My very best moments...

Not.

A couple years ago, I was Tess's Brownie Girl Scout Leader. We had some big event in the gym on the little tiny Army installation at Schinnen, The Netherlands, and I had tons of stuff to haul there and set up and haul away again.

I was loading stuff into my car after it was over. I took a bunch of stuff out, set it on the hood, got the car unlocked, and dumped it on the front seat and went back in to the gym get another load...

When I got in I realized I didn't have my car keys anymore and the car was locked.

So I got somebody to call the MPs and this very nice ( and young. When did soldiers get so young? Oh, yeah, when I got older) MP came out to help me get into the car.

We were trying to get it unlocked and not having any luck, so he went to check about calling a locksmith.

It was then that I realized that I was wearing my jacket and a zip up hoodie under it, and that I had stuck the car keys in the pocket of the hoodie.

And then I realized that the driver's door was unlocked.

Yeah. I felt like a genius. I told the baby MP that I found the keys. I really didn't think I needed to mention that the car had been unlocked the whole time.

Apparently I am a slow learner...

Last night, I was making roasted potatoes, which involves boiling potatoes and then tossing them with onion and garlic and spices and baking them for a while...easy.

So I filled the pot with water and put it on the back burner. I grabbed the wooden cutting board (you will see in a second why it is a very good thing I use a WOODEN cutting board...) and set it on the front burner, so I could cut up the potatoes and toss them in the not-yet-boiling water. Yeah, I know it's not the best idea (really, I KNOW it's not the best idea) to put the cutting board on the burner, but the side of the stove with the big back burner is next to the corner of the counter and there's no room to work on that side.

Then I promptly turned on the front burner. Not on purpose, but just like the faucet in our shower, it's the opposite of our stove in Tucson. (I kept adjusting the water colder when I meant to make it hotter when we first got here. I got over that pretty quickly, because I shower every day. Apparently I do not use the stove every day.)

After a half a minute or so, I smelled burning...For a second, I thought one of the kids had once again spilled something on the back burner. Then I saw a tiny wisp of smoke curling up from under the cutting board, and I realized what I had done. AGAIN.

That's right. Two of my wooden cutting boards now have circular rings of scorching on one side.

You would think that I would either stop putting the cutting boards on the burners OR start being more careful about which burner I turn on...

You would be wrong.

This is my life...

Tess and Thor came in the house with some Halloween decorations. Tess made a sudden lunge at Thor with some sort of torch, and said she had set her brother on fire.

Thor of course fell to the floor screaming and writhing.

And my response: "Tess, not in the house."

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Also, I would like to report that there was a mouse in the house for hours earlier this week, and the dogs never noticed.

A leaf blows across the back yard, they are on high alert.

The UPS truck and the mail man's jeep make them bark like crazy. A dog walks down our street, they are gonna let the world know.

But the fox that ran right outside their backyard and the mouse in their house -- they were completely oblivious.

You know, Mojo is pretty smart for a dog. But really, that's not saying much.

Routine tests

Those routine tests last week that turned into a call back for more testing...

I had the more testing this morning. Turns out everything is swell. I will get a letter in a couple weeks telling me everything is fine, and no further action needs to happen.

Which is great! I am so relieved that I am not going to add yet another drug or test or procedure to my already too big list of them.

I will, however, have to have this particular routine test more often than regular people do.

So, it seems that I am taking after my Dad, who we call the 1% guy, since with any procedure, any surgery, any treatment, any drug, he seems to be in the tiny percentage who have some weird or funky or bad reaction or unexpected result.

Makes life more interesting, I guess.

It was a mouse...

Yesterday I was reading Veronica's post about not the spider that was in her cleavage ...

Apparently earlier there was a spider in her cleavage at some point. She lives in Tasmania. I guess things like that happen there.

So I was writing a comment about how I saw a fox run across the street, and how I would rather have a fox outside than a spider the size of my hand in my bedroom. (Tasmania has big ass spiders.)

Tess started yelling for me, because she saw something run across her room and into her closet. I went up there and poked around a little, but not too much, because I really didn't want to find anything. Finding a mouse is for when Mark is there to deal with it.

I went back downstairs, and a couple minutes later Tess yelled again. She again saw something black run across the room and behind the door. I didn't see anything then. Tess by this point is sitting on her bed with her feet up because there is something on the floor.

Later, I was going out to the garage, and I saw a mouse -- well, a black blur -- shoot away from the door to the mud room and under Mark's tool chest.

(Our garage has room for both vehicles -- I know anyone who saw my garage in Tucson is stunned -- but there is stuff in boxes all the way around. That mouse could disappear forever as long as he stuck to the walls.)

Damn it. We had mice in The Netherlands, and it was an enormous pain trying to get rid of them. So I was thinking I would have to go get traps and set them out and then deal with the traps and sigh. I hate mice.

Later, after supper, Tess saw the mouse again, downstairs in the kitchen. We have a sideboard with the coffee pot and the espresso machine and all the mugs and cups in the kitchen, and two fruit boxes from Costco, for the recycling. The bottom one is full of glass and cans, the top one has paper and cardboard. The mouse was under the sideboard and then disappeared into the recycling box.

Thor at this point was squatting down a couple feet from the sideboard. Unfortunately the mouse didn't break his way, because he would have jumped a mile, I bet.

Eventually the kids got bored, since the mouse was in hiding.

A couple minutes later I heard this enormous noise of rattling glass and metal, and heard a couple tea bottles hit the floor. The noise repeated...

It was Mark, kicking the bottom recycling box into the wall. Twice. Because the mouse was behind the box. Then he -- and boy did this gross Tess out -- reached down AND PICKED THE MOUSE UP BY THE TAIL.

He thought it was dead, but the little feet were moving rather feebly. I dove for the back door and Mark swung and let the mouse fly over the back fence.

He felt kinda bad about that, knocking the mouse senseless and then tossing it into the cold. I, on the other hand, treated him as a hero.

Okay, well, I said "My hero." I didn't bake him a cake or sleep with him or anything. I didn't buy him a card.

He went to bed a couple minutes before me. When I climbed in next to him, he said "I slayed a mouse."

I laughed and reminded him that mice are nasty vermin. And that he is my hero.