We have mice. We had mice. Have. Maybe both.

We've never had mice in this house before. Chipmunks in the basement, yes. Raccoons in the attic, yes. Ants, moths, roaches, yes, alas, but at least they take turns. We call the big one Earl. Anyway, my husband spotted our one cat playing gleefully withe one of the toy mice a few weeks ago. Turns out, it wasn't a fake mouse at all, but a real one! That trumps any amount of catnip. Dead, thank goodness.  Go, Mister Cold Nose!  Uh, we have mice?

It's a surprise, really, that we've not had mice before this. Our house is old and ridiculously porous, efficiency retrofit non-withstanding. Anything that finds its way into the basement can scootch under the basement door into the house proper. But we hadn't seen any actual mice, other than the one now mercifully dead. Heard them scuffling in the attic, yes, possibly, which makes our electrician shudder.

We thought, "If there's one mice, there are probably more," but we didn't think any more of it until the following week when I was prepping my caller bag for my next gig, taking everything out and assembling all necessary gear. Lip balm, pens, cough drops, kick-butt throat spray, large paper clips, mini toiletries bag with toothbrush, markers, sparkly name buttons, DARK CHOCOLATE.

I'd already stashed a big bar of dark chocolate in there for my upcoming gig within the last week and told my husband that I'd put one bar in the cabinet and one bar in my bag, but DON"T EAT IT. He smirked at me, and said, "Oh, good. now I know where to find it."

So I reached into my bag and felt a huge hunk of the chocolate just gone. I swore. "Bloody hell, he didn't!" You see, despite DH's teasing, if we run out of the main stash, my caller chocolate remains off-limits, at least in theory. "Oh, he sure did." I pulled out the bar and got a good look at it. Whoever who had gnawed the chocolate had gone straight through the packaging. "Oh... he didn't." But a mouse did! Damn mouse. More swearing ensued when I inspected the bar and determined that I'd be better off throwing out the entire bar. *sniff!* So sad.  I took everything out of the bag, and wiped everything down with bleach.

By the time my husband came home from work, I had encapsulated all chocolate and sweet foods such as raisins or sweet crackers into tins, and was busily throwing out any old candy lurking in the kitchen. Out went old candy canes and peeps and Halloween candy. I tinned up the marshmallows while I was at it. I tinned up the new Easter candy I was still hiding. I took every last bit of raisins and candy out of my briefcase so the mice wouldn't be tempted to chew through, which is what you are supposed to do at night when backpacking. I took my cough drops out of my purse.

My hubs came home and looked at the pile of Christmas-themed tins littering the kitchen. "What are you doing?" I just thrust the gnawed bar at him and said, "Goddamn mice ate my chocolate!" "Ohhh!"

We both have memories of the backpacking trip in the Smokey Mountains where we were dogged by mice. Here we were worried about bears eating our food, and the damn mice ran up the ropes and chewed through nearly everything that smelled promising. They even sampled the toothpaste. Ewww.  At some campsites, their little eyes could be seen shining in the light of our flashlights. They were everywhere. They really liked our power bars. They must had thought that through-hikers were the best source of food ever. On top of the indignity of them ruining our food supplies, we had to pack out all the soup mix and pricy power bars they had ruined.

So... anyway. Mice.  "Good thing you have all those Christmas tins."

The next day, I heard scuffling over on the counter. Yes, they had found my forgotten stash of S'more supplies. Bits of chocolate and marshmallow everywhere. Ugh, ugh, UGH! Throw that stuff out and break out the bleach!

They weren't interested in our cereal and other things they could have gnawed their way into, no. These mice had a serious sweet tooth.

First I tried a pre-baited trap and stuck on an additional marshmallow for good measure, too much of one. The mice ate half of it one day, sprung the trap the next day without getting caught, and ate the rest in two days. It was quiet after that. I guess they had gorged themselves.

For Easter, I put the little girl's chocolate bunny in a Ball jar, her other candy in small containers, and left a note on the table telling her she had too many mice to leave out the candy. I am happy to report that only the intended recipient got to nibble on that candy.

