Mice

Tuesday night, I didn't get a lot of sleep. It looked like this:

10:00 to 10:30 ~ I've decided in the last week or two to try to get more sleep, as a part of being healthier. The whole regime has included more exercise, less food, more water, less diet pepsi, and more sleep. So getting into bed by 10:30 is a VERY BIG DEAL around here as, to be honest, my "normal" bedtime is at around midnight. *cough* So I start getting ready around 10...by the time I get my teeth brushed and flossed, the cat in (or out) and then in (or out) again, the doors locked, and the living room picked up (I hate waking up to a mess, though it does happen...it happened today, in fact!)... I can wash my face and be in bed by 10:30. Since I've started this, I usually toss and turn for half an hour before finally getting to sleep. (I am hopeful that this will get better.)

10:30 - Go to get in bed. Find both boys in our bed with Erik. There is no place for me to sleep. Everybody is already sleeping, so they miss out on my pouting. Sad for them.

10:30 - 11:30 ~ Lay on the couch and try to go to sleep. Toss. Turn. Sigh. Hear a mouse rustling in the kitchen. Now, we have mice. In fact, we once had something considerably larger than a mouse, thumping around in our attic. Seriously. I wouldn't even send Erik up there to take care of it, because by the weight and movement thumping on the ceiling, it appeared to be roughly the size of a racoon...but I don't think a racoon was living in our attic. If you get my drift. But, I did ask him to "take care of it". Not a peep from up there in months and, like the mafia, I don't ask.

Our house backs up to a large, open field. It's part of the watershed for the lake, part of the regional parks system, too. It's great because it's protected land and we'll never have neighbors back there. Yay for open space! Especially where we live; there's just not a lot of it left. One of the drawbacks to all the space (and I'll live with this) is that we do get mice. I once woke up from a dead sleep to find a mouse eating a cracker on my nightstand, so listening to one in my kitchen felt...well, better than that.

11:30 - 12:30 ~ Slowly go insane, listening to the mouse. Can't sleep. The noise is getting intermittent now.

12:30 - 1:30 ~ Decide to try and "sneak up" on the mouse. Leave all the lights off, and tip toe into the kitchen. Freeze and listen. Move another step. Freeze and listen. The mouse appears to sense my presence, and appears to also "freeze and listen". We're at an impasse, so I go back to the couch. He immediately starts crackling. Mother...humper. So I try to sneak up on him again. Repeat the whole scenario half a dozen times.

1:30 - 2:30 ~ I give up and lay back down. Only he starts crackling again. I throw off my blankets, and realize that the mouse appears to be at the back of the kitchen, in the eating area. It comes to me that we have some macaroni (for necklaces) and rice (for playing with measuring cups) on the bottom shelf of the art cabinet in the corner. I run to the cupboard and throw open the door, stop myself from belting "Aha!" at the top of my lungs (it is the middle of the night) and slowly deflate when a mouse doesn't come shooting out. I know. Let's just ponder that for a second. I was disappointed that I hadn't scared a mouse out my cupboard. What can I say? It was the middle of the night.

So I slowly start pulling out a few items from the bottom shelf...and as I am sitting there, in the middle of the night, on the kitchen floor, the heater comes on....a whoosh of air blows out of the vent between the cabinet and the back door...and it slowly dawns on me that the rainbow "star" made of waxed kite paper that is taped to the glass in my back door... is flapping in the breeze of the heater vent. Flapping in the breeze, and make a crackling sound. Flapping in the breeze, making a crackling sound, that sounds a lot like a mouse eating a cracker. I find tape in the art cabinet, and tack the bottom of the star down with it.

2:30 ~ Lay down in silence. Problem solved!

2:35 ~ Erik stumbles out of the bedroom, down the hall, and turns off the heater. Harumph.

2:35 - 4:30 ~ Can't sleep. Still. Find a website that offers College Algebra problems for practice. Start doing factoring and simplifying problems. Realize that I haven't had to write the conjugate to clear the radicals from a denominator in a long time. Decide that I might just go ahead and get a BS in mathematics. Use the online websites to look up classes for the spring at the university and the community college.

4:30 ~ Decide that perhaps I'm not in my right mind. Finally fall asleep.

4:30 - 6:30 ~ Sleep. Blissful sleep.

6:30 ~ Wake up, get it together...got to be bright eyed and bushy tailed!

So, I worked all day, picked up the boys, came home....and stared. I was so tired! Erik walked in at quarter to five (an hour earlier than usual!) and I said, "I think I'll take a nap."

I woke up at 6 this morning. Thanks honey! I needed that. Still looking up those classes, though.