Sunday Update - Week 16

 Hello again.  Sixteen weeks into 2021.  The weirdness continues and we're holding our own.

I got back to work on writing Friday night.  Duke Noble 2 is on its way.  Between Friday night and last night, I got out just over 3200 words.  Yay.  Already has a twist.  Heh.

I really need to do some marketing and have a sale.  I'll see what I can do this week to make that happen.

In other writerly news, I received the last proofs and now all of my books are available in paperback form.  In addition to the Kindle form.  I'm still waiting on the author copies of RHI, but those should be here tomorrow.  :fingers crossed:  I have at least two people who want to buy a copy.  Maybe a third, but I haven't talked to her yet and I probably won't see her for another couple weeks.  

It wasn't a great reading week. Only finished one book.  And the Zane Grey I was reading got set aside for another time because I just wasn't into it.  I picked up a fantasy instead.

In baking news, I got a wild hair and created my own recipe.  Chocolate Walnut Upside-Down Cake.  It was awesome.  So I posted the recipe on FB.  Except I forgot to put down something when I wrote the recipe - mini chocolate chips.  Oops.  I bet it's still good without them.  (corrected recipe below.)  I also did a batch of granola bars.  And it's not baking, but I made a vat of beef stew yesterday.

On the activity front, I did something 5 out of 7 days - skipping Friday and Saturday.  The weather was chilly and wet, so I used that as an excuse.  the other 5 days, I walked, did gardening, did some windows, went shopping, and went fishing.  Weight: 185.2 - up 4/10ths of a pound.

When I was fishing I caught 3 little bluegills and a little green sunfish.  None of them were keepers.  

If you want gardening news, go over here.  

Hubs found an antler in the yard!  Eight years we've been looking for antlers and suddenly there it was.  It was only a spike, but hey, it's a start.  It's long past when deer drop antlers.  We're thinking a squirrel found it in the woods and was dragging it somewhere to eat when it dropped it where Hubs found it.  It's in the garage for now.  I'll clean it up and put it in the house eventually.

From the sounds of it, Hubs is killing a mouse in the garage as I type this.  Must've got one in the trap and it didn't die.  I hope it was the one chewing in the wall for the past hour or so.  It was driving me crazy.  (Update:  It was a mouse, but it wasn't caught.  It was running around.  He didn't get it.  Drat.)

Other than that, not much going on around here.  Hanging in there.  Watching the country I love circle the drain faster and faster.  Not much I can do about it.

Oh, I went to Wallyworld earlier in the week.  About thirty percent of the people weren't wearing masks.  So I took mine off.  Freedom!  I still stayed as far away from people as possible - it's ingrained in me now more than ever.  If I get the crud, you can say I told you so.  If I don't... neener neener boo boo.  

Okay, now that's really enough out of me.  How was your week?

Recipe:

Chocolate Walnut Upside Down Cake

1 stick butter

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 1/3 cups chopped walnuts

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2 cups white sugar

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

½ cup baking cocoa powder

2 cups water

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 Tbsp white vinegar

1/3 bag mini chocolate chips 

Preheat oven to 350F (175C).  While oven is preheating, put the stick of butter in a 9x13" cake pan (sliced for quicker melting) and place the pan in the oven.  Remove as soon as the butter is melted.  Stir in brown sugar until combined.  Stir in walnuts until all nuts are coated and then make sure they're evenly placed.  Set aside. 

In a large mixing bowl, sift together sugar, flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder.  Add water, oil, and vanilla.  Stir until combined.  Stir in vinegar until smooth.  Pour batter over the nut mixture in the pan.  Bake for 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  Allow to cool completely before cutting and serving.  Overnight is best.  (If you don't let it cool, the still-warm cake falls apart.  Trust me on this.)

 

The Mouse Saga

Sunday, Hubs and I spent a couple hours out in the yard raking.  Not long after we came inside, I hear Hubs calling my name.