Then my husband was getting ready to make his weekly batch of bread. After the rising and shaping, we got ready to preheat the oven. A horrible stench started arising from the oven. Was it gas? Was our oven about to finally kick the bucket? Was something about to catch on fire? I had visions of mice behind the oven. We didn't want to ditch our batch of bread sitting there in the pans, but I finally made him turn off the oven, and we opened all the windows to air it out. My husband was opening various doors trying to see if anything was stuck in the stove.... and found an enormous pile of fluffy fiber in the broiler! Some of it was still glowing. Thank goodness it wasn't cotton, or it would have ignited instead of smoldered.

My husband demanded latex gloves and got to work cleaning out the pile and trying to shield our daughter at the same time just in case there was a body in there, but thankfully no. Somehow the mice had ferried a ton of fiber from somewhere or other within the previous three days (we bake every 4-5 days). On top of the yuckiness factor of having mice attempting to nest in our broiler, I was also a little concerned about where the fiber had come from. It didn't appear to be insulation, at least. I think it came from some old fuzzy fake fur I once used in a Halloween costume.

A day later, my hubs came in the front door, and caught sight of a mouse running straight down the main hall way! In broad day light! The cats didn't even notice. That creeped out the hubs so much, he went online and found some super duper electronic mouse traps, and had two shipped overnight. Humane traps, forget it. Stuart Little, they were not. He was going to nail those suckers.

The little black boxes arrived. My husband showed me the apparatus. "The mouse goes in, it gets a little charge that kills it, the little green light goes on, and they you just open the lid and dump into the trash. Simple! You don't even have to touch it."

He had baited it with chocolate, he said.

"What?! Noooo! We're not using more of our good chocolate! And don't you dare use the good white chocolate I stock pile for Christmas baking. That stuff is pricy. Next time use that peanut butter the little girl doesn't like."

But no, he did use the awesome white chocolate. Sigh. But we caught mice two nights in a row.

This morning he told me sadly: We didn't catch any mice last night.

But that's good, right? No more mice?

We are still going to leave the mousetraps up, but no more good chocolate will be sacrificed, I swear.
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New Year - Living the Life That's in Front Of Me

Hello, New Year! How is it going so far? I've been engrossed in everyday life and haven't been posting - sorry! And I got stuck in my other G00gle account and boy was that a pain. Excuses, excuses!

Just before New Year's I found last year's "Life List" of things I wanted to do with my life. To my surprise, some of the things had been started or completed.

I've been mentoring someone in a small way. I got a really nice haircut and learned how to style my hair. I've been corresponding more by Skype. I've been lifting weights and building core strength. I've pruned trees, notably the fig trees, much to their delight. And I've been cooking good food all year, thanks to the renovated kitchen space.

Without even remembering it, I've been working on new things all year.
Other things I started doing last year:

Exercise regularly, revived my decluttering, sold bunches of baby gear, and started teaching Sunday School again. We took a family trip to Florida to visit my cousin, which was a whole host of firsts in one. (They took us on a "hasher" run and my cousin took me purse shopping, which reintroduced me to the joys thereof. The little girl dabbled in the ocean.) We went camping with the little girl on several different occasions, and I started wearing accessories more effectively. I wrote another crazy dance. I called more squares. I wrote candid emails to my sister. I cleared a corner of the office for the little girl to have her own work space with table and shelving. I've been hacking away at my stories. I pared down my online reading.

All good things.

So, no, I have not walked across England or learned how to make creme brulée (sorry - I can never remember how to spell it) or relearned all my languages or written that book (well at least not THAT book), but it was a good year. I'm not even mentioning all the cool stuff that went on with my daughter and my family.

And the best thing is that I've been "Living the Life That's In Front Of Me." That's my code phrase for paring down distractions and really doing what I want to be doing. It's taken me away from the Internet a fair amount, but really, that's okay! I'm doing more, and that is huge.


