Rated R For Repeat AND For Really Horrible

By Beck

This is a re-print of an old post. I’m scattered this week, but I hope to be back to my normal chatty self next week. And did I ever get over the trauma that I wrote about in this post? Oh, apparently. The note of hysteria in this post has always amused me.

I decided to clean out the playroom this morning – I had big plans involving getting rid of all of the junky toys and having the kids return home this afternoon to a beautiful, sunlit playroom that they could actually PLAY in, instead of wading hip-deep through Happy Meal Toys.

I noticed with some horror that the kids had been sneaking candy into the playroom – candy wrappers! – and then noticed with some MORE horror that wee little mice had been pooping behind the train table. I was revolted for a few minutes, and then I made a mental note to vacuum and scrub the floor and kept picking up and sorting toys. Oh, I was so very productive! Such a good, good mama!

There was a large cardboard box right under the train table full of miscellaneous toys that needed to be sorted and such and so I upended it and out tumbled a mouse that had fallen into the box and then been unable to make its way out and so perished. Yes. A dead mouse. I fled screaming hysterically – I have MOUSE ISSUES – and phoned my husband at work shrieking into the phone that THERE IS A DEAD MOUSE ON THE FLOOR OF THE PLAYROOM AND HE NEEDED TO COME HOME RIGHT NOW AND BURN THE PLAYROOM DOWN.

He’ll take care of it when he gets here, although he says that he won’t burn the playroom down. As for me, I have been instructed to close the playroom door and pretend that it’s a bat. Not a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE MOUSE but a sweet little dead bat. It is NOT WORKING.

Great. So this evening, after the kids are in bed, we are going to wash EVERY SINGLE TOY in the playroom – all five million of them – and I’m going to make plans on moving to a brand new, hermetically-sealed house that no mouse could ever possibly get into. Also, I’m going to go give my cats a dirty look. Lazy jerks.

Yuckyuckyuckyuck. The TRAUMA.