Mouse House

Apparently, mouse invaders have a schedule. At this same time last year,** we discovered mouse turds and murdered two mice. After we found the second mouse, I got an ultrasonic, electoromagnetic magic forcefield.

I assumed it worked, since we didn’t have another mouse for an entire year!

However, last night I was turning off the lights before bed and I heard a noise that almost sounded like a leak in the walls. (It was raining and we have new, noisy LeafGuard gutters.) I went into the kitchen, turned on the light, and it stopped. I woke up Rob and we listened as it started up again, and identified it as a critter in the pantry.

We have so much opened food in there, cereal boxes, etc. Not to mention paper oatmeal packets and foil-wrapped granola bars, which apparently mice can chew through, because one had been nibbled on. Rob, with broom in hand ready to whack, pulled out some of the boxes of cereal and discovered droppings. We couldn’t find the mouse but we set traps. It hadn’t been caught as of this morning. I can’t wait to go home and check the traps!

I also ordered another ultrasonic, electromagnetic force field, just in case it helps to plug one in closer to the pantry.

**This is a reminder of the advantages of regular blogging. I have easily accessible documentation of the last incident. I had completely forgotten it happened the day of the Super Bowl … and even thought it might have been more than a year ago.

Nemesis

At the risk of offending someone I don’t know, but who shares the pronunciation of my name (I’m guessing), I want to share the discovery of “The Kari Safari,” not to be confused with Rhymes with Safari.

Interestingly, her blog appears to be mostly movie reviews. Interesting, because of course, I am trained in the art of reviewing movies. I have a degree in it.

The Other Kari has not posted lately, so maybe she’ll never discover that I’ve linked to her. But if she does, I have to ask, why go by the nickname “Kartard”? It’s offensive to both Karis and retards, which I’m perhaps erroneously assuming is the derivation. Her last name could be Tard. In which case, I apologize.

I told my brother that people coming across this blog will not mistake it for mine, because I would never go by Kartard.

He said, “That’s not for you to decide, Kartard.”

Can you imagine if I Twittered?

I don’t know what to say. Which is precisely the problem. All the random thoughts I want to share with the Internet have become Facebook status updates instead of blogs, and that’s where I’ve been posting photos too.

Partly, because I’ve tried to remain anonymous here, I have virtually no audience, and the things I say on Facebook get reactions from people I went to junior high with. Junior high! Would those people visit my blog, I wonder?

When I first started blogging, I sent the link to everyone I knew and cared about. But many of them, not bloggers themselves, paid little attention. Then I started worrying that something I wrote could come back to haunt me. Wouldn’t want my boss to read my blog!

Somehow, Facebook has made it OK for people to use their own names again. Play Scrabble with their bosses. It’s one-stop shopping…if you’re already on it, writing about yourself, you don’t even have to take an extra step to check in on me.

I wonder, if I thought more people would read my blog, if I would blog more? I took the first step, which was posting the link to this blog under “websites” on my Facebook profile.

Nothing happened. Mostly I’m not afraid of anything I wrote within the past year or two … but if someone really wanted to learn all my secrets, those archives to the right are a treasure trove. Or Pandora’s Box.

The really bold move would be to actually post one of my entries on Facebook. I’m not quite ready for that…

I told you Stew was a girl

I love it when I’m right.

More than a year ago, Stew was acting a little sluggish and not eating, and I thought she might be “egg-bound.” I did some internet reading and learned that you can help female iguanas lay their eggs by creating an egg box. If they are unable to lay the eggs, they can die.

I filled Isis’ first carrier (which she had long ago outgrown) with playground sand and duct-taped all the openings but one entry point and put the enormously heavy thing in Stew’s habitat. I think maybe she went in it once, but she didn’t lay any eggs, and after a while she seemed back to normal, so I put the sand-filled carrier out in the shed.

A month or so ago, I noticed Stew was hardly eating, and her poops were unusually dry (too much info?). Thinking she might be dehydrated, I started spritzing her regularly. Iguanas don’t really drink water, they absorb moisture through the air and get it from their food.

For a few weeks now, she’s been crazy active. We hear her scrambling all around in her habitat, and she’s even ventured to the second and first floors. (We built ramps, but she mostly just hangs out on the top floor all the time).

And then this morning, when I went to feed her, I discovered 17 or so eggs rolling around in there with her. She did kind of bunch up the newspaper, so maybe that was sort of a nest, but apparently she didn’t need sandy substrate or a dark place to lay her eggs.

I’m so pleased, because I feel like this is a sign of good health. (I hope I haven’t just jinxed myself right before I’m going to leave town for a few days and won’t be able to keep an eye on her.) The eggs of course are infertile, as she’s never known the love of a male iguana.

