Stewin' in his own juices

I had to take Abby to Tulsa today to the dentist because that blasted headgear band fell off of her molar again. We flew back towards home to drop her off at Little Theatre practice where her daddy would pick her up later, then Kady, Sam and I headed toward town. We made a stop at Mom's office to partake of her fax machine because I needed to fax in an application for something that will hopefully make me some extra money soon (Keep those fingers crossed, friends!). After that we went to the college library because four of us in that dreaded Macro class were going to study together in hopes that one of us knew just what in the heck is going on in the class.

The four of us included two actual college-age girls, a guy my age and me. Guess who showed up - me and ol' Stan. You can tell who the non-traditional students are because he's brought his kids to class a few times and I had mine with me tonight to study. The other two girls never showed, so poor Stan and I sat at that table and whined and griped and well, it was a case of the blind leading the blind. We were really hoping that the girl who sits on the front row and never has that clueless look that I sport during classtime would be there, but I guess she has a life. So he called his wife to see if she'd order a pizza that he could pick up, I called my husband to tell him I had Arby's coupons and was taking orders, tried to convince Sam that a book on the human body in the college library wasn't really 3rd grade reading material and then we went our merry ways, neither of us knowing any more than we did when we got there.

When I called Paul to take his Arby's order he sounded out of breath, so when I got in the van I called him back and asked if he was okay. He replied with a winded, "I am trying to find that smell." He said it was so bad tonight that his eyes were watering. He and Abby pulled out the dishwasher, pulled pots, pans and cleaning supplies out of cabinets looking for that smell. He found a pretty good-sized hole in the sheetrock in the back of the cabinet next to the fridge and went from there. He undid a wire hanger and hooked it and said, "I'm gonna see if I can pull that dead [expletive] out of there."

He pulled out a rat-sized ribcage and some nest. Apparently it's the remainder of the skeletal rat from last time. Whew. It was so decayed there was no smell. So he pulled out the fridge and gagged the smell was so bad, but there was no mouse visible.

He pulled the back off the fridge and found it.

It was a itty bitty, teeny tiny little mouse who had innocently crawled up under the refrigerator to get warm on a cold fall evening and well, ya know, the fridge was making a really funny noise last week......guess it was cuisinarting our little rodent friend.

Then, as if mouse dying up inside the inner-workings of the fridge wasn't bad enough, when he died he fell into a little pool of heated water and well, we were simmering some mousepourri.

The smell was so bad because IT WAS COOKING.

We cooked a mouse under our fridge. We aren't like our traditional redneck kin who like a good pot of possum stew when the weather turns cold - nope, we like us some mouse stew. (Sam threw the mouse stew line at me. She's also showering obsessively because of our conversation, bless her heart.)

When the kids and I walked in the door after a run to Wal*Mart to buy steel wool and poison, it smelled pleasantly of bleach and some lemony cleaner and not dead mouse. My husband is so nice sometimes- he knew I'd be utterly freaked out, so he cleaned the entire kitchen, vacuumed the mouse turds out from the cabinet that has been empty for two years because it's the "mouse cabinet" and I refused to use it until he remedied that problem. Well, there is enough steel wool behind my kitchen cabinets now that even Super Mouse couldn't get through and the many, many packets of poison Paul threw back there will prevent Super Mouse from even trying.

I *heart* my husband.

Abby called me at one point and said, "Mom, it's bad. Real bad. The kitchen is a disaster and Dad just puked over the fence." I said, "He puked over the fence? Literally?" She replied, "Yep. He took out that rotten wet mouse and puked just as he threw it."

Have I mentioned that I *heart* him?