Me:  "What?"
Him:  "Did you put a sticky trap in the spare room?"
Me:  "There's one in the closet in there."
Him:  "No.  This one."

I walk over there and he's pointing to a trap that is now at the end of the bed.  The trap now has a splotch of fur on it and is chewed on one side.  And there's bits of trap paper in a line from under the closet door to where the trap now rests.

Me:  "We've got a mouse."

And sure enough, when we moved the bottom of the comforter from where it touches the floor, there it was, a tiny mouse staring up at us.

Now, you have to understand some things.  1) That bed has no frame, so its a mattress and box springs on the floor.  2) It's the cat's bed and, as such, it has big, flat, plastic boxes shoved tight along the side as 'stairs', to provide geriatric cat a gentle walk up to sleeping level.

So, there's this mouse, hiding under the comforter, but unable to escape further because the plastic boxes are shoved against the box springs.  And there we are, two grown and capable adults in a small bedroom chock full of furniture and plastic boxes, trying to figure out how to catch one tiny mouse.

Sounds easy.  I mean, the little thing was pretty much trapped, right?  Scoop it into a garbage can and off it goes to the big mouse house in the sky.  The mouse had other plans.  We almost had it when it saw a window of opportunity through the space between Hubs' legs. 

Understand some other things... 1) There is only about 3 feet between the bed and the door.  2)  There is only about 3 feet of space between the bed and the piano.  3) Most of that space is taken up by plastic boxes.  4)  Neither of us are exactly small people.

Hubs jumps, scrambling so the mouse doesn't run up his pantlegs.  I jump, scrambling off where I was laying across plastic boxes.  The mouse?  He runs under the dresser. 

At this point, we're stuffing things around the door so he doesn't get into the rest of the house, and trying to figure out a way to herd the cute, little bastard into an area where we can catch him.  Lucky for us, the dresser sits about 4 inches off the floor.  I can see the mouse.  He can see me.  I take a plastic hanger and herd him toward where Hubs is waiting with an old pillow case.  When the mouse is encouraged out from under the dresser, the idea is to throw the pillow case on top of him and whisk him away. 

Again, the mouse had other ideas.  He sees a new window and shoots out from under the dresser.  And the chase is on.  Under the piano (it's electric and sits on a stand, so no hiding there) across the front of the table where I keep my stereo, into the space between the head of the bed and the bookcase.  Aha!  I have him cornered! 

Nope.  He slips down the little crack between the bookcase and the wall.  He's behind the bookcase now.  I think.  But nope.  Peering down the cracks between the case and wall shows now mouse.  He's UNDER the damn thing.  While I keep an eye on the various routes the mouse could escape through and start de-booking the case, Hubs slips out to get a more effective mouse stopping tool. 

Everything off the bookcase, books and tchotchkes scattered everywhere, I lift the case (it's a two shelfer, so not that big) so Hubs can hit the damn thing with the spade he'd retrieved from the garage.  Carpet be damned, this mouse is gonna be a splat for sure.

The mouse had other ideas.

He runs for it.  Straight across the room and under the dresser again.  Okay, fine.  I get the plastic hanger I've been using as an encouraging tool and herd the damn thing toward the space where Hubs can finally get him.  Except...

Yep, other ideas again.

The mouse, moving exceptionally fast by this time, climbs the candle I was using to keep it from crawling through the space between the door and the plastic box we were using to keep him from crawling under the door.  He climbs the candle, runs across the plastic box and slips down the other side.  Hubs moves the box just in time for us to watch his little furry butt squeeze underneath the door.  Now, the mouse has access to the whole rest of the house.

But we had other ideas.  Hubs whips open the door and there's the mouse, thinking he's gotten away Scot free.  Hubs tries to chase him back into the bedroom with the shovel for easier containment, but the mouse jigs to his right and scampers under the telephone table... right onto the sticky trap I keep there to catch spiders.  And this time, he was stuck but good.

