MICE!

"THE MOUSE"

These mice or this mouse lives inside my wall. I hear them sometimes at night and more recently, I've heard them come into my closet. There is a hole in my closet where a board should be and that's how they make their way in there. While I was cleaning out my closet, I found food in a pair of boots I rarely wear anymore. GROSS! I know! It freaks me out to think of them in there and to know there in there and inside my walls. I know all God's creatures need a home but not in my shoes.



I heard it/them tonight and again, FREAKED OUT! Not that mice aren't cute but I really don't want to see this one. Who knows what it looks like but I am positive it's not as cute as Despereaux! So I set a mouse trap in my closet. Two things: 1. I kind of feel like it's inhumane to kill a mouse. I have all this guilt. Like when my parents tricked me into eating venison and moose. I kept apologizing to Bambi and Bullwinkle every time I saw them. "I'M SORRY!" And 2. I don't want to hear the snap of the trap and the squeal of the poor defenseless mice. That and I don't want to clean it up. "KILL IT MOMMY!" That's what I have to say. Like when Spiders would crawl down the wall at night above my bed. Then Mommy would come in with a tissue and get the sucker! YEAH!

I remember when we were little we had chores (as I'm sure most kids do) and my brother was in charge of the kitchen. He had to remove all the shit from the counters and clean behind everything but he was NOTORIOUS for not doing that. One day my mom goes to inspect the corners behind the canisters and guess what she found? YEP! A mouse. But not just a dead mouse. This mouse must've been dead a long time because all the hair had fallen off and all that was left was the bones. Needless to say, mom did inspections more often.

I sit here anticipating the sound of the mouse reentering my closet and HOPE that if the killing of one mouse doesn't scare the rest away, the exterminator will come and take the rest away.

And as I was posting this, I heard the trap. It wasn't as loud as older traps which is nice...as nice as mouse death can be. I did run downstairs and wake my mom up and she cleaned it up. He was small with BIG beady eyes. Poor guy. But now I know what I'm up against next time it happens!

EDIT: And at 3:30 in the morning there was another mouse. My mom was not too happy about cleaning that one up.

A 9 year olds memory

I love reading biographies. I just finished reading Patti Smith's autobiography "Just Kids" and it was fantastic. Even more fantastic is how she remembered all those details of her life. Could it be that she didn't do drugs? I don't do drugs and I still can't remember what happened yesterday. I've been trying to think of particular things that happened in my childhood that I could include in my memior but nothing comes to mind so maybe I will embellish somethings when push comes to shove. By then every memory will be so outlandish you'd think it was from a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.

"And it was on my 5th birthday that my great great great Uncle Billy Bob presented me with the ring of destiny and told me I had to go on a quest of 5,000 miles. Only then would there be world peace and people would stop eloping with goats."



There are certain things that I remember as a child that later on my mom told me are way off. For instance, when I was one years old, my mother brother and I got into a major car accident on the highway. Everytime I pictured it, I remembered us driving through the woods, a man stepping out with a gun and shooting us. When I told my mom about this, she told me that we were hit by a drunk driver. (That whole thing is a story for a different day.) I don't know where I came up with this. Perhaps I remember seeing the trees on the side of the road and the EMTs? Maybe it was a dream I had afterward. It's funny what we remember and you have to wonder how much is true in biographies when people write about their childhood.

I remember something particular that happened the summer before I went into the fifth grade. My brother, who was eleven at the time, and I had decided to ride our bicycles to my grandmother's house. She had moved to Middletown from Nanuet not long before and so now she was in riding distance from our house. We had a vague idea of how to get there, having been there so many times by car. We must've been more than half way there and neither of us remembered the rest of the route so he opted to stop for directions. (Something he never did EVER again after that.) We were coming over the top of a small hill and he was ahead of me. That's where I blacked out. The next thing I knew I was being rushed into the house of a strange woman. Her son was in the living room watching television and she was yelling to him "get towels, GET TOWELS." Meanwhile blood is gushing out of my mouth. Someone must have called my mom because she was there not too long after in our blue Chevy Astro Van and I was being escorted to the hospital. I remember the doctors scraping gravel out of my mouth and sewing me up with stitches. I had to get over 20 stitches on the inside of my lip and above my top lip where my booger catcher was.



