My unhappy thoughts with a gold lining

I hate mice. Not that I'm a scream-and-jump-up-on-a-chair-type of girl, in fact one year at girl's camp I won an award for cleaning up a dead mouse under one of the bunk beds. (That was an aberration though because usually I won an award that had to do something with starting fires.) Good times. Anyway. I really hate mice. Today I spent all day cleaning up mice droppings. And then I was in tears again because of all the things that I had to throw away. All my pictures and things from my grandparents' funerals (okay so I can get more copies from my mom--but still), my sketch book from a college class that I really wanted to keep (Kayli--you know, that honors class we were in together), and all my stock of thankyou cards and envelopes and such went straight to the garbage. Luckily, my wedding momentos and extra pictures and other random momentos I've kept over the years that were in the same container were okay because they were in seperate shoe boxes. Phew. Lesson learned here, even if you gather random empty chocolate tinfoil wrappers for some planned art project someday--don't keep them in a box with important things. Mice will find them. Also, the box with my baby tub, snugli, baby hiking backpack, and boppy was a major hit. The backpack I'm going to have to get professionally cleaned. The boppy was destroyed--I think the mice smelled milk. The baby tub has a foam pad in the middle--that was all chewed up. But I soaked it in the tub with bleach water, so I guess it's usable. The snugli and a few other things smelled okay once washed. Oh, I really hate mice. They really went after all my baby things. My infant carseat I had to soak in bleach water too. My mom had cleaned that earlier, but it still smelled awful on the straps and such. Also, there's an entertainment center I haven't quite decided on throwing out or not--I don't know why, but the mice really loved the lamp shades that I had stashed inside. And now the entertainment center reaks on that particular shelf. Those lamp shades were goners, but so was the lamp to one of them. Yes, the mice gnawed away at one of my wooden lamps. Why? I don't know. But even Leo agreed to toss it after I had him smell it (this was after I washed it down well and sprayed it with Odoban.) I also spent three hours washing down our food storage buckets. The mice couldn't get in those, but they sure had a party on top of them. It was nasty. I threw a whole box of cannisters away that had had powdered sugar and the like in them. The mice did manage to get in those. I wasn't about to try to clean them, and even if I had, I couldn't have brought myself to reuse them. Anyway, I've always wanted Tupperware cannisters instead of my cheap, junky Walmart ones, and Tupperware ones are on sale this month. Oh, did I mention we had to throw out every single one of our sleeping bags too? I'm scared to open up our tent.

But last but certainly not least, I found a dead, squashed mouse under a box today. It had been there a while. I made Leo scrape it off the floor and carry it outside. But I still have to clean up the bits left over tomorow. I really couldn't stomach it today. I have to go through all our kitchen boxes tomorrow as well. I've been putting it off because I'm afraid of what I might find.

But the good news from all of this--I have been extremely motivated to clean everything because, we're moving Saturday!!!! HOORAY!!!! I thought I could handle an occasional roach, but last night when I saw one climbing across our dining room table, I realized I can't. Not at all. But we've found a lovely house and I don't have to deal with them anymore!!! It's the top floor only, but it has plenty of storage and is perfect. It's too far from BYU for Leo to ride his bike, but I guess we'll manage. And it's the same price as the place we're in. Hallelujah. So on that note, I'll end so I can go to bed and wake up and clean tomorrow. Really, I should have been cleaning all tonight, but my stomach's being cramping so I thought I'd rest. What can you do, eh? (Well, I may have been avoiding that kitchen stuff a bit longer......)