An Interesting Couple of Weeks

Take me for a ride in your car, car.
Take me for a ride in your car, car.
Take me for a ride, take me for a ride,
Take me for a ride in your car, car.
Peter, Paul and Mary

Sometime toward the end of August, a heavy rain storm moved through the area. Richard had driven the truck down the driveway, which was a river at that point, so he could cut up some trees that had fallen over the driveway. When he drove back, he set the emergency brake and then didn't drive the car again for a week or so. When he got in to start it up it was frozen and would not budge. He was procrastinating about calling a tow truck to get it to the mechanic. We were now down to 2 vehicles.

On Sept 10 I left the house to attend the women’s Bible study at church. I got as far as the end of the frontage road, turned left on the highway, and my car had a catastrophic breakdown. The passenger-side controller arm on the rear axle broke, and the car would not move. Fortunately I was able to get off on the shoulder. The tow truck came and took the car to Randy, the mechanic.

So now we were down to 1 car. The next day as I left the house to go to the clinic for a punch biopsy on my nose, I grabbed the phone, and Richard said, “Who are you going to call if you break down? I can’t rescue you.” Good point. I jotted a few names down just in case.

I was concerned that I had a skin cancer. In mid-August, Richard had a large crater carved out of his nose during a Mohs procedure at the dermatologist’s office to remove a skin cancer, which a plastic surgeon had to cover the next day with a skin flap. I had visions of something similar happening to me.

It took a while for Randy to track down the part from a junk yard. He also discovered that the master cylinder was not working properly and the brakes were working on only 2 wheels. So he replaced the master cylinder too.

On Friday I got a call that the pathology report said it was not skin cancer. Yay!!

One of the men from church insisted on coming to the house last Monday to help Richard with the truck. They spent several hours working on getting the truck freed up and succeeded by spraying everything with penetrating oil.

My car was fixed and we picked it up. A couple of days later Richard took the truck to the mechanic to have the brake pads and drums and emergency brake fixed. Randy told Richard about a 2004 Saturn in pristine condition (it had mostly spent its life being towed behind an RV) he was selling for one of his customers (who was now 90 years old and not allowed to drive).

We bought it. So now we are have 4 vehicles that run, and 3 junk cars. We obviously need to get rid of the junk cars, but Richard doesn’t know how to go about it. This would be one of those "head-shaking" hilarious situations if it were happening to someone else. 

On Sunday I visit a man in the nursing home. He is either in his recliner, where he also sleeps, or he is in his motorized wheelchair. He was in the wheelchair Sunday, so I moved all of the pillows off his recliner and sat down. A little while later, I put my hand down, and the pad I was sitting on felt  damp. So I said, "This feels wet." And he said, "Yes. I peed my pants this morning because they took too long to come when I rang the bell." Because of the motorized wheelchair, he no longer is able to stand or walk so has to be hoisted and moved on a "lift and stand".

I'm thinking: What? I have been sitting on a pee-soaked pad and you didn't say anything?! I wet some paper towels and wiped down my behind and the back of my legs, then got some more paper towels and dried that off, and then I went and got an aide to bring a dry pad for his chair.

Tried very hard not to work myself up into a fury about it. Why didn't he say something??!! I noticed the end of a roll of paper towels on the top of his dispenser, so I grabbed that and when I got to the car put that all over the seat just in case my rear was still damp.

Oh yeah. One last thing. I baked a batch of biscotti for my brother-in-law’s birthday, and instead of turning the oven down to 300 for the second baking, I turned it up to 400. Fortunately, I smelled it in time. I was able to salvage enough to send him, and Richard happily ate the rest of the slightly burned biscotti.

Three (Not Blind) Mice

The experts who published a a recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences say mice have been living alongside humans for as long as 15,000 years. This is about 3,000 years earlier than the start of crop agriculture—the time it was long believed mice took up residence with humans.

Doing so allows them relatively good protection from being something else’s dinner and we provide them with food. It’s a pretty good deal for the mice. But for us? Not so much.

One of my favorite paintings at the St. Louis Art Museum, Still Life with Mice, painted in 1619 by Loedwik Susi, captures this relationship very well. I lightened it up a bit so that the third mouse lurking by the apple is a little more visible.

Mice have been living alongside us for as long as we have been in this house. They have chewed bits of our clothing to make nests under the chest of drawers, gotten into filing cabinets and chewed papers, and on it goes. I am not sure what word to attach to the feelings I have had on the occasions when I have opened the kitchen drawer to see mouse poop on the silverware.

One of them got inside our Krups.

 Once I caught 3 at one time in the bottom of the sunflower seed barrel.

And no, I could not bring myself to kill these mice. I took them for a ride and let them go in a wooded area a couple of miles from the house.

Usually, though, they are not looking up at us with their beady black eyes. Usually they quite dead when we find them on the business end of the mousetrap.

I suppose  I should not have been surprised very early the other morning when I was in the recliner reading the scripture for the day and taking the first sips of my coffee to catch some movement at the corner of my eye and looked up to see a mouse scurry across the carpet and behind the bookcase.

So the traps came out, and it took several days before the mouse made a mistake and went to wherever mice go when they are no longer with us.

We thought it best to re-bait the traps (I think he is using peanut butter or perhaps Nutella). This morning we caught another mouse in the living room in the trap right by my recliner and also a baby mouse in the fruit cellar. A baby mouse? Oy vey.

So we have now trapped 3 mice in the last two days, and where there are 1…2…3… mice there is certainly another one and, in this case, probably another... and another....and another... forever and ever.

The traps will stay baited and ready for a while.