Cinderella I am not!

This morning as I was brushing my teeth, I started to really look at our bathroom counter, and I decided it was time to clean. Right then and there. I began scrubbing the bathroom sink before Nate even left for work. I neglected to make him breakfast because I was so distracted by my new desire to make our lovely, blue bathroom sparkle like a diamond in the sun! My poor, hungry husband…I did hug and kiss him good-bye as he left for work, and immediately returned to the bathroom for more cleaning, complete with bleach. (I never cleaned my bathroom with bleach until I met my husband. I always used comet and scrubbing bubbles. Today I used bleach and a multi-purpose cleaner because it’s what we have.)

Anyway, I had scrubbed the counters, and had moved on to the shower, when I heard a strange noise. “I’m home alone. Surely Nate didn’t forget something. What on earth –” I turned around to locate the noises and saw a scuttling, furry creature zig zag its way ferociously towards me. Petrified, I jumped and started screaming. I must have scared it because it moved closer to the other side of the floor and moved past me as I bolted out of the bathroom, still screaming. I ran down the hall, through the kitchen, into the den, and jumped on top of the chair, letting out one more scream for good measure. I sat there for a good minute before I realized that it was not coming after me and that I had probably scared it as much as it had scared me. I ran across the den, grabbed my phone, ran back to the chair and quickly dialed Nate’s number.

“What’s up?”

“There’s a mouse in our house!”

“Where did it come from?”

“I think it came from the guest bedroom, but it ran into the bathroom!”

“Where is it now?”

“I don’t know. I ran away!”

Nate reminded me that all the rooms were open this morning. Gulp. That means I have to go close all the doors…Okay, I can do this. It’s just one little mouse. I am bigger and scarier than it is. Why don’t I own a bb gun? I could just kill it myself! I wonder if I would be able to hit it while it was on the move…I slipped on my flip flops (because they give me courage) and I stomped my way to the hallway. That’s right, I stomped. I did not wish to see this thing again and I wanted it to know I was coming! Stomp, stomp.

“I’m coming for ya, you ugly little pest!” (Yes, I actually shouted that down the hall)

I quickly closed the guest room without looking in. I briefly checked the office. No sign of a mouse there, so I closed that door. I looked in our bedroom and noticed the clothes on the floor (What? Old habits die hard.) and pictured the ugly little monster hiding beneath a pair of jeans. I became really quiet and listened to hear something. Nothing. I closed the door and told myself I would come back and pick up our room and do a more thorough search later. I walked toward the bathroom. The light was still on. In my frenzied panic, I had forgotten to turn the light off as I left the room. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything. But I was not about to just walk in and look around. It’s a small space. So I hopped up on the newly cleaned bathroom counter and tip-toed across to look more thoroughly for the mouse, and any hole it might have run into. Nothing. No mouse. No hole.

Huh. Well where did it go?

Why didn’t I just hop up on the ledge and watch where it went when it came running in here? Now it could be anywhere, in any room, just waiting to pop out again and scare me to death! Come to think of it, where did it even come from and why on earth did it run towards me? Aren’t mice supposed to be afraid of people? Maybe there is some other creature in our house that it was trying to escape (besides me).

I hopped down from the bathroom counter and walked back to the den, my refuge. Too bad I’m allergic to cats. We could just get one and that would solve the problem. I ended up finding the number for the exterminator.

“This is Jackie, how can I help you?”

“We have a mouse in our house. Do you guys deal with that?”

“Well we can have someone come out and take a look. They wouldn’t be able to come till next week. Do you want to wait and schedule something if you see more of the little guy this weekend?”

“No. I saw him once and I never want to see him again. Let’s schedule now.”

Here’s the thing. I’m not a big cleaning person. I like things to be clean, so I will clean, but it’s usually the last thing on my to-do list. So this morning was kind of a big deal because I was actually in the cleaning mood! Having a mouse appear in the midst of my cleaning process is not a reward to me. I do not like mice and I never have. Quite frankly, I don’t understand why Cinderella made them her friends. That’s just weird. People and mice are not meant to be friends or to co-habitate. It’s just wrong.

So for the time being, our bathroom will remain half cleaned, and I will continue to announce myself before entering a room. But come Tuesday morning at 8 am (yeah, that was the earliest available), that mouse will be gone! (I hope!) Cinderella I am not!