March 20th, 2009:
I’ve been living in denial for months now, but the signs are too strong to ignore any longer. The mouse droppings in the sun room, the glimpses of a rat scampering back up into the palm tree when I go out to the patio late at night, (worst of all) the sounds of plotting coming from the attic. There really is no other explanation: the rodents are plotting to take us out. They’ve finally decided to put the information gathered by their mouse-spy months ago to use and launch their attack.

So far, the traps we’ve setup to defend against the rodents haven’t netted us any prisoners, but at least the enemy seemed to respect them and stay away. now it sounds like that’s all changing. It’s time to stop playing defense and go on the attack. We’ve carefully setup some traps in their territory (the attic), and hopefully we can take out a few of their warriors.

March 24th, 2009:
Well, it’s been four days since Shae and I launched our counter attack against the rodents and so far we haven’t had any real success yet. The rat seems to have retreated to the palm tree (or at least he’s doing a better job of hiding), but our traps in the attic have not succeeded. In fact, it seems that we are just feeding the mice peanut butter while they dodge the traps. Instead of capturing the enemy, I fear we’re actually giving them the protein they need to grow strong enough to launch a full-scale attack. We have no choice but to deploy the “Rat Zapper” that we acquired from Shae’s parents. I fear escalating the war, but the mice seem to be too smart for our outdated traps.

The Rat Zapper is an odd weapon. I thought we would bait it using cheese, but apparently you can’t use anything “cheese-like” because it will complete the circuit and fry the bait. I would think burnt cheese would be hard for a mouse to resist (it’s hard for me to resist), but I have no choice but to trust Shae since she has training on our new weapon. I guess the ideal bait for the Rat Zapper is cat food. This seems absurd to me. If you have cat food, it would stand to reason that you also have a cat. If you have a cat, why the hell do you need the Rat Zapper? Whatever, war is strange. We’ll have to make do with dog food and hope the Box doesn’t get his nose zapped trying to get a snack.

March 26th, 2009:
It seems we have vastly underestimated our adversary. Somehow, they found a way to disable our Rat Zapper; our new technology is no match for the rodent wits. (Either that, or the last rodent caught in the trap burned out the device. Whatever the cause, the Rat Zapper is not going to help us.)

In fact, instead of gaining a technological advantage over our enemies we seem to have upset the mice by escalating our attack. Today when I went to check on our attic trap I discovered that the trap was missing. That’s right, the rodents have stolen our weapons. I wonder what their plan is. Are they planning to set the traps up where we’ll set them off? Is one of the mice a mini-McGyver disassembling the traps for parts and building a super weapon? Things are not looking great for the humans in this war.

April 4th, 2009:
Our efforts seem to finally pay off. My scout (aka Shae) reported back that her morning trap-check was successful. We got one! Of course, my scout is of no use in disposing of our enemy’s body so up into the attic I go.

My examination of the battleground revealed some interesting intelligence. The scariest part of the scene was the trap itself. The casualty lay next to the trap, but something had eaten all of the peanut butter from the trap. That means that another mouse finished off its meal while his comrade lay dead just inches away. These rodents are heartless. They will stop at nothing to grow stronger in preparation of the next attack. Again, I may have underestimated the enemy.

Next to the successful trap, I found something even more interesting: the previously stolen trap. What could this mean? Was the fallen mouse attempting to setup the trap to use against us when he was taken out? Could he have been defecting and bringing us our trap as a peace offering to gain our trust? Did another mouse catch on to his plan and take him out before he could defect (and then feast on peanut butter afterward)? Was the trap never stolen in the first place, but instead just got pushed out of sight where we couldn’t see it until we went into the attic to clean up the carcass (that can’t be it). Today was a good day for our side, but the determination of the rodents is intimidating.

April 6th, 2009:
The mice seemed to go into hiding for a day or so after the fall of their fellow warrior, but they seem to be getting back to plotting again. As I sit on the couch typing, I can hear them scurrying about overhead. I fear what their next attack will bring, but after our successful attack we are optimistic. We have set out additional traps hoping to keep our momentum going. We have drawn first blood, and we are hopeful that we can end this war quickly. I guess it’s back to the battlefield. More updates as the war unfolds.

I had every intention of sitting down today and writing up one last post about my pregnancy woes, but something happened the other night that changed all that. We had a home invasion. Before you get all worried let me explain. At 4am I had finally fallen back asleep after a trip to the bathroom when I was awakened by something scratching at our window screen. I was a little freaked out so I turned on the lamp next to my bed. This of course woke Pat up. The next thing I knew, something jumped off our window sill, ran across our floor and took sanctuary under the recliner. I told Pat I thought I just saw a mouse on our window sill. He was groggy and a little upset from being woken up and he told me to just go back to sleep.

A few minutes later I actually saw the mouse run up the air conditioner cord and onto the window sill. He stood up on his hind legs and started scratching at the screen again. At this point, I realized two things. 1. This was either a HUGE mouse with super human strength, or a rat. 2. I needed to close the window or else there was going to be a hole in the screen pretty soon. Pat thought it would be a good idea to take the screen off, wait for super mouse to crawl back up and then he would just go out the window. I thought this was a great idea. Pat spent about 10 minutes trying to get the stupid thing off the window before giving up. During this whole mouse/rat ordeal guess what my awesome watch dog was doing. Absolutely nothing! This dog wakes up to every little sound, but as soon as there is something at our window, he sleeps through it. I do have to give him a little credit. He cleaned up after the monster mouse by eating all its dropping off the carpet. This was definitely not a pregnant mouse because there was a lot of droppings.

