UPDATE

I found a humongous mouse trap at Wal-mart, brought it home to an eager Jared, who promptly perched a chunk of string cheese on it and strategically placed it below the oven (which is still pulled away from the wall) Last night while I could not sleep from an ill-timed coke I heard a loud snap! I ran to the kitchen, fired up my least dim flashlight (they're all almost dead ALL of the time) and peered into the rat's lair. The trap had snapped, the cheese was gone. But....no mouse in sight. He is probably laughing as he dies in the wall with the taste of his last good meal on his lips.

Pinewood Derby

Jared had three cars racing this year. The one he made for Ethan last year, the one he made for Ethan this year, and the one he made for Ike this year. Between the three he got 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Good job, Jared! Oh, and Ethan and Ike too.

The saga continues!

Okay. So Jared is BEYOND obsessed about this mouse. Last night, as I was trying to fall asleep he kept running into our bedroom to give me a play by play of the mouse eating the poison he had layed out for it. He was practically counting the bites! Then he was giving me stats on how long it would take for the poison to take action and where the mouse might go and what he might do during his last hours. I was trying to sleep. I could not concern myself.
Then, in the midst of my five hour nap today, he had the nerve to burst in and inform me that he has since learned that the mouse may go into our wall to die and this would stink! He was freaking out! I had to look at the clock at my bedside to be sure of what was happening. "You're home at 1:00......in the afternoon?" Jared NEVER comes home during the day. Never. If he has no money for lunch he will count out pennies for a convenient store hot dog. This guy hates to come home mid-day. This was unprecedented! I'm still groggily trying to make heads or tails of his presence and he is in the kitchen, power tools a-blazin'. He is removing parts of our dishwasher! He has got the oven pulled out into the center of the kitchen. I'm walking in, rubbing my eyes saying,"You came home for the mouse? You're home to check on your mouse?" He looks at me, the wild eyes are back and he says, very very seriously,"Liz, this is very important,I need you to buy a trap today. I don't want that mouse to die in our walls and stink!" Then he proceeds to tell me all the factoids about killing a rat that he has apparently learned from his friends...."Lance says they get drunk on this stuff and wander into strange places to die!" "Don says they can fit into a hole the width of a pencil!--a pencil Liz!" (He uses his hand to make a circle the size of a pencil tip just in case I'm not sure) I'm now realizing he has been talking about nothing but this mouse to everyone he knows for the past 24 hours. His poor friends/boss/co-workers. He's back to the trap now. "Liz, I really need you to buy this trap! Not the little flimsy ones. It has to be a really good trap!!" Okay babe, okay, I can do that, a trap, got it." He continues to stare at me with crazy eyes and is scaring me just a little. Then, he grabs all the convenience foods he can find in the pantry, and leaves. So now, I'm out to search for the world's best mouse trap. Hope Wal-mart has it cuz that's as much as I'm lookin'!

I smell a rat

If past posts haven't made you scared enough of my house, I now have a mouse in my kitchen. I knew it was there. At night I could sometimes hear sounds like my oven was turned on but it wasn't. You know that kind of sound it makes sometimes? Anyway. I had told Jared I thought there was a mouse but he seemed not too concerned.
Well, last night Jared was at the table eating soup, gearing up to cut out Ethan and Ike's pinewood derby cars (derby is tomorrow) and he suddenly yelled for me. I was upstairs getting kids to bed. He yelled, "Liz! I need you!" I came running down wondering if he had somehow managed this phrase while choking because Jared is a big choker and I have saved his life more than once. When I came into the kitchen he was holding a broom and was poised by the dishwasher with "crazy eyes." Crazy eyes are Jared's eyes only ten times bigger. He handed me a mop. He said, "We have a mouse!" No kidding.
He kept poking around the stove and dishwasher and mumbling things about the measurements of the cabinets, the height of the floorboards etc. As usual, he believes an error in his building could be blamed for "the little beggar" getting in. He really believes a house can be built so perfectly that it would never have bug, foundation, rodent or any other issues. I try to tell him this is Houston but he doesn't listen. I told him, "Honestly babe, the kids always leave the front door open. The mouse probably just waltzed on in, right past our blind cat, and made himself at home." He wasn't listening.
He proceeded to give me instructions on how to "wap!" the rat with my mop while he pushed it out of it's hiding place with the broom. This thought was almost more than I could bare. I don't do animals. At all. And this is not a sweet little pet, it is a disease-ridden varmint. I was trying to harness my chi and get myself ready for the filthy guy to come running out from under the oven. I was planning on closing my eyes, screaming, and just swatting anything and everything as hard as I could with the mop. But Jared could not seem to find where the rat had stowed away to. At this point, I was ready to just put out some poison, go to sleep, and not set foot in my kitchen until the culprit was dead and GONE. But Jared (he can be obsessed at times) decided we would do a rat watch. We turned off the lights, sat side by side facing our stove........and watched. He really believed this would be productive. I went along with it because I had nothing better to do, and it was kind of entertaining--watching Jared's wild eyes dart around the kitchen while he threw out countless theories as to how the mouse got there, how long he'd been there, and if he had any friends.
This went on for quite sometime with no results. Finally, I went to bed. I'm not sure what happened after that. This morning when I left early to take Harris to the doctor, there was no sign of the mouse or Jared. They were both in their hiding places asleep.