Ch-ch-chains, chains of fools


As it turns out, my cute little car is crap in the snow. I miss my Honda CR-V for the first time since gas prices skyrocketed to $4-plus (oh, how smart I felt back then).

It’s not a huge deal, as there aren’t many days when snow is on the ground around here. But I’ve never been scared to drive before.

Don’t remember when I first drove in the snow. Maybe in high school during a trip to Lake Arrowhead? I think I was given some tips about turning into the skid or whatever, and was driving my dad’s Jeep.

I had my own little SUV by the time I lived in Chicago, and had nary a problem that winter. Nor in D.C. the following year. Nor when I drove to New York City for New Year’s 2000, leaving earlier than planned from my apartment in Alexandria, Va., so as to beat a forecast blizzard. My friend’s father moved my car from the street into the parking garage at his building in the middle of the night, to save me from getting snowed in. But no trouble driving home.

This is my 6th winter in Washington, the second without my CR-V. We didn’t have any snow to speak of last year that stuck around very long. Alas, this year, we’ve had a doozy and are expected to get more snow tonight and tomorrow. (Have canceled plans to go to the company Christmas party Monday in Olympia, even though I can take the company — i.e. government — Ford Explorer to get there.)

Last Sunday, my car wouldn’t go up a very slight incline to Rob’s parents’ house. They told me later that no one can get up that street without 4-wheel drive. They assured me that I’d have no trouble in my own driveway. Still, I hadn’t moved my car since Tuesday.

I did shovel the foot of snow off of it on Thursday, as I contemplated going to the grocery store, but then chickened out. What if I slid down and couldn’t get back up? I am fortunate that I can work from home and had a swell ol’ time on Wednesday and Thursday, taking occasional breaks to attempt a snowman and throw snowballs at my dog, who caught them in her mouth.


This was working out great, I thought. I’m never going back to the office! But someone called Friday morning, telling me that she needed someone to let her in, because she was scheduled for a video-conference meeting. Couldn’t get a hold of the one other person who was supposed to be in the office that day, so I went ahead and backed out of the driveway.

No problem at all. No problem, even, pulling into the parking lot at my office, which was still piled high with snow, because apparently no one else in the neighboring offices had come to work since Tuesday either.

A few minutes before I planned to leave, a maintenance guy came in and asked if I could move my car to the other side of the lot, as there was a leak and they were going to be pushing all the snow from the roof to the place where my car was. No problem whatsoever; I backed my car out and parked it in a new snow drift, next to the aforementioned Ford Explorer.

This time, when I backed out, my wheels spun and didn’t want to go. How embarrassing. The maintenance guys would see me and laugh. I had a set of chains in my car that I was going to have to ask them to help me assemble. Or…I was going to have to leave my car there and clear the snow from the Explorer and take it home (then worry about getting in trouble for using the GSA car for personal use). But I pulled forward and back several times and got that sucker out.

The slope of my driveway on the other hand, was not so easily conquered. I can only get halfway up it. See? I was right to be concerned. Never should have moved my car in the first place!

Monkey man

If you don’t follow SYTYCD (Canada or otherwise), surely you’d like to hear the latest on my dog.

While we were in California for Thanksgiving, Isis tore the legs off of one of the first toys we ever got her. A stuffed monkey with stretchy legs we cleverly named “Monkey Man.” Rob got it for her while Isis and I were still in California (also for Thanksgiving).

She tears apart most toys, sometimes within minutes of putting her mouth on them. (The pink leopard ring is still intact, though, Aunt Louise. She loves it.) So we weren’t troubled by the dismemberment of Monkey Man. He was 2 years old, which is a long time in dog toy years.

This morning I was watching Isis on the petcam. She looked like she was licking her feet, but then I noticed something between her paws. The red smile was the giveaway. It was a sock monkey I made in 2004 from a kit given to me as a going away present three jobs ago.

That monkey, along with an E.T. doll from Quin and a teddy bear named Stanley that was given to me in 1996, had been perched on top of the couch since well before Isis adopted it as her bed.

Oh look, here’s a picture of Sock Monkey dangling provocatively over her head. Clearly, she used a lot of will power to resist him until now.


Somehow, she has always been able to tell the difference between toys she is meant to devour, and my fuzzy slippers, for example, or our beloved Hot Diggity Dogs. Oh sure, there’s been the odd confusion over a cat-shaped Halloween pillow and the feather-stuffed couch, but mostly.

Isn’t it strange, though, that she only messed with Sock Monkey after she’d murdered Monkey Man? Like, she recognizes that it’s a monkey and therefore she should be allowed to eat it.

I saw her tugging on the legs, but couldn’t tell how bad the damage was. Probably pretty extensive, since his construction was rather flimsy. I called in for reinforcements, and watched on the petcam as Rob’s mom moved the monkey, E.T. and Stanley out of harm’s way.


Here she is keeping an eye on the construction workers.