mice

like every other warm-blooded woman, i hate mice.
this kind of goes deeper than the run of the mill- they carry diseases and poop and pee microscopically everywhere type of disgust.

my grandmother's house smelled so bad growing up that as soon as you walked into her apartment building, you could smell her place. she had huge roaches and mice that were so bold, they didn't run away from you even if you approached them with a broom or some deadly device.

i hated going over to her house and would itch while was there and hours after we left. gross.

it was the smell of dirty carpet that a dog had peed or pooped and it had never been cleaned, dirty clothes, body odor and just funk that fell down on you like a thick fog.

at home, we had mice but it was nothing our cat, cindy couldn't deal with adequately. i had a self-esteem problem which turned into a binge-eating problem and would hide evidence of said problem under my mattress and behind my bed which attracted the mice to my room.

my skin still crawls at the sound of a mouse chewing through paper or burrowing through walls and such. instead of my mother explaining to me that keeping food or remnants of food in my room attracts mice, she called me nasty. she said i would end up like my grandmother. she said i was the reason we had mice... talk about scared frickin straight!

when i moved away for college and subsequently after i came home and moved in the upstairs apartment, it was my mission to make sure you could eat off my floors ESPECIALLY when i had a boyfriend. dishes were never left in the sink. food was always neatly stored away and my house was pristine. i was always fueled by the words my mom always said to me: "no man wants a nasty woman." that was always her warning.

btw, i hate the word "nasty."

ffwd to this week.
i haven't done laundry in about 2 months.
dishes were piled in the sink.
rocky peed on something and for the life of me i couldn't figure out WHAT it was. all i knew was that it was driving me crazy. (it was actually what he was supposed to pee on - his wee wee pad that i had thrown in the garbage but hadn't taken the garbage out...old urine is a disgusting smell.)

and then i heard it...the crinkle of little teeth biting through my garbage in the middle of the night.

i'm a fair sleeper. not deep enough to where i could sleep through a fire but not light enough that random noises wake me but i swear (!!) that sound woke me up out of my sleep.
my blood went cold.

i spent a marathon tonight cleaning from top to bottom and i'm not done. i saw the offender. it scurried out of the radiator that connects my apartment to the one next door. of course, rocky didn't do anything. BOOOO!

i spoke to essequibo a while ago. he said i have to plug all the holes with brillo and set traps and voila! if i plug all the holes...the mice have no where to go but on the traps (in theory) but that means i have to get rid of the traps...SCARY.

jesusbeanexterminator.

funny thing is...i know there are probably one or 2 mice scurrying around my apartment...my mom complains to me all the time that she catches at least 3 or 4 a week.
they're not coming from me!