Hubs took stuck mouse and trap outside, and dispatched the little bugger as quickly and painlessly as possible.  At that point, there was nothing else to do with it.  You wanna try peeling a live and bitey mouse off a sticky trap? 

Anyway, such is life in the country.  I thought I'd jammed stuff in all the holes this house has, but there's one somewhere I missed.  Probably the hole where the dryer hose goes down under the house.  If they get in there, more power to them.  As long as they stay out of my cupboards. 

A quick check confirmed there were no signs of mice in my cupboards, by the way.  There is nothing worse than finding mouse poop in with the silverware.  :gag:

The cat, of course, was sleeping elsewhere at the time and was thoroughly unaffected by the whole hoopla.  Mouse running around in her room and she does nothing?  I fired her on the spot.  She yawned at me. 

The Saga of a Missing Mousetrap and Deconstruction

So, early yesterday morning, Hubs and I were sitting in the office when we heard the telltale snap of a mouse getting thwacked in a trap out in the garage.  Once he'd had his coffee and had sufficiently woken up to start the days chores, he went out there.

No mouse.  No trap.

The hunt began.

The mouse, with trap attached, had gotten up under the wooden deck/ramp thingie out in the garage.  With no way to reach it, we kind of shrugged and decided to tackle it later.  It wasn't going anywhere.

After lunch, Hubs decided to take the deck/ramp thingie apart.  I mean, we've been here five and a half years and have never seen what's under there anyway, so it was a worthy project, even if there wasn't a mouse who was going to stink up the place eventually.

So, he went to work pulling up boards and sheets of particle board.  We found a bunch of Max's missing kitty toys under the ramp part.  But no mouse.  Under the deck part, we found more kitty toys and the original wooden step from the house into the garage.  But no mouse.

And no holes for it to have escaped into the walls of the garage.

And no trap, so it was still dragging that damn thing.

We searched everywhere.  Not under the jeep.  No under the boat.  Not under the work bench, in the bathroom, behind the tools, beneath the mower...

Beside the deck/ramp thingie is a wooden platform.  It has slats with holes that things fall through to land beneath.  (Don't look at me, I didn't make the damn thing.  Hubs didn't either.)  I shined a flashlight through the holes and lit on the trap.  Gnarly.  Didn't see the mouse, though, so it was all good.

Except once started, Hubs wanted to finish the project and get it all cleaned underneath that thing, too.  More pried boards.  OMG, the loads of dust, junk, and mouse poop underneath it all.  :gag:  And the trap.  With the mouse still attached.

Near as we can figure it, the mouse, having realized it had no way to escape underneath the deck/ramp thingie, had ventured back out into the garage, climbed the platform and fallen through the slats.

Hubs dispatched the mouse and cleaned up all the gunk and detritus from however many years that thing had been there (at least 6 years - just before we moved here - but no more than 17, when the garage was added on).  Wearing a filter mask, so he didn't breathe mouse poop dust.  (He didn't want me even out there during this, and I was OK with that.)

By then, it was dinner time, so he put it back together just enough so neither of us would kill ourselves stepping into the garage, and left the rest of it for today.  Yeah, four hours worth of it*.

Today, Hubs will put it all back together with additional wood to block the holes the mouse originally used to get up underneath there.

Ah, life in the wilds of SWMO.

*Hubs spent four hours on it.  I was in the living room reading and watching reruns of House and Criminal Minds.

Thursday This n That

I have two notepads on my desk that I'll probably never write in.  They're too pretty.

It's been hot and grody here, but I've been going fishing anyway.  I need to get out of the house and away from this computer, if only for a couple sweaty hours.  I go out, I sweat, I drink a lot of water, and I come home.  It's better than sitting here and slowly expanding.  Be nice to catch something bigger than bait, though.

I've been having some really craptastic nights of sleep lately.  Not sure what's up in my head, but as soon as it hits the pillow, it starts attacking me.  As I wrote in yesterday's post, it was attacking my writing.  Last night, it was attacking my parenting skills.  Fun, fun. 

