It Was a Dark and Stormy Night......

Okay, so it wasn't stormy....but, it was a dark night....and you always know when you read that phrase that things aren't going to bode well for those involved...which is precisely why it came to mind.  Precisely.

The "incident" occurred on Friday, February 12, 2011.  This date is seared into my memory.  It still sends little shivers down my spine and makes my toes curl..  (and not in a good way, mind you)

The beginning of that week, my children went through a particularly nasty round of illness.  Well, mainly the youngest and the oldest.  The youngest ran a fever for months...no, it was days...but, I was awake every night all night and it felt like months...not that I mind being up with my little loves... because I don't mind.  Really.  I have cappuccino and Cherry Dr. Pepper to pull me through the days... the long, endless days ...when I am stumbling over my words...  and my feet....and the laundry pile....and the dust on the floor that is so high it's making dust dunes.... which accent perfectly the water standing on the bathroom floor from someone's bath...  Wait, where was I?  Oh yeah, sleepless nights and the subsequent day-after, zombie stage.  Anyway, the youngest ran a fever off and on for three or four nights....and then it seemed the sun broke through the clouds and I heard angels singing "alleluia" until they were cut off by the sound of the thermometer beeping at 104 degrees from the armpit of my oldest.  Poor babies.  And so after  running a fever of 104 on Thursday and Friday and noticing that his tonsils were wearing little fuzzy white trench coats, I decided to take the oldest to the doctor on Friday.   Darren decided to drop us off at the doctor and go pick up a couple of planters and then come back for us.

This is where the "dark and stormy night" comes in.  Well, the sickness wasn't exactly a walk in a spring garden, but that is neither here nor there.

He came to pick us up and we stopped at a gas station.  As he's pumping gas and I'm looking around at all the lights and sights and thinking I really would like to have a soda and some chips...or a burger and fries ...or something...  All healthy choices, mind you...  So, as I'm sitting there, I notice this flurry of movement...a rapid scurrying across the car door (where it meets the window).  To my utter horror, its beady little eyes and tiny little wriggling tail registered it in my mind as a MOUSE.  IN MY CAR.  IN THE DARK.  Ewwwww...

Don't get me wrong....I'm not afraid of mice.  Really.  I'm not.  Not the "jump up on the counter screaming" kind of afraid..  Actually, I caught a mouse once.  In a pint jar.  But, just between you and me, I think it was a couple steps shy of a complete waltz, if you know what I mean.  (It was kind of slow)  So, I caught it in a pint jar.  But, then I couldn't just brutally murder it because how would I do it?  Hit it with something?  That's just wrong ....and gross.  And I didn't want to let it go outside because it was familiar with how to get in.  So, I poked holes in the lid and fed it cheese and water all day till I could take up the road and release it into a field.  So, I am not afraid of mice.  My main beef with mice is that they want to come inside the house. I don't like it.  I particularly don't like finding "evidence" of one.  I feel the need to bleach everything in a quarter mile radius and throw out anything edible when that happens.  Plus, if you must know, I hate that scurrying thing.

Anyway, so, there was the mouse, scurrying, across the door...down the side of the driver's seat... under the seat....and out of sight.  {{{shiver}}} The youngest children were not happy...  well, the three year old was fine until I turned around and noticed the mouse running down the side of his carseat right beside his head....and that was when I might have freaked just a bit.  So, then his brother behind him is leaning over and trying to make sure the mouse didn't get in his carseat, my daughter is getting quite hysterical, and the youngest is crying his eyes out because he thinks the mouse is in his seat.  It was getting pretty late, so we decided to stop somewhere and get that burger and fries I had been craving...only my craving seemed to have waned somewhat for some reason.  The youngest two and I decided to go inside and order the food while everyone else tried to rouse the mouse from its hiding spot and force it outside the vehicle.  The great thing about 3 year olds is that they like to talk....so, as we're standing in line, he decides to share with everyone that we have a mouse in our car..  nice.  Anyway, we get outside with the food, and everybody's in the car and I'm thinking, "Yes!!  They were successful!"..  only to find out that they weren't.  So, now we have food...in the car...with a mouse.  Yuck.  And then I look over and the mouse is running down Darren's seat... it's everywhere!!!  And the fun wasn't over...instead of getting to go home, we still had to go to the pharmacy and get Malachi's prescription filled ...  The entire time, I kept moving my feet just so the mouse would know that up my jeans was not a good place to scurry. Nasty little thing....

We did eventually get home with no further mishap...  A mousetrap in the vehicle with peanut butter proved to be too much to resist and so he met his fate.

And thus ends the tale of the dark and storm(less) night......