… I'm struggling and have slipped up.
UGGHH!!! Stress, stress and more stress. I’ve succumbed a bit to stress-eating and I’m not pleased with myself.
Last week I thought I heard something in the house … after doing a little investigating I decided it was a mouse. We set a trap and caught it. I live in a very old house in a suburban area. In the spring we often see evidence that mice or other small critters may have spent the winter in our garage (which is NOT attached to the house). We’ve lived there 16 years and only had mice in the house once … we were doing some major remodeling, some walls and a crawl space been opened and I saw a mouse one night. We caught two mice in two days and that was the end of it. So when we caught this critter, I figured ok it’s done.
Well we were fine for nearly a week. Then I started hearing more noises. In the last two days we’ve caught three mice. And I saw one last night. I’m freaking out. How many are there? The local hardware store says that lots of people are experiencing the same thing. It’s a colder than normal winter and their normal ‘winter homes’ (like my garage) may not be cutting it this year. Also, the coastal areas in our town had major flooding a few weeks ago which may have forced mice out of the garages and sheds in those neighborhoods. I want to call an exterminator. DH says they won’t do anything different then we’re doing … I don’t know, but we know there’s at least ONE more. We catch that and then if we hear or see or catch more that’s it … it’s exterminator time!
So far my kids don’t know about the mice and I don’t want them to … but my son thought he heard ‘squeaking’ this morning. I told him it was the birds outside at the feeder and turned up the radio. In reality, I think it was another mouse on a glue trap … but I couldn’t look while he was there … I left it for dh – who wasn’t home at the time. I don’t understand it … they’re not in my kitchen. I see no evidence of them on the first or third floors. They seem to be only on my second floor. They found Christmas candy in a closet (left-over stocking stuffers). I got rid of that before we caught the first mouse and there’s no more food up there … but they’re still around. My kitchen is like a one-story addition to the house with a peaked roof and a doorway on the second floor that goes into the attic of the addition … there’s no basement under the kitchen, only a crawl space. I think they may get in there, go up inside the walls and then follow some baseboard heating pipes into the bedroom and family room … either that or they’re climbing the gas and water pipes to the second floor laundry room (do you think food spills on the kids’ dirty clothes could attract them?) but I don’t THINK I’ve heard anything in the walls. Can you tell from this detail that this is REALLY bothering me!?!?
THEN, on top of all that … dh got laid off from his job last August has been looking unsuccessfully ever since. Now, he has a real good chance at getting a 3-month contract at good pay, starting the middle of next week. Sounds great right? Not necessarily … it’s 2 1/2 hours from home. For the first few weeks he’d need to be there 5 days a week --- 4 nights away from home. After that he’d probably be able to work from home a couple of days. My kids are in school from 8:30 to 3. I need to find somebody to pick them up at school and stay with them or bring them to the sitter so that I can still work my required hours. And, my kids have never experienced a parent away from home on a regular basis. They get upset if only one of us is there at bedtime, I know this will cause major disruptions for them … AND … I’ll be forced to deal with the mousies all by myself!!! I don’t cope well with that sort of thing!
Last night at 10:30 I went out to make some colored prints and copies for dh to bring to today’s interview. I got home close to 11:30, logged on for a while and then about midnight succumbed to stress-eating. I wasn’t TOTALLY out of control, but it was about 200 unplanned calories at a time when I should have been asleep. EEEK!!! It was freezing outside and everybody else was asleep … I SHOULD have just gone to bed, but no I sat at my computer, playing games and snacking. NOT GOOD!!!
This morning I didn't have my planned breakfast. I had one egg, two slices of bacon and an Engish muffin (sandwich) ... so I wasn't exactly bingeing, but it wasn't exactly 'healthy' either. UGHH!!
Anyway … I guess I just needed to vent. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.