D Day for Charlie.

Our house was the scene of slaughter last night. I'm not proud of it, but it had to happen. After a summer of finding mouse poop in various places in the house (that we both dismissed as "disgusting" but "manageable"), we experienced an explosion in both mouse population as well as a heightened brash and bold attitude of said mice. We started finding poop on our kitchen table (that isn't near a wall and has metal legs), on our fireplace mantel (where mice made off with half of the robin egg shells I've been saving since we moved into our house), on Walker's high chair (how the hell?) ... we had also been wondering where a little hot pepper that had been in a glass went ... we soon realized that a mouse had gingerly reached in, took it, and took off (prompting Jon to remark 'I hope that little bastard explodes'). And this was all downstairs. Jon finally checked upstairs after he became convinced that it smelled like a dead mouse and, believe me, we know what that smells like. N-E-Way, upon cleaning up the corpse he realized that a mouse had gotten into his box of dork, I mean comic, books and nested. He also discovered that mice started eating THE BEDDING OFF THE GUEST BED. I mean, seriously, what the fucking fuck? I understand that when you live in the country you need to store food smartly to keep away ants and mice but do we have to strip all the beds of linens and not put anything in glasses or have a high chair for our child to eat in? Jon declared on Saturday, "That is IT. I'm going to kill them." I begged for leniency, "Just give me a day to research options other than mouse traps or poison. Please."

So I went to the Berkeley Parents Network, a site I go to frequently for parenting advice but that somewhat oddly came up in my google search of "humane mouse removal". I guess I was hoping for a solution something along the lines of spritzing lime juice in the corners while playing Black Sabbath to drive them out. I don't know. Just something that didn't involve breaking their necks.

When we lived in Portland, we had a resident mouse in our house. Well, it was probably more than one but we liked to think it was one. I decided to name it and asked Jon what we should call it . He thought for a minute and in a super funny voice, like a 7 year old, he said "Char-leeeeeee." So all mice became Charlie. When we didn't hear Charlie for awhile, I asked Jon where he thought Charlie was and he remarked, "He's on vacation. In the backyard." We gave Charlie a very rich life, with a family, vacations, job, a commute, and a to do list.

And then this happens -- the Berkeley Parents Network recommended killing them and killing them without mercy -- get traps! lace them with peanut butter! buy as many traps as you can and do it all in one fell swoop! I resigned myself to it. If Berkeley parents are condoning mouse murder, who am I to be a hold out? But I told Jon Sunday night "I don't want to know about it. I don't want to see the traps, I don't want to hear them go off, and I definitely don't want to see dead mice." and I added, "I just feel so bad about it. I don't like killing anything . Even mice that shit all over our house." And he replied, as if we were really at war, "I know honey. But it's either us or them."

My advice? Don't name things that you might have to kill one day. It's just a bad idea.

I Don't Like Mondays.

I just returned from lunch and took the long way back ... a long walk along the lake. It's weird how roads and paths and places that are so familiar, paths you take or places you see every day, can hold so many unique memories. I think of walking down the bike path to get ice cream cones with Jen K almost every summer day at 3:00. We'd sit outside at the picnic table and bitch about work and sweat. Little did we know that we'd both be pregnant within weeks (her) and months (me) and that by the time the next summer rolled around, she'd be back on the West Coast. Or I think about how, determined to get some exercise due to my complete panic over turning into a fatass while pregnant, I bundled up at lunch one day, big mummy coat, wool socks, giant crazy fake-fur lined hat with idiot straps, gloves, and headed out to go for a walk around the lake in the deadest part of a pretty dead winter. With wind chill it had to be like 10 or 20 degrees below zero, but it might as well have been a million. About halfway through my walk, as I gingerly avoided ice patches and literally leaned into the wind to make progress, I looked around and realized I was literally the only human being around. I actually laughed, thinking of people sitting in their offices, sipping their coffee, calling others to the window to say something like "Hey check this out - look at that jackass. Who the hell goes for a walk on a day like this?" It's weird what a great memory it is. Ice chunks floating around in the lake! The inability to feel my face! Icicles on my eyelashes!

I've realized, now that I'm a mom and my routine has totally changed, Sunday night blues have been replaced with Monday-afternoon blues. Sunday nights, for the first time since I went away to college, don't mean boo-hoo-the-weekend's-over. Quite honestly, they mean "Oh man, I get to shower and write e-mails and eat a decent lunch tomorrow". But, coupled with those highlights, comes the inevitable melancholy I feel starting at lunch (which explains my nostalgia attack on my walk back to work) and extending through the end of the day. I miss Walker. A lot. After weekends, even grumpy nothing special weekends, I really miss being away from him. This past weekend, however, was the best kind of weekend. So that makes a somewhat pleasant, none-too-challenging Monday like today into one giant colossal downer. This weekend we had perfect summer weather. Perfect. A whole weekend of perfect summer weather just doesn't happen here. "It's the kind of weather," I told Walker while we sat outside on a blanket, "that you wait all year for. The kind of weather you think about in January." Both days we went for walks and both days we ended our walks stretched out on a blanket, under one of the huge maple trees in our yard, pointing at the leaves overhead. We pointed at clouds and clapped, he babbled, I talked, and when the breeze kicked up I wrapped the edges of the blanket over his legs and hugged him. I could've stayed there, in those moments, forever, for the rest of my life, and I'd never be sad about what I'd be missing.

Are You It?

About 3 weeks ago, Jon came in after walking the dogs and said "There's a little bird underneath one of the tomato plants. He's just sitting there, looking up. It's cute." Immediately I thought, oh man, that's not cute, that's sad. A little bird, at the beginning of summer, not flying.

This was a Wednesday, the half day that I spend at home. So later in the morning, when I went to close the curtains against the sun, I noticed a bird hopping across the yard and chirping. I thought maybe this was the bird he was talking about, but maybe not. It had been at least a couple hours since he had seen the bird and, heck, we get lots and lots of birds in our yard.

A few hours after that I headed out to the car with Walker, ready to make our departure. I buckled him in and threw my bag in the car. Then as I scooted in behind the steering wheel I looked up and on the sloping end of our yard there was the bird. He was just sitting there. I couldn't tell if he was injured or what exactly was going on. He was very calm. I put the car in drive and slowly rolled by the little bird. He just looked at me. He didn't squawk or try to fly or hop away , he just cocked his head and stared at the car and at me. I hesitated, but then put the car in park--my desire not to scare him outweighed by my ridiculous curiosity. I gingerly walked over to him and, as I got closer, I realized that he didn't have a right eye. He didn't look injured, he just looked like a little bird that was born without an eye. Where his eye should've been, there was a rough patch of skin, almost like a closed eyelid but not exactly. He rotated his head to look at me with his one good eye, but he didn't screech or try to get away. It was utterly disconcerting. It made me sad. It was as if he was looking at me and thinking, "Are you it? Are you the thing that's going to kill me?" I looked at him and said "I'm sorry if I'm scaring you. I'll leave you alone." and we drove away.

When I got to work, I called the Audubon Society in Huntington and asked what I should do if the bird was still around when I returned home. The woman who answered gave me the number of a local wildlife rehabilitator but also remarked sympathetically, "This is the time of year when there are just a lot of little birds around that have things wrong with them."

I called Jon at work and told him about the bird and how he was still around. I asked him to please drive carefully when he came home, because if he barreled into his usual parking spot he might run the bird over. But when he got home, the bird wasn't there. I looked for him when I got home, too, but he was nowhere to be found.

He was gone.