Pickles & Dimes

Jason was off work today, so I had to deal with his unusual habit of wanting to have a full-blown conversation at 7:15 in the morning, which starts off by him waking me up to ask, “How did you sleep?” That’s WRONG, because that means sleeping is OVER, and only *I* make that call.

Also, I had to deal with him barging into the bathroom as I was stepping out of the shower, which infuriates me because I don’t have dangerously high levels of testosterone swirling madly in my body, so shut the door already because hello, I am naked here, and as I turned around to say, “The door - shut it,” I stepped directly on Abby’s tail, because she was underneath the shower curtain getting ready to lick the water off the shower wall even though she gets fresh water - with ice - twice a day, and she screeched loudly and gouged a hole in my foot during her hasty exit, and isn’t this how everyone’s day starts?

We’ve been battling mice in our garage, with two known dead so far and the D-Con still being eaten regularly. We also have D-Con in our storage rooms in the basement - out of reach of the cats of course - thanks to Jason’s “hypothetical” run-in with a rodent last weekend. The D-Con there hasn’t been touched.

Until last night. I was looking in one of the storage rooms for something, when about a foot and a half from the D-Con box, I saw a mouse curled up in the corner.

After girlishly whining, “Eeewwwww,” I decided to be a Big Girl and handle it myself. I gingerly picked up a pencil and thrust-stabbed it at the gray, fuzzy lump. Nothing. As I reached for it a second time, holding my breath, Sunny burst through the door and rammed me in the back with her furry little head, giving me what only can be medically described as “Early Onset Heart Failure.”

After depositing her squirming body out of the room, I poked at the mouse again. Turned out it was stuck to the floor. After internally debating whether or not the mouse had been dead for months, rather than hours, I finally poked it enough to dislodge it.

Then I went to Jason and told him, “There’s a dead mouse in the storage room.” He came over, gave a visible start, took a deep breath and grabbed a dustpan as if heading off to battle.

“Don’t touch me when I’m touching this, OK?” he admonished me loudly, like I’d be dumb enough to do such a thing when I myself routinely get startled by watching toast pop out of the toaster.

He attempted to brush the mouse in the dustpan, when we both heard a clacking sound.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Yeah, so? It’s been dead a looooong time,” I said.

“Yeah…so long…it turned into a ROCK.”

And sure enough, what I mistook for a dead rodent carcass that we both shadowboxed with for the last five minutes was in fact, a dirty, dusty rock.

Huh.

Last night I made dinner. Now, I am not exactly what one would call a gourmet in the kitchen, and in fact, Jason and I routinely have items in our pantry that can simply be described as “meat-in-a-box” or “meat-in-a-can.”

So yesterday, channeling Betty Crocker, I decided I wanted to exercise my cooking muscles and add to my recipe book, which woefully consists of about 10 recipes, one of which is some pudding concoction that I attempted once that tasted like burnt rubber if burnt rubber tastes like death, and yet I cannot bring myself to remove said recipe, because that would only leave 9 recipes in the book, and well, that is just SAD.

So yesterday I made bacon-wrapped chicken, which is not exactly the most healthful dinner around, but I like bacon and all forms of chicken and I live with a man who physically cannot eat any vegetable except for potatoes without gagging. (You don’t even want to know what happens if we get a pizza and the tomato sauce is too chunky.)

Anyway, this chicken dish was awesome. I threw on spices and herbs and tenderly wrapped the bacon around the chicken, and it was so moist and tender and delicious, from the noises you would’ve thought we were making a porn movie in our basement instead of eating dinner. Plus, I served it with Rice-a-Roni, which is not homemade, but is like my own personal motto. Rice-a-Roni = Me. I even made some last weekend on our portable camping grill - that’s how addicted I am to it. Ahem.

Now I’m flush with excitement from my cooking success and I want to make some more “from-scratch” recipes. Here’s where I need a favor. Do you guys have any cool recipes you’d be willing to share with me? I’m open to anything, as long as there’s no veggies in it unless it’s potatoes (or, if the veggie can easily be picked off or put on the side, because I - love veggies. Except for broccoli, which can suck it. And cauliflower. And beets. Boo, beets!).

Due to Jason’s totally “hypothetical” question of, “Hey, can mice climb up the side of a porcelain toilet bowl, you know, hypothetically?” I have been somewhat…reluctant to use our downstairs bathroom where said incident may or may not have taken place. I remembered seeing the teeny baby mice in our detached garage and noticed the lack of parental units, and surmised that adult mice could quite possibly be lurking behind our toilet, waiting, as Jason claimed, to climb up the side of the bowl while it was otherwise occupied, clamoring along until the occupant freaks out accordingly.

Now Jason is claiming it was all a “nightmare,” as it was 5:00 in the morning and he was going to the bathroom with the lights off, so he must’ve “fallen asleep” while on the throne. And dreamt about a “mouse” brushing up against his bare leg before scurrying out of sight.

I’m not sure which disturbs me more: the thought of rodents spelunking down our toilet bowl, or that my boyfriend’s mild case of narcolepsy allows him to fall asleep anywhere, at anytime.