Light

Starting to feel better. I think my guest has started packing. Thanks for ya'lls support. I am blessed to call so many strong, amazing, compassionate women my friends.

Today I'll be working at my kids' school. That will be good for me. Once I'm out the door and around people I usually feel pretty good. And I could do that everyday (and often do) but then my house and it's uanavoidable needs become sorely neglected. The pile of laundrey next to Jared's side of the bed is becoming known as "the mound." When my kids are desperately seeking socks in the morning I say,"Go check the mound." When there isn't a pair of jeans to be found when the morning is brisk, I tell them,"I think there are some clean ones in the mound." The mound is a clever mixture of both clean and dirty clothes and I think the cat may have puked in there somewhere. She broke into the house and tore a hole in the bag of catfood in the pantry and ate to her belly's content. So, I think I got all of what looked like cat puke clothes out of the mound and into the laundrey room (still not in the washer) but you never know with a mound of this magnitude. The cat could be in there for all I know. The only answer is the laundrey mat. (I actually love the laundrey mat. Coins jingling, washers agitating, dryers humming, weirdos abound, I find it all very soothing.) It will have to be done all at once. All of it. No sense in trying to sort. If a cat puked in the mound it is all pretty unsanitary wouldn't you say? Hope CPS doesn't follow this blog.

not title worthy

This morning I feel..just blank. And a little sad. The sad is curcumstantial. The blank is mostly chemical. I will now shower.

Where I Be

Sorry for everything being about me right now, but I gotta es-press my major issues. It helps me not split open and ooze crazy all over tha place!

Today was the first day on a new drug. Still taking the old ones (There's two of them) Now I'm taking a controlled-release stimulant to help with all the lethargy and depression. I'm on downers to help with my anxiety/OCD but the side effects have been robbing me of a life. So in goes the magic pill this morning, down the chute! Well, it's not the kind that has to build up in your system. It goes in, releases its magic for the next 8 hours, and out it comes. So here's what it did to me.

I was filled with paranoia and guilt. More guilt than I am used to and that is saying a lot since guilt is pretty much my primary emotion. I felt like people were looking at me funny. I felt like everyone was mad at me. I felt like a bad mom and wife and friend and sister and....you get the idea.

So, what is my reaction to all of this? I feel pissed. Why oh why can't I just get better? I'm exhausting every resource I have available to me and still, I'm coming up short. I exercise regularly. I take my meds diligently. I see my psych religiously. I pray about it....alot. Not as much as I could, probably. I have sought blessings and read and learned and pondered. I have combed books and picked brains. Perhaps it's time to throw in the towel. There are worse things than a life of angst and despair. I mean, I have great friends, great family and the gospel. Wish it were enough. Let me at least sleep and revisit this endless saga in the morning.

Goodnight friends.

Unwanted Visitor

I got an unexpected visit from an old "friend" recently. She isn't gone yet so I'm having to force myself quickly through this post so I can attend to her. She is a quite demanding guest.



She got here about a week ago. I hadn't seen her in quite some time and I quickly remembered why I don't like having her around. I do all I can to keep her at bay but she somehow always manages to wiggle back into my life. I'm just going to vent a moment and I hope ya'll can handle it.





She is moody! I've never met anyone so unstable! I never know what she'll do next! Sometimes her behavior is rash but mostly she is just grumpy and sometimes downright mean! She is very rude--having little to no regard for others. While these things seem to take up a lot of my time and worry, she can also be irritatingly "zoned out". I'd venture to say she is mind-numbingly boring. She can be very quiet and robotic. She never wants to do ANYTHING or go ANYWHERE. She sleeps EXCESSIVELY and eats all of the junk food in my house.....ALL OF IT! She doesn't want delicious meals or just regular food! She wants fat-laden, grease-saturated, frosting-coated JUNK! When I have none left to offer she forces me out the door to buy more.





The worst part is I never know when she plans on leaving. She stays just as long as she pleases. She doesn't leave when I ask her to, or even when I TELL her to. There isn't one thing I can do to get rid of her. There isn't one thing ANYONE can do to get rid of her!! How long will she be here? I have no idea!!!





She'll finally decide, for whatever reason, to up and leave just as swiftly as she arrived, and then I'll be able to breathe again. It takes a while to transition back into normal life once she's gone. I have a lot to catch up on having neglected my life to better accomodate her endless list of demands. Who, might you ask, is this horrible girl?















Her name is Depression, and I hate her.

Weird kids

Ethan was home sick today. We had to make a trek to Wal-mart to get laundrey soap. On the way out the smell of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls wafted toward us from the bakery. Ethan announced, "I can tell by the smell that those cinnamon rolls are round. I can smell shapes."

Later, after school, I left Harris in the bathroom to cath. I came back to check on him and there was a large, strange stain on the bathroom rug. I was studying it, trying to determine the origin when Harris said, "Don't look at that! It's my throwup!" I became alarmed. "Are you okay? Are you sick, buddy?" "No, I just wanted to see what it would feel like to touch the back of my throat. It hurt. I'll never do it again!'

What a couple of weirdos!!!

GIRLS NIGHT OUT!!!!

This Thursday, Feb. 5th, get in your car and drive to this place:








You can then purchase one of these:












and also some of these:














Or you can just sip on one of these:














But, no matter what you do or don't purchase, you are guaranteed to leave with some of this!:

















Hope to see you there!