I screamed and cried for my step dad and it's strange but I remember thinking, "He works in a hospital so he can help me" even though he worked security there and wasn't a doctor. But after they numbed my mouth and it didn't hurt anymore, I cracked jokes with the male nurse and tried to ease the situation. I, even to this day can't stand bad times and am always trying to lighten the mood. Later on my brother said that as I was coming down the hill, I ran right into his handlebars and flipped over them, skidding my mouth along the gravel. Luckily I lost no teeth but had fish lips for a week. I ate pudding and mash potatoes for a week and lost my thumb sucking habit. I felt like a rock star that I got 20 stitches and a busted lip. Hey, for a nine year old that's HUGE!

Sometimes where to begin is the hardest part

As I start this entry it is 12:44 a.m. It's a funny time to be starting a blog entry but if you are a devoted writer, you know we keep odd hours. When I was at college, I found the best time to write was in the middle of the night, usually around 4 a.m. and when I was hopped up on caffeine. I'd go to the library and there would be various other people pulling all nighters. I knew it was quitting time by the sound of a familiar obnoxious voice: "GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!" That was usually around 8 a.m. and I knew at that point that no more concentrating would get done. Now that I live back at home, I can't keep that same focus. Yes, I still drink coffee at 11 p.m. but there are so many more distractions that happen. I don't have to worry about others watching me watch some random video on you tube. Now, instead of focusing all that energy into something productive, I spent the night watching Robin Hood (1973 Disney Version) in 10 minute clips on YouTube. Not exactly a whole lot going on there.

The real reason I wanted to stay up was so that I could get some real writing done. About now I get to the point where I am too tired to work but have too much caffeine left in me that I cannot sleep. I've actually gotten better at keep a journal around this time. In the past I was so worried that I would have to write everything that happened in my day religiously but that failed miserably. Writing about yourself gets boring and the only time people care if you keep a journal is if you're Jackie O and you have some infamous scandal that people are going to actually read about 60 years from now.

Actually if you can just let your hands/pen do the talking, that is when the BEST journal work comes out. Everything is raw and you don't have time to filter anything out because you're so exhausted that your brains sensor has gone to sleep for the night. I often wonder if Kerouac had the same idea. (Not that I'm comparing myself to him but still...) The best part about this is I look back at what I wrote in the morning and it still makes complete sense. It's as if I don't get a chance to judge myself at night and working through my issues comes easier in the morning. (One day I'll have to share some of my scribblings but right now I seem to have misplaced my journal.)

I hope tomorrow I can look back at this and not say that I got nothing done but rather I actually remembered the password to this blog I got to follow my friend SonshineThoughts and actually wrote in it. Amazing. (So is her blog btw.) It is now 12:58 p.m. and I am done. 14 minute blog. I am going to start timing my blogs.

Mom Appreciation

Happy Easter everyone! This is my very first blog post and while I should be downstairs helping my mom bake all the delicious Easter goodies, I'm here talking to you. Mom's don't get enough credit; especially when you're young. I'll be the first to admit that I rolled my eyes when my mom asked me to do something or got agitated when she said something to me I didn't like. This morning she starts baking and almost immediately moans that the kitchen isn't clean, there is no room to bake and blah blah blah blah blah. In my head I said to myself, "that's mom being mom again. Always complaining." Just then I remembered this story that my Aunt Rosie told me about how she felt so underappreciated. She cried out to her children and husband and no one came calling. The only thing she heard was: "There she goes again."

Sometimes it takes a person losing something to truly appreciate its value. My grandmother was very valuable to us and even though we appreciated her more, once she passed away, it was a little and a lot that we needed her for. What is it about older generations that made them keep everyting locked in a safe in their brain. Grandma, you took the recipes with you. The good ones actually. Those are the ones that you can't recreate on your own because everytime she'd make something, she'd add something here and something else there.

And so now, while my mom is kvetching and I'm thinking, "Geez! You know this happens so why bother complaining?" I think back to my Aunt Rose and how all that complaining really meant something. So I got off my ass and went into the kitchen and cleaned it up for her. AND GUESS WHAT?! MOM STOPPED KVETCHING!

Moral of my story, "Moms are like cars. I ignored the engine crying out OIL OIL CHANGE MY OIL!!! Once I finally took it in, I realized I almost killed it because I wasn't listening. Mom: I will learn to listen to you and oil you when you get dried out." ...or something like that.