The deer we refer to as 'the skinny twins' (aka Oliver and Annie - because we suspect they're orphans) are not so skinny anymore.  Yay.  They're still not fat deer, but they're on the road to recovery. They're almost up to the same size as the yearlings we call the 'not-so skinny twins'.  Each set, btw, has one doe and one buck. 

We have three fawns this year.  A set of twins and a single.  We suspect they're all from the two mature twin does who hang around here. 

I have two things that aren't crossed off on my last to-do list.  They're the same things that never got crossed off my last to-do list.  Dusting and sending out a new newsletter.  My motivation to do either is about equal. 

The mice in the garage discovered the bag of sunflower seeds.  So Hubs put the seeds in a tub, but the tub was cracked.  He repaired it with Gorilla tape.  The mice have been chewing through the Gorilla tape.  So I put a bunch more traps out there, baited with peanut butter and sunflower seeds.  The mice have stolen all the sunflower seeds without snapping the traps.  Except for one.  The last one must've had the seed stuck on there better because it got the mouse.  Next time I'm at Wallyworld, I'm buying a new tub.  And maybe a different bait.  Do they sell sunflower butter?

And I'm spent.  What's up in your this n that world today?

Spontaneous Generation

If you're not familiar with the theory of spontaneous generation, it's something they came up with centuries ago to explain the presence of something when there's no possible other way for it to have come about.  So, say, you've got a bin full of grain and you think it's pretty secure, but one day you open the bin and it's full of mice.  They must have spontaneously generated.  Right?

Of course, upon further inspection the theory was disproved.  Mice got into the bin because mice can get into anything with like a 1/2" wide gap.  And if there isn't one, they'll make one.

This theory always fascinated me.  Things don't just poof into existence.  Derp.

This morning, though, I'd almost be willing to subscribe to the theory.  In the past four years, we have plugged every hole possible in this house to keep the mice out.  Every. Hole. Possible.  And yet, this morning, there was a mouse on the sticky trap* next to the fridge.  Hubs dispatched it

So, now we're trying to find how the damn thing got in.  All of the steel wool I have stuffed into all the exiting holes appears to be in place.  Except for that spot next to the dishwasher, which I'll reinforce after I've had more coffee. 

I've come to terms with mice in the walls.  And in the garage.  Even the thought of mice running around in the house doesn't really squib me out.  It's when they get into the cupboards and you never know if they've run around licking the silverware or whether they've used the dishtowels as a litterbox that gives me the heebies-jeebies.  They need to not be in the house if I can ever use my utensils and stuff without washing everything beforehand every single time.  Thus, they need to get gone.  Seriously. 

Never mind about the cat.  She's useless.  She's like that stupid commercial where the bank is being robbed and the uniformed guy says "I'm not a security guard, I'm a security monitor.  I only tell you when the bank is being robbed.  :pause: The bank is being robbed."  She's a vermin monitor.  She'll point it out, but she rarely does anything about it.  She might pounce on a baby cricket, but that's where her effort ends.  She did visit the bedroom in the middle of the night last night, but since she doesn't speak English, we didn't even get the message that there was a mouse in the house.  Like I said.  Useless.  "You've got claws.  You've got fangs.  Kill the damn thing already, or let me sleep."  :eyeroll:

Anyway, since I know spontaneous generation is so not a thing, I guess I need to search for possible entry points I missed over the past 4 years.  With mice, it's sort of 'where there's a will there's a way' and I will probably never totally mouse-proof my house.  Ten years from now, I'll be sitting here scratching my head and looking for their latest access point, I'm sure.

For now, though, when I'm caffeine and nicotine deficient, I'm leaning toward spontaneous generation.  Poof! there's a mouse.  

Ugh.


*I keep sticky traps all over the house to catch brown recluse spiders.  I do not use sticky traps for mice.  Snap traps are best.