I'm not going to post any. 

Then I go away for an hour and clean up the other traces of wildlifery in my existence.

When I go to put the broom back, the snake is gone.  So all is well.

But I ask you -- if I have to deal with mice AND snakes, couldn't I at least see that the snakes are eating mice and giving the inside cats a little help on the outside?

Sigh.

Exterminator? Or Exorcist?

"I got a question -- why don't white people just leave the house when there's a ghost in the house?"
(Note: You'll have to scroll in about 3 minutes to get to this part.)

It's a good damn question.....

Picture, if you will, a bleary-eyed Average Blogger autopiloting through her 3:40 a.m. wake-up routine:
Smack the alarm clock.
Stumble in the dark into the closet.
Find a dress that fits and isn't covered with crumbs or cat fuzz. Stumble downstairs.
Curl hair.
Realize shoes are upstairs, fumble back up in the dark. Kick a toy that says "Smile and Wave, Boys, Smile and Wave," and curse quietly because it probably woke up Not Your Average Blogger, even though he doesn't budge.
Go back downstairs, make sure the Young Prince's backpack has a snack in it. Forget to look for his water bottle.
Make sure shoes match. Find coat. Find ID badge. Grab purse. Turn off dining room light.  Go through dark kitchen and open back door to garage.

And freak right the fuck out and slam the door because OMIGOD SOMETHING IS HISSING AND MAKING SHRIEKY NOISES VERY CLOSE TO MY BODY AAAHH!!! 

Listen as shriekhissing continues. It stops.
Debate turning around right then and going back to bed. Decide sleep is impossible. Debate using front door right that second.
Stupidly decide maybe if the light is on, the creature will be visible. Turn on light. Open door again. 

See nothing and freak right the fuck out and slam the door AGAIN because OMIGOD SOMETHING IS HISSING AND MAKING SHRIEKY NOISES VERY CLOSE TO MY BODY AND I CAN'T EVEN SEE WHAT IT IS AAAHH!!! 

Listen as shriekhissing continues. It stops.
Leave a note for NYAB that there is a monster in the garage. Go out the front door.

Get into car and think, Hm. Maybe I'll see what it is if I turn on my headlights.
Open garage door, turn on high-beams. See nothing.
Blackberry a note to NYAB indicating such.
Go to work.

Four hours later, call NYAB and ask him if he has investigated.  Listen to YP singing in background as NYAB says, "Huh? What note? I haven't been in the garage. Oh... note. OK."
"So?"
"You mean you want me to look now?"
"Well, sure."
(Clunk, the phone gets put down. Footsteps. YP singing. Door opens.)
"JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY!!!" (Door slams.)
(Hear YP scud past the phone, apparently in socks.) What? What, Dad? Why did you say that?
"Never mind. Go finish your breakfast."
(Footsteps. YP singing. Clunk, the phone gets picked up.)
"It was a fucking bat stuck in the door."
"Stuck in the door? You mean the screen door? That part between the screen and the grill protecting the screen?"
"No. I mean, stuck in the screen door. Between the screen door and the actual door into the house. Like you slam your finger in a door. I don't know how it got there.  I'm going to leave it there to die. If I start messing around with it, it will wind up in the house."

Start giggling at NYAB's outburst of a few seconds earlier while simultaneously shuddering at OMIGOD A BAT WAS HISSING AND MAKING SHRIEKY NOISES VERY CLOSE TO MY BODY I MEAN MY FRICKING HEAD OMIGOD!

So, yeah. Another damn bat. What is it with those things??  Dear bats: The bugs you like to eat are OUTSIDE.  Not in my house. Not in my garage. NOT IN MY BACK DOOR. Go. Away. Or I will sic my cat on the lot of you. Love, AB.

Edited to Add: The little bastard was dead when I got home, thank goodness.  Though I'm sure I must have amused anyone who was watching as I put on my gardening gloves and hat and then opened the door with a dirt rake.  And still shrieked like a girl from four feet away when the limp thing fell from the top of the door on to the step.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsors ... (Or: WTF Is It With the Wildlife Here?)

A Washington, D.C., news outlet's early morning features were briefly delayed on Thursday when editor Average Blogger received a nasty surprise in the form of a mouse trapped in a plastic bag her cat dragged into the living room.

The mouse, still very much alive at the time Blogger uncovered it, played dead, but betrayed itself when it cocked an ear and twitched a foot, causing Blogger to leap back and shriek like a little girl while the cat leaped forward and pounced.

The mouse made a brave go of it, escaping a few times and running wildly toward the fireplace, but the cat was quicker each time, finally playing a short round of handball (pawball?) with the mouse but not quite dispatching it to its heavenly maker before getting bored and abandoning the venture.

"That effing cat," Blogger said. "I wish she'd just kill those damn things outright, not bat them into brain damage and leave the still twitchy bodies and blinky eyes for me to pick up and dispose of."