When I went to brainstorm a "Life List" for this year, I found myself writing down similar things. Of course, the creme brulée and all that popped up again. But I found myself writing things like:

Edit... Learn... Read and contemplate... Write... Build... Write... Paint... Declutter... Make...Write...Create... Nurture...

Essentially, I want to clear more space in my life so I can create more.

I want to clear the desk and write and illustrate. I want to play. I want to eat less overall, spend less overall, and distract myself less overall.

Since the beginning of the New Year, I've found myself, without forethought, taking up projects anew.

I decided to undertake the 365days project on Flickr, a daily self portrait. Holy cow, where did that come from?! I decided to take out my ukulele for the first time in nearly two years and play with chords and harmonies. Music! I'm dreaming of space to set up my paper and pencils and paints. The siren song of Illustration is calling me. I'm writing. Hack, hack, hack. I attended a step aerobics class. haha! I started taking more naps. Mmm, naps.

Some of that is conscious and some of that is not. I'm thinking that if I plant seeds of intent and then live the life that's in front of me, wondrous things will happen.

What wondrous things are you contemplating this year?
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Slowly, I Get A Lot Done

Whoa, I have been too busy to keep up with the internet much. Sorry! But I have been throwing myself at numerous practical/fun projects, fed my numerous inspirations.


I've been reading and enjoying all the breath-of-fresh-air inspirations on SouleMama's blog. I don't live on a homey homestead in Maine with a gaggle of kids, but I create my own version of that in urban/suburban North Carolina.

Baking homemade pans of vegetarian lasagna (nearly every week) with squash and zucchini and carrots and sometimes other green things.

Writing out a weekly menu on a little white board. There is the lasagna, of course, and vegetable stir fries with fish, or a stew or soup or simply a pot of brown rice to eat with sauteed veggies or stew or baked into a casserole or eaten plain with a little salt or cheese.

Fine tuning my thrify-deal-seeking strategies. Sometimes I stock up, sometimes I say -Oh heck, not this month- but I'm always monitoring and adjusting and learning to be wiser.

Slowly moving salvaged/scavaged field rock for my new garden wall. This has been on hold for several years. Every week, I try to move a few more sets of stone over to my launching pad for the assembly.

Moving towards sweater inspirations from SouleMama. I've never knit a sweater, but I knitted mittens for a gift recently (first time for that also), so this can't be that much harder, just different. I can follow directions. I just need to assemble my materials and attention.

Slowly cleaning up the last tree to come down during the arborist crew's visit. Most of the major tree debris was chipped into an impressive pile of mulch. Mulch slowly being moved about in the yard. The last tree did not make it into that pile, so I am chipping and clipping away at the pile of branches and filling up yard waste bins every week. And then there are always stray branches and leaves et al to clean up.

Walking to the park with my little girl when the weather allows it. Some days she wears snow pants for the cold, others, a hat for the sun. She gets playground time, and I get a workout from pushing baby+stroller up and down swoopy hills in the neighborhood.

Visiting the library regularly. I end up reading a variety of books in the evening. I have my stack, and the little girl has her stack. Every so often I return things on time. Some times we make it there for story time or craft time. In between, we read, read, read.

Finishing the hand quilting on a coverlet comforter for the little girl. The project is thrown together and not very precise, except for my vision of what it will be: a fluffy-soft-cozy-colorful comforter with double layers of insulating batting for keeping warm on cold nights. Only the edging left to sew. I've been working on this since before Christmas. Hopefully completed before Spring! Other quilting/sewing projects are lingering around.

Sewing up a set of "door snakes" or draft stoppers. Another SouleMama inspiration, I think. Looking for some basic muslin to make these, I came across an old (stained but sturdy) set of pillow cases. I cut them up and sewed them up. Now I just have to fill them up! In the same vein, I'm starting to tackle weather stripping on the doors, which we suddenly realize need it, badly.

Finding a filter to fit our new furnace vent. Oddly enough, given the location of it, we need something other than the high-end pleated filters. Even more oddly, the cheaper version is hard to come by.

Started amassing a pile of microfiber and other cleaning cloths in an attempt to reduce our paper towel usage.

