The Map

Lindy has a new friend at school and has really wanted to invite her over. I told her if she got the little girl's last name or her phone number then we would call her. Lindy got off the bus all excited a couple of weeks ago.

"I asked my friend her last name." she said with a grin.
"Oh good, what is it?" I ask.
"Hm.." she thought as she tapped her chin, "I know it started with Mmm or Rrr -- or Gu. Ghoster? Coasten? Roaster? Rover? Monster? Yeah. Monster. So can we call her?"

Hmm. I can see now how well that conversation would go.
Me: "Hello? Mrs. Monster? My daughter would like to invite your daughter to play. Where do you live and we will come pick her up."
Barbra Monster: "Oh, how delightful. She would love to come. Here are the directions to us: we live in some kid's closet. Just go past the bathroom and then turn right at the open door. But we are only there at night. OH, and if it's this weekend, we will be at our vacation home under some other kid's bed. So when were you planning?"

I told Lindy she was going to have to get the little girl's real last name, like write it down, or better yet get her phone number.

Well I think the problem is solved. The other day Lindy came home with a map. Now it is no secret that I love maps. I can spend several hours googlemapping my way all over the world. Ever since they added the street-view feature...oh my, I can't quite profess my love of googlemaps enough. I would do a commercial for them. So I figured we were in business when Lindy told me that the friend had drawn a map and it was in her backpack for me to look at. Because with all of my googlemap prowless I felt prepared for any cartography challenge.



Oh yes. That is helpful. Let's go pick her up. I'll just get my bag.

Killin' Is My Business- And business is Gooood.

*If you can name the movie my title comes from you get a really big cyber high-five and extra points for watching hilarious movies.

It started on a Monday night. Matt and I were sitting in the kitchen debating politics and religion, as we do most every night (ha), and I noticed the garage door into the house had been left ajar since we got home...a couple of hours. No big deal, I closed the door. A few minutes later, just as our Hulu streaming of The Office was getting good --- oh, I mean our conversation on politics was getting very deep--- Matt said "Oh MY HECK!! There is a mouse in here."

"What the WHAT?" I shouted, and paused our Office episode (no use pretending anymore. We don't talk about politics. We watch t.v. Do you hate us now?)

It was in the laundry room. We saw it run under the washer. Oh. IT WAS ON!

I have never really understood the drive behind hunting. I don't like to eat wild game (I don't even like cow meat, and it's pretty easy to come by), although once, at Ricks, our friend Macee bought some ostrich jerky off a guy going door to door. Guess what? It tasted exactly like beef jerky. Only Macee paid like 20 bucks for it. Some dude at Ricks unwrapped a Slim Jim and sold it to girls who thought he was cute for a 2,000% profit (check my math, pretty sure it's wrong). Genius. But I digress... I've never really understood the love of hunting. The walking around for hours to find the perfect spot, the wearing of the camo, the waiting for hours eating nothing but beef jerky (or ostrich if you're Macee), only to shoot and miss your elk/deer/bear/lion and start the entire process over, it just isn't for me. Until that fateful Monday night.

Matt and I figured we had the little wretch. We decided we needed to empty the laundry room of all contents but the washer and dryer so that if he ran he wouldn't have anywhere to go. It was a foolproof plan. It took us a while to throw everything into the kitchen, but this was going to be worth it. That little rat would be sorry it ever came in here. HAHAHA. My brain was already transforming into that of a hunter, how to trap it, how to kill it...it was all I could think about.

We got out some melon and some peanut butter and put it on a new-style mouse trap Matt had out in the garage. I went in the kitchen and closed the adjoining door. Matt sat on a bucket in the garage and we waited. And waited. I felt just as authentic as if I had been crouched beside a tree waiting for my big buck. Finally the mouse took the bait. Hazaa...wait, no. He literally took the bait. Without setting off the trap. Took the melon and was flitting off, carefree. Matt attacked all combat style, sometimes you've gotta go hand to hand out in the wild (I really don't think that's true). He grabbed his broom and all I could hear was tens of dollars of damage being done to the walls and my broom. It sounded like the inside of a dryer in there. Whack! Slam! Explative! I grabbed my Clorox Ready Mop as to be...well, Ready. And I was glad I did. The little bugger scurried under the kitchen door. "OH NO SUCKER. NOT ON MY WATCH." Slamm-O! went the Clorox Mop. I squished/ swished him back under the door for my tag-team to finish off. But just like a real buck in the real wilderness, somehow he escaped our clever snare of an empty laundry room and retreated back under the washer. BULLOCKS! Time to restrategize, grab some ostrich jerky and start again.

