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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Glamorous Life I Lead

I love the life I lead, really I do.  I am blessed, lucky, whatever you want to call it.  But sometimes I just can't believe how absolutely glamorous it all is.  I just have to pinch myself sometimes.

Like yesterday for instance.  Our garage is a disaster and has been since we've moved in.  We're busy folks and Art just hasn't had the time to get to it.  I don't blame him, it's not on the top of my priority list either.  But I needed to get the Halloween stuff down so I thought I'd help a guy out and do a little cleaning for him.  After all the garage shouldn't just be a "man's job" right?  I can do this.

Well after spending all of 5 minutes in there, I discovered we have a rat/mouse problem.  Now we saw evidence here and there a few weeks ago of a rodent but we thought "no big deal" and we put out a couple of traps.  Turns out it was a very big deal.  I'll try to avoid giving y'all a visual that will stick with you all day and just say that rat/mouse droppings were all over.  I started to panic a little, okay a lot, and just started moving stuff out of the garage.  At one point I started crying, because I cry at everything really, and I said to my mom who was thankfully watching the kids for me, "I don't know if I should be doing this, what if I get a disease or something?"  You can always count on me for high drama. ;)

So after a quick call to my friendly local Hydrex man, and after going through boxes and getting things cleaned up this is what I can teach you friends, in case you ever find yourself with a rat/mouse problem:
  • Spray Lysol everywhere first before cleaning anything up.  Let it sit for a few minutes and while wearing a mask, gently sweep it all up.  And no, you won't catch a disease or die of Typhoid fever.  The Hydrex man assured me of that.
  • Items like that Indian corn you get at the store and use for fall decor?  Ya, throw that stuff away each year or keep it in a tight sealed Rubbermaid storage box because apparently rodents love the stuff.  Who knew?  And make sure plastic Easter eggs are all emptied before storing them away for a year.  Yup.
I'm just full of helpful information aren't I?  Recipe posts one day, cures for rodent problems the next.  You get it all with me.  All in all, I threw away 3 dumpsters of stuff, including half of my Halloween items and half of my Easter items.  Lesson learned to just invest in nothing but those plastic storage containers.  The old folded over cardboard boxes are no match for a pest.  No amount of Lysol and scrubbing could make me feel good about keeping that stuff.  Shivers.

I seriously thought to myself yesterday, "Man, I don't get paid enough for this crap."  But it's done and it's all cleaned up and now I can sleep at night.  Well sort of...

The kicker is while I was cleaning, I found our little pest.  He is in fact a mouse, NOT a rat, thank goodness, and the little bastard taunted me the whole time I was cleaning up.  He was crawling all along the back wall and shelves just staring at me.  My mom wanted to blast him with the fire extinguisher.  I threw a metal baton at him.  He's still in there though so it's time to call in the big guns.  Little mouse, you are actually sorta cute, but today you meet your maker, the Hydrex man. 

16 comments:

  1. i can't help myself, i am cracking up right now!
    bless your heart! thanks for the storage tips;)

    love you!

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  2. I unfortunately know exactly how you feel! I remember the time I heard one in the dog food I made my husband come look, he opened it, looked at me and said nothings in there and then proceed to roll up the half bag of food and carry it outside, yea nothing in there all right!

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  3. oh my! i feel awful for you! i dont think i could have handled it as well as you did... and thanks for the storage tips. i will tell my husband we need to invest in a TON of rubbermaid boxes for everything :)

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  4. I grew up in rural Idaho, and I remember listening to mice run up and down inside the walls of my room. You gave me a little flashback.

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  5. I'm interested in the Hydrex man, we have something scratching above our bedroom almost every night at 3am. It sounds like a possum but cant be sure and I'm also not sure if I want to go climbing into the rafters to see whats going to lunge at my neck...

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  6. bwaahhaha! thats terrible! i love that you are able to have a sense of humor about it now and i would have done the exact same thing. cry, panic and create absurd and extreme causes/effects and then dealt with it!
    note to self: get plastic bins for the garage STAT. I will hurt somebody if my christmas decor is ruined!

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  7. We had a storage unit once while moving and packed things very carefully. One day while needing something out of the unit we found thousands of rat pellets everywhere. Everywhere! I left a cherry pit bag, you know the ones that you throw in the microwave in a box, and we had pits and pellets everywhere! Oh my goodness. I'm talking inside lamps! In everything you can imagine. We threw so much away. Sprayed Lysol and bleached the crap out of it. I never bought another cherry pit bag.

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  8. you just gave me the shivers, but I'm glad you got it sorted out

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  9. i'm really not sure i would have handled it as calmly as you did. i like to think of myself as fairly independent... until lizards, insects, and snakes are involved. and mice? well just forget about it. husband and/or brother to the rescue!

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  10. This post gave me the heebie-jeebies. I do NOT like rodents AT ALL. EEEK!!!! Glad you got your "situation" under control!

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  11. I was cleaning out our garage, moving some giveaway clothes when the SMELL and wetness hit me at once. Some mice had made a nest in our giveaways and it was soaked in urine. I ran inside, disinfected myself, then called my husband to tell him goodbye because I was about to die of hanta virus. :) Yeah, I'm a little dramatic too.

    Jenn

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  12. Oh I think I may have gone for the fire extinguisher too. Yuck! Good job cleaning up, you are a woman of many talents ;)

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  13. Too funny, Andrea. As always, love to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. Love the story.

    We learned, while living in Hawaii, that you do not leave the sticky mouse traps out while you are on vacation for two weeks. You will come home to decomposing mice!

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  14. The fact that you wrote "the little bastard" is killing me right now. You made me laugh.

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  15. Oh you just make me so happy! I would have freaked and brought the high drama too! Thanks for the tips. they are noted!

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  16. Haha! Sorry that happened, and you lost some decorations, but that was a funny post!

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