Little aggravations

So Robin, a blogging friend over at AOL journals has a birthday coming up, and asked her readers to make a video of themselves singing happy birthday to her.

When I got my guitar out of the case, it was hopelessly out of tune. And it took me a good twenty minutes to find my guitar tuner.

Then I opened up the little compartment in my guitar case looking for my capo, and it's not there. I always keep it there! It's a Kyser, and I paid nearly $30 for it several years ago; I see they've come down in price, which is good if I can't find mine. Musician's Friend has them for $19.95. I'm thinking I may have left it in my cabin last fall. If Cliff and I take our morning walk, I'll check there and see.

Anyhow, what all of this tells me is that I haven't strummed my guitar in months. I'm such a slacker. I think when my husband wakes up and asks for his coffee, I'll serenade him, just to get back in practice. Yes, he will enjoy it; his hearing isn't great, and he thinks I sing like a pro.

Another little aggravation: I have mice playing around in a bathroom cabinet. I put poison out for them, but that takes so long to work that I decided to help it along with a mousetrap. Alas, the mice simply lick the peanut butter off and leave the trap unsprung.

They just don't make mousetraps like they used to. Cruel as it is, I'm going to get some of that sticky paper I with which I catch mice at the cabin and put it down inside the cabinet. I hate mice in my house; they're filthy little vermin, and they poop everywhere.

The mice get their revenge

I recently did an entry about my war with mice. I do believe I've managed to eliminate all of them from my domain. All the live ones, that is.

So this morning I emptied out the lower cabinet where they seem to have been partying the most, and cleaned and bleached it. Since the mice had been all over down there, I washed every dish and container I had stored there.

This particular section of cabinet is awkward to reach, all the way to the back, because it was stuck in a corner of this old house as an afterthought, probably 50 years after the house was built. So it's where I keep lots of Tupperware and such that I seldom use.

When we left for Church this morning, I had washed dishes and stacked them everywhere to dry. I'll bet some little mousie angels were watching and laughing.

Oh, the other part of their revenge is the awful smell of decomposing rodents in my kitchen! Cliff and I have looked everywhere, but we can't locate the final resting place of the stinking carcass of a mouse (or two) that D-Con got the best of. Ewwww.

By the way, is it just me, or are dish drainers getting smaller? I suppose it has to do with the fact that most people use automatic dishwashers, but I wash my dishes by hand. I cook a lot, and I really need a big drainer!

I hate mice!

We live in an eighty-some-year-old house in the country. This means that we are sometimes bothered by mice. The thing is, we'll go as long as two years without ever seeing a sign of the little vermin; then all of a sudden, they're all over my home-sweet-home.

During such an invasion, I feel I must wash every pan I use for cooking and keep all counters sponged often. Thank God they've never discovered the upper cabinets where plates, cups and glasses are kept. I'd never get much else done except wash and re-wash dishes.

We've had one of those six-month respites from rodents, until the cold snap last week. Upon opening one of the lower cabinets, I noticed what could only be mouse-poop, and plenty of it; it wasn't there a week ago. The same day, Cliff saw not one, but TWO of the despised critters scurry under the couch.

I had used all my mouse-poison back in the cabin, where the mice always seem to be winning the war... but as Cliff says, the woods is their home, and they were there first.

I was fortunate to find two mouse-traps, and baited them with peanut butter. Trouble is, mousetraps these days aren't made as well as they used to be, and often the peanut butter gets licked off again and again, with nary a mouse losing her life.

We had to do our weekly shopping, so I picked up a box of d-Con and placed it at strategic locations (where Sadie, my dog, couldn't get to it).

I checked my main mousetrap and found all traces of peanut butter gone, but decided to re-set it anyhow.

And, believe it or not, I caught a mouse! And then another, and another. All within a space of eight hours.

I see they have been partaking of my poison, too.

I'm feeling much better now.