We figured we had him this time. Matt resumed his place on the bucket in the garage. The "mousetrap" (read peice of crap) was reloaded with 4 TBS of peanut butter and an entire slice of honeydew, probably the tastiest melon in the land. The difference was that this time I did not wait in the kitchen. I stealthily perched myself atop our LG front load washer with my Clorox Ready Mop in hand. The plan was simple. The mouse would smell the delicious melon, long for the sticky yummy peanut butter and venture out for a snack. All we had to do was wait. We were good for it. It was only 11:00 pm and we were all hopped up on adrenaline and ostrich jerky (okay, no jerky, but I have a hard time dropping things...it's a little OCD.). We couldn't be more authentic hunters if we were wearing all camo drenched in deer urine, squatting in the night with nothing but our gun and scope to keep us company. Riiigghht. We waited. and waited. and waited. We didn't dare move an inch, didn't want to spook him. Time ticked. My legs started to go to sleep...and then went fully to sleep. My back started to hurt. The Ready Mop got heavier, a lot heavier. Still we sat. At some point the adrenaline must have tapered off because my eyelids began to get heavy. I glanced at Matt out in the garage on his tipped-over orange Home Depot bucket. Was he asleep? My blurry eyes couldn't tell. I gestured that we should have a pow-wow. Getting off of the washer was a trick in itself with my sleepy legs and my weak arms from holding that 400 pound mop for so long. It had been over an hour. It was after midnight. Have I mentioned Matt gets up before 5 for work? And I was supposed to be on game to teach 10 preschoolers in the morning? The thrill of hunting was wearing down. Way, way down.

We devised a contraption that would make it so the mouse couldn't get out of the laundry room into the house. It consisted of a pvc pipe placed in the crack of the door and wood stacked in front of that. The tasty treats of peanut butter and melon were replaced with De-con.Foolproof. No worries. All we had to do was wait for him to eat some De-con and die. By the time all was said and done, we went to bed at 1:30. I felt like a total failure. I wanted to do it myself. But I guessed the De-con was just as good.

I avoided the laundry room as long as possible. Two days went by and then my want for clean undies overpowered the stench of failure and I had to go in the laundry room. I did my wash with a clenched jaw.

Then on Thursday morning I was getting Hank some yogurt and saw a little something out of the corner of my eye near the huge pile of crap that had been thrown from the laundry room, but mysteriously not been cleaned up. "Ha," I thought to myself, "wouldn't it be funny if that was the .....MOUUUUUUSSSEE!" He was in my kitchen! He scurried into the pantry. And all of my hunter instincts returned. "Gotcha." I said with a sick sneer on my face. I grabbed my Clorox Ready Mop that was now as light as air. I spun it around a few times like a baton or some nunchucks (not really, but that would have been rad) and I was ready for my short game. Our pantry has boxes lining the floor with such treasures as cans of beans, cans of spaghetti sauce, cans of corn. I knew he was hiding behind one. This mouse was about to die. I scooted the boxes out one at a time. I had him. I knew I had him. Until I had scooted all the boxes and he wasn't there. What the WHAT? He had to be there.

"I want more yogurt." Hank said.

"SHHHHH. Mama's killin'. Just a minute. Stay where you are, things is gonna get ugly." I replied.

I didn't hear what he said back. Too focused. I realized it was possible that the mouse was in one of the boxes. I lifted a pan that was sitting on top of one and wallla! There he was. He lept out of that box and into another. The Ready Mop slammed the box. I was not under my own power anymore. Instinct or the mop or both had taken over. He ran out of that box and into the middle of the floor. I think I heard myself snicker as I brought the Ready Mop down with all my strength. BAM. Congratulations to me, I graduated from hunter to killer. I shook. I nearly threw up. I had to clean up the mess. I nearly threw up again.

My friend Carrie's husband went bear hunting. I asked what he would do with the bear if he caught it and Carrie told me that he mainly wanted it for a rug and that they also make good sausage. So a word of advice for my friends: Don't eat the sausage at my house, but you should definitely check out the new mouse-skin rug in Lindy's Barbie house.