EXCEPT FOR the mouse!!! Except for, not even... same diff.

So here's our saga: We saw a mouse or three over time, caught a few on glue traps, cleaned up mouse poop in a place or two throughout the months, thought they were finally gone...

Yeah... right.

Now this part is a testament to how little I've been cooking up real meals in our house this super hot summer: they had taken over the pantry and had chewed into cardboard boxes of mixes, flour, crackers, cereal, plastic bags of flour, sugar, chocolate chips, styrofoam cups of ramen lunches (they licked those babies clean!).... All without my knowledge. Well, we saw a trace here or there, thought they were gone, were frankly afraid to look too closely... I mean, who wants to actually dig in there and deal with the after effects of a mouse party? An obvious thing to keep putting off...

I spent all afternoon yesterday throwing away 3/4 of our food and paper supplies, taking shelves out of the shelving system (to be thrown away, thank you very much. Plywood with poop and pee on it? For my food? So not happening. How would you ever get it clean??) , shop-vac-ing the poop and the cardboard/styrofoam/paper bits, 409-ing the walls, the shelf supports, the floor.

And what do we find today? Another friggin mouse! The pantry (aka the front-coat-closet-turned-pantry) still smelled bad, so I opened up the door to air it out and a dang mouse ran straight down the vertical metal part of the shelves! What the crap is left in there for him to eat??? NOTHING! Go home, little annoying disease-carrying make-me-want-to-puke animal! Eat some of that fine bright green mouse, er, food in the little plastic box there, and then go share it with your friends! See ya! "Humane" disposal time is OVER!

This is so not my idea of a well-spent weekend afternoon. Or week, for that matter. Now I get to have new wood cut for our shelves, finish airing out the closet, make sure the stupid mice actually stay out this time (how??), and shop for new food for my family.

Reminds me of the time I thought squirrels were cute... until one got into my dorm room. The thought still makes me shiver to this day!

IMAG0181, a photo by binkwaffle - Holly on Flickr.

Guess where the boys are this week? At CAMP!!! Woohoo!!!

They did an awesome day camp this summer for a couple of weeks, and there's also a resident version. I kept telling the boys it just wouldn't fit in this year, but we decided to make it work. Wow! I'll do THAT every summer from now on!! :-)

We drove the boys out to Mannford, OK, (middle of nowhere) on Sunday night. As we drove away from camp, we realized that Husky, Aidan's favorite stuffed animal, hadn't made it into the car. So Brad and I drove home the 30+ minutes, grabbed Husky, and drove back again to Mannford (still in the middle of nowhere). Turns out, someone stole the copper from the power substation for our neighborhood that evening, so our house was w/o power when we got home the first time. So at least the second trip to camp was cool, had music, and gave us something to do with our evening. I think it was 90 or so in the house when we left. I was too annoyed and afraid to look at the thermostat when we got home for the final time. Ugh. (We came back to town -- again -- and had dinner at 9 p.m., checked our phones until AEP/PSO said our power was back on, then went home around 11.)

They called us from camp on Monday night and said that Aidan wanted to come home, but the camp director took care of it. No call last night, so whew! :-) Two more nights to go! They're doing a ropes/obstacle course, rock wall climbing, swimming in the lake and the pool, ziplining... I'm sure they're totally wiped out by bedtime!

Meanwhile, I've been trying to do some cleaning (Ever have one of those weeks when nothing you did seems visible in the end? Yeah. Me too.) and some sewing. I have a craft show in October, and Murphy's Law says that it will be here before I know it!

Because today is expected to break Tulsa's all-time high of 115 degrees, I drove Brad to work today since his a/c overheats his car at the moment. He works about 20-25 minutes away, and somewhat closer than home to the Fabricut fabric outlet. I say somewhat because it is farther east, but leaving the Port and going to Fabricut then back home is kind of like doing a big triangle rather than just a coupla miles past his office. BUT, somehow that gives me mental license to "keep going" to the outlet for my fabric on occasion. Check out what I got! Won't those plush and textured fabrics be awesome for fall and winter bags and clutches?? Yum!!!

And check out those rolls of basic fabrics! Interlining, interfacing... They'll come in handy on everything! Especially for --- ready? --- FIVE DOLLARS!!! TOTAL! For that entire bag full of rolls! I've really got to take Brad to work more often. :-)

So I'm off to SEW SEW SEW now! Cleaning? What cleaning?