Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Today I woke up and it was winter. Actually, I felt it coming on all through the night as the wind whipped tree branches against the side of the building and I had to burrow deeper and deeper into my nest of blankets. I have realized afresh how my conception of cold does not align with most of the population. I've learned that most households keep their thermostat at around 70 degrees in the winter. Some people even dare to drop to 68. This is not how I was raised. We were like a family of house-cats all seeking the warmest spot and turning the heat up to a temperature that would stifle most Mid-westerners. My parents' electric bills must have been obscene. I never thought about bills, I just wanted to be warm.

Now that I have to pay the bills, I am trying to adjust to life in an igloo. But in the mornings, when my resistance is low, I still sneak into the hall and turn the thermostat up to 75 degrees. Even that's not really warm enough. I wear sweaters all the time now, and fuzzy slippers. I sleep with a comforter, a quilt and another down comforter on my bed. But I'm still cold and am looking into getting an electric blanket. Now if only I could find an electric jumpsuit to keep me warm during the daytime.

Hot Cold

The computers hum and blink their one giant eye, a room full of Cyclops that never sleep and stare and have no eyelids. Sure, there are screensavers but they just blink some more and never stop radiating energy into the room chock full of fluorescent light and rays. It's dead here, quiet, a place of screens and papercuts on my fingers from the paper that spews out of the printers, page after page after page. Outside it's windy cold fresh and the leaves are slick wet under my shoes. The parking lot it black and wide and I rush to my car get in lock the doors. It's scary in parking lots at night when nobody's around and there are shadows and what could I do? Something. It's nice when I get home and the lights are on but they aren't screens and there is yogurt and cookies and I like the fire that turns on with a switch, because the fire is real true light not from a bulb or screen. It's hot light, not cold like the computer lab, parking lot, but like the sun, summer, the glint in peoples' eyes when they are excited.

Death Under the Kitchen Sink

We caught a mouse. The little bugger was in the trap this morning. I checked immediately after I woke up. It was sort of gratifying to actually see the cause of the trouble and know that it was eliminated. But it was also quite sad. The poor brown furry thing was stuck in the trap, dead. I just stood there and stared at it. Then I started to get really sad and had to close the cupboard. I knew I couldn't get rid of it, so I waited until my roommate woke up and asked her remove the mouse. My eyes got teary for a moment as I described to her the situation under the sink. I know it had to be done. Mice are dirty gross disgusting and can't be tolerated. We have scrub the cabinets with bleach. But it was sad to see the mouse in the trap. I hope there won't be any more.

Mouse in the Lazy Susan

There is a mouse in our lazy Susan. More precisely, there was a mouse. It is gone now. I don't know where it went. Perhaps it is traveling through a labyrinth of the backsides of cabinets and the spaces behind walls, nibbling as it goes. It nibbled my macaroni and cheese.

I discovered the mouse this morning. I woke up, drank some water and stumbled to the kitchen. I mixed some oatmeal from a packet and and microwaved it. I sat down on a stool at the counter to eat my warm oatmeal. The sun peeked through the blinds and all was right with the world. A few bites in, a sound came from the cabinet containing the lazy Susan. It sounded like a piece of paper being flicked around in the cabinet. I knew it could only be a mouse (or, more horrifying, mice). I was hit with the irony that this is the nicest apartment I've ever lived in, and yet it is the first one to have a mouse. I walked over to the lazy Susan and spun it around. No mouse. Thank goodness. I hadn't thought about what would happen if the mouse flew out at me. Maybe it wasn't a mouse after all.

I bent down and inspected the cabinet. A bag of popcorn had a ragged hole in the side, and specks of corn littered the bottom of the lazy Susan. I peered into the space behind the Susan. A tiny mouse turd lay on the plywood. In my mind, a tiny swear word rose and emerged softly from my lips. I thought about just closing the cupboard and finishing my oatmeal, but then I decided that my roommate needed to share in my horror and promptly woke her with the news that there was a mouse in the lazy Susan.

Together, we inspected the damage and found more evidence of nibbling. My macaroni and cheese packets had large bite marks in the paper. A corner was missing from her box of taco shells. The mouse could not be denied. I pulled on some jeans and rushed to Wal-Mart for traps, the old-fashioned kind that snap. I set them, nearly snapping off a finger in the process. Two traps sit baited in the lazy Susan, one on the top level and one on the bottom. No carnage has yet occurred. My roommate said lazy Susans are notorious for having mice. You are all forewarned.