And We Don't Even Have a Belfry

I dearly love my husband, as you all well know. And we have lived together long enough now that I am pretty well attuned to his noises, even when we are on different floors of the house. "Now he is opening the garage door, now he is in the kitchen, now he is parking his keys and wallet, next he will check the table for mail..." etc.

This does not quite extend to his moments of stress, however. If I am sitting in the living room and he is cooking dinner, I can never quite tell whether a forcible "God DAMN it!!" is in reference to him hurting himself, burning something, or swearing at the ballgame on TV. More often than not, when I find out what he was swearing about, my reaction is a very unhelpful, "Really? You made so much angry noise over that? Wasn't that a bit uncalled for?"

And sometimes I get in trouble for that being my initial reaction, like on Sunday when he made that sound and it turned out bacon grease had popped into his eye.

But other times ... both our reactions are more or less spot on.

Last night, he had an event and got home late, like after-11 late. I was already asleep. I started awake when I heard the garage door open, but dozed off again when I realized it was him doing his just-got-home litany. I roused a little when I heard him come upstairs, and we had a short half-conscious-on-my-end conversation and then he headed back downstairs to eat and putter.

And I heard: "Good Fucking Christ!!!"

Only it wasn't preceded or followed by any loud bangs or shattering glass, and then I heard him shut the doors leading from our living room to our hallway -- moving at a rate rather faster than his usual speed.

Muttering a "WTF?" of my own, I got up and came downstairs.

"There's a bird in our house."

"Huh?" (Ardent, you will like this part: When I had dozed off earlier, it was during the X Files episode "Chimera" -- the one with the ravens. So you see, I was having a stroke when I said, "huh?")

"THERE'S A BIRD IN OUR HOUSE. How did you not see this thing?"

"Errrr... it wasn't in here before I went to bed? A bird? Are you sure it's not a bat?"

"I think it's a bird. And that stupid cat. She's just sitting in there. She couldn't care less ... oh, wait, now she sees it."

At this point I was standing behind him, so all I could see was white Oxford button-down shirt and a teeny bit of the living room ceiling as he peeked through the doors.

Then he abruptly turned and shouldered past me. "Well, whatever it is, I'll be damned if it goes upstairs. I'm going to shut the kitchen doors." He headed back around through the hall into the dining room.

I peeked through the living room doors, and sure enough, something was very busy flapping away around our living room and breakfast nook. I still thought it might be a bat, but we have had countless sparrows get trapped in our garage, so it seemed possible one could zing from there into our kitchen, especially as much as the Young Prince leaves doors open. Then too, I've never really observed the flying habits of birds inside houses, so I couldn't be sure.  But it did seem to be awfully hyper and not ever alighting anywhere.

NYAB, having shut the doors, completed the downstairs circuit as he ducked into my view. "OK, I'm going to open the back door and hope it flies out." And he headed out on to our deck. I hadn't heard him open the kitchen door leading to the garage, so I went off to do that and give the thing two outlets.

At this point the whole scenario sort of went Wide World of Sports in my mind.

Annnd, it's taking another spin around the living room ... Makes a fast break left and zips through the kitchen, but retreats back to the living room ... Whoops, a misstep there as it thwacks into the fireplace. And it's heading for the door! Ohhh, so close. But it misses and takes another lap.

Etc., etc. I still hadn't gotten a very good look at the thing, mostly because I'm a shrill shrieky girly-girl when it comes to things skittering around my house at eye-level, but also because it was flying fast enough that it looked like it might hurt if it banged into me (not to mention claws and ... beak? teeth?) so I kept reflexively ducking and cringing and wincing whenever it came within 8 feet of me.

I ventured out of the garage and into the kitchen to see if I could get a better look while it was back in the living room. Just as I said, "That is SO not a bird, it's a bat!" I saw it slap  into the window. And then there was a flash of white, a flash of dark, and then I heard a very tiny but horrible eek-eek-eeee.

At first I thought it had flown so hard into the window that it had gotten between the curtains and knocked itself out. But no.  Our mighty huntress-cat Shays had finally stretched herself, hopped up onto the couch, and taken the thing out in midair.

NYAB called from out on the deck, "I think she killed it. On her second try. She's got it in her mouth. And yeah, I think it was a bat."

"Well for god's sake, don't distract her, you know how she is. She carries things around in her mouth and then she spits them out and they skibble off again."

He said, "Erm, not this time. She just dropped it and it's not moving. Yeah, looks like a bat."

We met in the dining room and both looked down at the limp little furry ex-rodent while the cat sort of preened and licked her paws.

And then my big brave husband got several paper towels and the dustpan and disposed of the body while I danced around on my tiptoes with my shoulders squinched up around my ears and my hands flapping as I sang the "Ew! Ew! Eww!" song. Sigh.

We still don't know how it got in here, or why it waited for NYAB to get home to make its presence known. Here's hoping it was a lone gunman. I don't want to be doing this every night.