Calling up friends or relatives to chat or visit at opportune slices of time. Snagging conversation and sharing or sharing food. It's not that I have lots of time to visit, but I try to catch those moments.

Keeping up with the little girl on a daily, hourly basis. I try to throw in a little art, a little number play, a little music, a little directed imaginative playtime in small bites. She herself pursues lots of activities and talks about them all the while. I am continually amazed and entertained by the breadth and creativity of her verbal expressiveness. I think she might take after her gregarious mother. :) She's reciting books and singing songs and pretending to give shots to the cats. She's survived her first ear infection and learned to take her medicine happily. She's also warming up for her terrible twos. Whee! Being present to her as she explores the world and develops into her own understanding is a worthy endeavor, always.

Yes, I'm still trying to eat less, declutter more (I didn't even mention the on-going office project!), be present, be appreciative of the life in front of me. If all my projects are progressing slowly or imperfectly, they are still progressing. Progress over perfection, I say. And it's so nice to be present to what I have.
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Shifting Underfoot

Sometimes things change, and it may be so gradual and subtle that it takes a while for the shift to register. Maybe they are not so much changes as shifts. It's a good word.

A few new shifts becoming apparent recently:


My pants are getting a little looser. I know there is something going on when I'm constantly having to hitch up my best reliable pair of jeans. Not so reliable now. I think this means I may have to find another pair of reliable pants. But I'm okay with that because...

Ever so slightly, I'm losing weight. I had been eating more vegetables and good food, but I hadn't been able to break below a certain postpartum poundage. Now suddenly, it's dropped a few pounds and stayed there. My husband tells me he's noticed me looking slimmer, too.

I'm cooking more. Not only am I cooking more dinners, for goodness sake, but I'm cooking lunches as well. What has come over me? I'm not complaining. It gives me something healthier to feed the little girl when she demands that I feed her food off my plate. Two theories: I'm inspired by Smitten Kitchen's ability to whip up wonderful food in her minuscule Brooklyn kitchen space. And now that the rest of my kitchen cabinets/counter spaces have been installed, I have a nicer, larger, more efficient kitchen space to work with, even without permanent counter tops. I'm getting used to not having to constantly walk to the other end of the room. Instead, it's all in front of me or close at hand. Makes it easier to get right to it. It's niiiice.

The light is shifting in the sky. Spring is inching closer. I'm repeatedly surprised and delighted by finding sunlight falling on new places within the house. It's letting me know that it's March now and I'd better start some more seedlings.

My hair at my hairline continues to grow in in short wavy curls. This is a mystery. I don't think I singed off my hairline or suffered any other trauma. Maybe I get bonus hair as I age?

I'm embracing my parenting routine. Nurse, play, read, kitchen chores, nurse, nap, read, lunch! We work in a lot of reading and playing and goofing off, and it's all learning too. I wanted to be a parent, but I did not expect to be getting so much out of my daily routine. Introducing new parts of the body, reinforcing vocabulary and signs, reinforcing limits with love, reinforcing our lovey connection, singing songs, narrating the world. Wow. It really is a cool life.

My feet really hurt at times. I didn't used to be so tender. I put a lot of stress on them dancing. I am reminded yet again - Ah yes - I need new dance shoes.

I have seen the return of my menses. Apparently, it does show up at some point even when one is still nursing. I'm disappointed that it didn't hold off even longer, but it's just a new shift to deal with. Reminds me that my body continues to adjust and readjust to having given birth and to continuing nursing, but maybe not as consistently or as much as before.

The little girl's awareness is ever expanding. She watches me prime the breast before nursing, and then when I say "okay," she deliberately lunges forward to latch. She notices crows flying high up in the sky. She notices when and what I eat. She notices when we say, "stop right there!" and knows when she chooses to obey or ignore us. She notices the sirens going down the street. She notices when I say, "crap!" and tries to imitate me. Oops! She responds when she sees a car moving or a dog or a cat or a horse in person. "Aooh!" she says, and her whole body jerks with her enthusiasm. Whoa!!! Did you see that??!!! Boy, do I ever. No more wailing like a high-pitched teakettle or grunting like a Wookie. Our little Wookie is ever so slowly growing up.