Anyways, after Pat got back into bed it was about 4:30 and I was wide awake. There was no way I was going to fall asleep with this stupid rat making a ruckus. I knew both Pat and I needed to get some sleep, so I moved into the living where I thought it would be quiet. Boy was I wrong. First of all, our house has an open foundation with hardwood floors and we are not sure the walls are actually insulated. You can hear every little noise! Our bedroom on the other had was added on much later and is very quiet. It makes me very thankful for our bedroom. Ok, by the time I get situated on the couch it is about 4:45. Do you know what happens at our house at 5am? The sprinklers come on. I never realized how loud they really are. We have 3 stations that are sprinklers go through. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes. At 5:20 the sprinklers finally turn off and I feel like I may be able to finally get some sleep. Nope.

Guess what I saw: another super human strength mouse. It ran across the living room floor and behind the curtains that are right next to the couch. How am I supposed to sleep knowing this mouse man is right next to me. I guess it ended up climbing onto the window sill because it dropped down onto the arm of the couch where my head was. After a few choice words for this evil demon, I decided it was just a mouse and it wouldn’t kill me. As I lay there thinking I really need to get some sleep, I realized it had been an hour since I last went pee, so up I got and headed for the bathroom. I finished my business and went back to the couch. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 5:50ish. Shit. in 10 minutes round 2 of the sprinklers would be kicking off. I said @#$% it and turned on the tv. I figured Pat would be up soon anyways since the dog never lets us sleep past 6 because thats what time he eats breakfast. Once again I was wrong. Apparently, he lets Pat sleep in until 7. What the hell is wrong with my dog?! During that hour I think I may have actually fallen asleep for about 30 minutes. Don’t worry, I was finally able to get some sleep later because it was football day.

I’m not sure if it was the horrible tangerine color of our bedroom, or just because Shae loves to make me do shit, but somehow I got roped into painting our master bedroom/bathroom this weekend. Basically, the bedroom’s not finished, I’m sleeping on the couch, and the people who painted our house last should never be allowed to touch a paint brush again. Ever.

I should have known we were in trouble on Friday when I got home from work and Shae hadn’t started work on the room yet (my favorite part of the plan was the part where she did stuff while I was at work). After a few passive aggressive remarks to wifey, we got to work taking apart the bathroom. Of course, since it was evening, things got a little more interesting once we took down the light fixture. You don’t need light to paint, right? Eventually we go the bathroom taken apart and primed, and called it a night.

After a freezing night (well, freezing for SD…we had to leave our windows open to ventilate the room), we got up and went to work on the bedroom. Everything from the bedroom and the closet went into the only room in the house with space to hold it all–the guest room. I just want to take a second to suggest to anyone reading this that if you’re painting your bedroom and the only other bed in your house is in the guest room, you might want to find somewhere else to keep all of your crap. If you have to keep your crap in the guest room, at least keep the bed cleared. If you ignore those two suggestions, at least make sure that both of your air mattresses aren’t stored in a closet in the guest room that you can’t get to after filling the room up with all of your crap. Or, ignore my advice and just sleep on the couch. Shae and I chose the last option. We are super-smart sometimes.

Anyway, after we got all of our shit out of the room we went to work cleaning and prepping the bedroom. At this point, I have to ask: how hard is it to take off the outlet and switch covers? We’ve painted 3 rooms in this house and in every single room the previous painter(s) have been too lazy to take any of the covers off. Every switch and outlet cover has paint on the edges because apparently it’s too much effort to take 20 seconds and remove the damn covers. The master bedroom, though, set a new standard in painting laziness. There was an alarm keypad on one of the bedroom walls that had some LEDs on it (this has now been removed). To block the lights at night, someone had taken a plastic card with the keypad instructions and folded it over the panel. When we took the instructions off sure enough there was paint on the sheet. Who the hell is too damn lazy to take a 3×5 laminated piece of plastic off the wall when they’re painting? It took 1 second…it wasn’t even taped to the keypad.

In contrast to this, the painters took the time and effort to paint (almost) the entire closet interior (including the built in shelves) to match the horrid orange. The one part that they left unpainted (of course one random wall wasn’t painted, what else would we expect?) showed that before being painted orange the closet was white. It took about an hour to prime and another hour to paint the closet (and is a large part of the reason we didn’t finish painting yesterday). Who the hell would spend (at least) an hour or two painting a perfectly fine closet a horrible shade of orange, but not take the five minutes (or less) it would take to remove all of the outlet and switch covers in the room?

Anyway, that’s enough venting about the previous painters, back to our story. There’s not a whole lot else to tell except it’s Monday evening now and it’s about 50/50 that Shae and I will get to sleep in our bed tonight. On the bright side, we “watched” about 10 movies (as background noise, mostly chick flicks) and I got to witness Erica and Shae taking turns shampooing the bedroom carpet. Even unfinished the room looks about 100 times better than the awfulness that was the tangerine, and hopefully we’ll finish up the baseboards and touch-up in the next night or two and get moved back in. Pics will be uploaded to our photo album once we’re done.