April 2, 2022

 I thought perhaps it was time for a new header photo, so I turned and took a picture of Murphy stretched out, upside down on the bed beside me. 

What have I been up to? Yesterday I finished my sixth day of supply teaching in a row. I was filling in for a sweet previous co-worker who was away for six days, so I worked Friday to Friday in her grade 4/5 class. 

I am completely wiped. I was going to do a blog post on the destruction of innocence where I was going to bemoan the need of cell phones for ten-year-olds, sexualization of young girls with their midriff baring tops, and complete and utter lack of respect toward adults. I was going to write about entitlement and the need to always question and negotiate. I was going to write about the lack of wanting to please, or take pride or even be present. 

I realized that that would only be focusing on some of the students, but I would be leaving out the good ones, the sweet ones, the funny ones, the ones who are self-conscious or shy or kind or confident. Those kids still exist, but honestly are becoming the minority. None of the previous issues mentioned is any fault of the regular teacher. This group has always been like this. I know, I've seen them go through the grades over the past six years or so (kindergarten and up).

My messages to the world would be these: Parents, please stop dragging your children into your adult problems.   Parents, please be their parents and not their friends.    And finally, parents, "no" is a perfectly acceptable answer and you do not have to cave after any amount of sulking or whining or temper tantrums.

On a completely different note, if you ever notice the unmistakable and ever growing smell of decomposing mouse in your house and it is in an area where you have a chest freezer, there is a good possibility that a mouse has crawled into the recess at the back of the freezer where the motor is housed and where there is a small vent at the side and you will need to use a long grabber tool to extract said mouse whilst trying hard not to gag on the stench and at the same time cursing putting in a cat flap. Just saying.

Because one must discuss weather, we have had everything from warm sun, to dangerously high winds, to snow flurries, to diagonal rain, to freezing rain in the past week. Half expected to wake up to either hail or a double rainbow this morning.

Finally, this weekend I do not have lofty goals. I will change out the chicken water (still using their heated water bucket just in case), I will read, and I really have a hankering for fish and chips because Joanne wrote about eating it in her blog and that planted the idea in my head. I will add to this if this happens this weekend.

The Nose Knows

Quite a number of days ago, when daughter and I came home from town, my husband responded to our, "Hi!" with "We have a problem."

This was the problem. While daughter and I were out and about, tabby cat, Samson (he of the header picture) came in through the cat door with a rodent in his mouth. My husband only noticed this when said rodent was dropped in the kitchen and ran. It ran under our dishwasher (which had the bottom panel removed because of the repeated attempts by service people to fix the leak because it is under extended warranty, but that's a whole other story...)

Husband told us it was large and held his hands up to show the size. He was demonstrating 'rat size'. Great, so now we had a rodent in the house, potentially a rat, hopefully just a hefty mouse. Traps were set. Nothing. Time went on. More traps were set. Daughter slept with towels jammed under her bedroom door (we have an old house with gaps under the old doors).

Two days ago, I thought, "Boy, I really need to dump the compost regularly in this heat!", which I did. One day ago, I said, "Something smells in this kitchen. No, it's not the garbage." I contemplated going through the bag of potatoes, thinking one was rotting which can happen sometimes. There was also a niggling worry in my mind. "You don't think it might be..."

This morning, the stench was undeniably that of decomposition. It would seem the run under the dishwasher was the last physical exertion that mouse had experienced. Husband started to maneuver the dishwasher from its spot in the kitchen (it's built in), but it would only go so far. Both of us laid on the floor (yup, nasty smell just wafting out at us), flashlight in hand, hoping we could see the deceased in the back recesses of the dishwasher hole. I thought I saw some dark grey fur in the back corner and asked husband if he had one of those skinny grabber tools (mechanic types use it when they inadvertently drop something that's hard to reach). Yes he did and within moments I was rolling around trying to grab onto the "mouse". Well, in reality it was just a clump of the sound-deadening fabric that is wrapped around the machine. No mouse.

However, our olfactory senses told us that it was still in there, somewhere, so husband went to the basement and detached various lines so the dishwasher could be pulled out even more. And voila!! There it was (mouse, not rat). Plastic gloves were donned, mouse was deposited into a plastic bag and taken out to the burn barrel, and I proceeded to bleach and disinfect the area until absolutely no stench remained.

Have I mentioned we've been under a heat advisory these past couple of days. There's nothing more delightful than dead mouse on a hot day!


I know someone out there has a 'dead animal in your old house' story. Feel free to share.