The yard is getting overgrown and a little shabby. Not much time for upkeep these days. I garden and tweak in five-minute intervals when I can.

The chickadees have returned to check out the feeders, although there hasn't been any seed there for at least two years. Smart bird. I feel badly that I haven't been able to keep up with feeding the birds this year. It's both happy and sad that they remember my stopping point. Smart bird has moved on to other venues. I hope he'll come back when I get my yard act together again.

Some friends have grown more distant. Two friends haven't returned emails in months. Note: I'm not talking about you! :) One is engrossed in supporting her aging mother. The other, who knows? She's not interested in meeting for lunch or talking about her life, so it's hard to tell. But I have other friends who consistently pop up every so often and again. I'm in a new stage of life myself, so maybe my focus is shifting. Maybe some friends are feeling distantly out of my circle. And some friends are evergreen with fresh, periodic contact. Everything is shifting, and I have control over only so much of it.

I'm having parental bonding moments with other parents. I am very surprised. I take the little girl to the park, and other parents strike up conversations. We learn ages and children's names first. We chat about development and encourage our baby to be social or to slide down the slide or to wave or say "thank you." I've not encountered much annoying competitiveness yet. Often, I'll be going through a local store, and my and my little girl's attention will be grabbed by another small child and her parents. We tell our child, "see the baby?" and covertly peek at each other. The parents smile and beam at the other baby, then make eye contact with the other parents if they seem inclined. The babies wave or stare solemnly or smile or try to kiss the other one. The parents encourage or discourage the contact, depending. Little girl mostly stares at anyone- adult or child - trying to be friendly. She can't quite figure it out how to respond. She's not ready to be wholeheartedly open to anyone she meets and so she just LOOKS at them with solemn big eyes. I enjoy being friendly if the parents are not standoffish. I'm still negotiating this whole Parent Conversation thing. It can be fun. I did not see that coming.

I think my sleep cycle is shifting. I'm often feeling ready for bed by eight in the evening, whereas I used to be ready to go dancing at that time. How did that happen?! My husband is very happy that my sleep cycle is apparently - cough, cough - shifting, because I've been a night owl most of the years he has known me, and our differing awake-times sometimes cause conflict. But not so much any more. Except, you know, when I catch a second wind and stay up late writing. Heh.


Life changes don't always come about in a big wave. Often they evidence as little shifts. Interesting, that.
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Green Peas & Toasters: Where Quality and Thrift Collide

Where do quality and thrift collide, you ask? For me, it's at green peas and toasters.

Let me tell you this saga.

I love green peas, frozen, not canned. I have fond childhood memories of simmering them in water until their skins puff up and they are just tender, neither too hard nor at all mushy, then sprinkled with a grind of black pepper. Even now, I can eat a huge plate of them in one sitting. But a couple years ago, my green pea experience started being tough and tasteless. I would start to dig into a serving, and find myself unable to eat them. Bleh! I was baffled and disappointed. My lovely peas! I just could not eat them. I thought this might be leftover food sensitivity from my pregnancy, but the tasteless peas lingered. I finally gave up on ever eating greens peas again. If I was just going to keep throwing away plates of peas, what was the point?

I mentioned the sad situation to one of my foodie friends. She said - "Oh, they are probably irradiated. The heat makes them tougher."

Now, I had not heard of irradiation toughening vegetables. After all, it's supposed to help increase shelf life, not decrease quality, right? But whatever the cause of it, I realized that it wasn't me; it was indeed the peas. It was a sad, sad day. I love peas!

But anyway, I started looking for alternatives. I tried different varieties. I tried I don't know how many different brands in hope of retrieving my earlier experience, but nothing really lived up to my ideal. Damn tasteless peas!

The only brand that came close was an organic label from Oregon, sold in small expensive bags at my local food co-op. I took a breath and bought a bag on sale for under three dollars!

