me vs. the mouse (part II)

So after four days of actively avoiding the yellow tv room, ignoring it, except for my daily site check to make sure my barricade is in tack and fully mouseproof, I saw him again. I had just warmed up my morning coffee, wandered over inspect my structure, when I saw him. I choked on my sip and just about sent my steaming cup of brew flying across the room. He seemed darker this time, sitting on the rug by the door. My shuffling and sputtering must of scared him, and he took off to some corner, out of sight.

The good news: he's still in the family room.

The bad news: I'm pretty sure he's made his home in the couch.

mouse-capades

What do you do when there’s a mouse in your house?

It was just after twelve and I was curled up on the couch, channel surfing through early morning tv, when I spotted the small, furry, pad-footed intruder, scurrying across the hearth of the fire place. I froze, crushing my eyelids together, hoping it wasn’t real…not now, not when I’ve got nowhere to go, not when I’m the manliest person in the house with the gumption to deal with this. What on earth do I do?

This isn't the first time I've had run-ins with fuzzy houseguests. In my student home there was William and Elizableth, two garbage hoarders that our pacifist cat Jack liked to catch and release. Then there was Edward, the two-inch ball of white lightning that lived in the living room couch in Tanzania (note: custom-made roadside furniture often comes with inhabitants). And now Jean-Marc, the first mouse bold enough to risk squatting in the house of the most musophobic (look it up) woman I've ever called Mom.

So like all good pacifist, vegetarian, city girls, I did a panicky little dance and then barricaded the doorway between the den and the kitchen with a card-table, some 2x4s, and electrical tape. Mum and dad get home in four days.

black magic

I started dancing with the dark side at age nine. The Craft was in theatres, and there were five of us, crouched behind the fence in the school yard, wasting a season chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” and willing out finger tips to channel enough to magic to make a body float.

Since then, the only real magic I’ve found is the spark I’ve conducted from the occasional faulty electrical socket. But if I did have the power to conjure something from nothing, I would choose the following:

boots by jeffrey campbell

dress by a.p.c.

boyfriend built-for-natalie

craft-a-holics anonymous

The biggest challenge for a pathological crafter is finding a balance between how adorable the craft is and how long it takes to make it. I’ve got boxes of semi-patched clothing, right socks, and un-mailed letters scrawled onto home-made stationary- all projects whose stylistic value fell victim to the ridiculous time spent cutting, sewing, and gluing them together.

Lately my hour’s break from the job search has devolved into afternoons of decoupage. My new obsession…personalized greeting cards.