Well. They were good. Really quite good. Good enough to eat on a regular basis. Other than being nearly a dollar a serving, of course. I would have to restrain myself and eat only one serving at a time, which for me is a very modest portion. I couldn't justify eating the whole bag at one sitting at that price! (I've eaten gourmet muffins for that price, but those are huge portions and a different story.)

So I'm thinking to myself: is this a dilemma for the modern age? So many things have been getting cheaper and cheaper -- cheap clothing, cheap food -- but they are not really better at all. The quality that one used to be able to expect as a matter of course is not only harder to find, but much more expensive. And so to have the same quality one had before one will have to pony up the cash to support it.

Which reminds me of cheap clothing. I am still astounded at the common tendency to throw away clothes after a year or two. Who does this? I'm still wearing some of my clothes from twenty years ago, and they have held up all this time, some of it just recently starting to fray. I thought it was just our disposable society at work, but apparently, it's true - all that cheap clothing doesn't hold up at all. What is this crap clothing? It's the new normal, I guess. That's "prosperity" for you - you think you are getting glitzed out, but it all goes threadbare in a year.

Ah. So to buy really excellent, decent quality clothing (if one can find it), one will be paying some big bucks, apparently. Same things as with the peas.

I am not willing to buy all organic food any more because I just can't afford it, but I need my green peas. I'll dole it out like gold bullion or high-end chocolate.

Did they pick these peas by hand? Sing them lullabies? Pay off the agribusiness mob? For two-thirds of a cup per dollar? Okay, okay, I'm sure that's what it actually costs to produce quality food these days, living wage and organic practices and all, and it's worth it, but oh, my!

Lesson learned: to get something of quality, sometimes you just have to pay the true price of its value.


That brings me to toasters.

I had a very nice toaster once upon a time. Wide slots, useable settings, even heating, quiet yet distinctive pop-up. Must have been twenty-some years ago. One day, the toaster died, and I went off in search of a replacement. I found plenty of inexpensive toasters, so I bought one. You might guess where this is going. Yes, that toaster lasted me about fifteen months before it too died. Now I do eat a lot of toast, but this was ridiculous.

Off I went to look for yet another new toaster. The really good high-quality toasters with metals sides and innards were upwards of US $130. I love my toast, but that was not in the budget. I looked a little closer and noticed that most of the toasters available were made of cheap, flimsy plastic. I could not find a decent toaster without plastic! They were all just as flimsy than the toaster that had just died.

In disgust, I stomped off, refusing to buy any of that crap. I made toast in my broiler for more than a year, and it was good if a trifle inconvenient. Piers Anthony wrote a funny philosophical short story once about the simple pleasure of toast through the space ages, but I digress...

Flash forward a couple years, and I was browsing through a thrift store and spotted a toaster. An older toaster with some life left in it. It was modest, a bit beat up. It was metal! I took it home for seven dollars, and I've had it ever since. It is now even more beat up, but still it keeps going. I don't know what I'm going to do when that one finally kicks the bucket. Does anyone know how to fix toasters any more? I mean, fix toasters in this country where it's cheaper to buy something new than to fix a perfectly good appliance. pause to roll eyes

It's true; I had my sewing machine cleaned and refurbished a couple years ago, and it cost me at least as much it would to buy a brand new machine. But, as the repair mechanic noted with a touch of awe, it has metal parts, and "you just can't find that any more." I told him there was no way I was giving up my old machine. I think he was pleased. I know I was delighted.

Lesson learned: if you are lucky enough to have anything "old fashioned" yet well-made, hang onto it for dear life, or you'll be stuck with a steady stream of cheaply-made plastic crap.



I think this is just the way it is these days: a profusion of cheap goods and a small selection of really quality goods for those able to discern the difference and willing to pay.

And why are so many of our goods getting cheaper and, well, cheaper? I'll leave you to contemplate the variety of likely reasons. Too big of a conversation for this post. I'm no economist, but I've learned a few things from green peas and toasters.
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