I have always known I wasn’t very politically correct. In fact I blame the woes of the world on political correctness. But this weekend proved to me that I definitely have to find a balance between correctness and ‘ok why don’t you just grow up’!
I went upstate this weekend to meet up with my daughter who was already there with her family. It wasn’t a weekend I would have gone, the weather was bad and I had a lot to do with Thanksgiving around the corner and my husband annoys the hell out of me during the 3 hour car ride. But my grandsons asked me to come and soooo…I was there!
Before I was even packed I got a call from my daughter informing me that me house had been invaded by mice. There were signs of them in the kitchen, the living room, the laundry room and yes….one of the bedrooms. My bedroom, of course. By signs she meant shit. Lots of little tiny mouse poop. Before I put the For Sale sign up I regained my composure and told her to clean what she could, throw out anything that looked disposable and buy traps. And I didn’t mean the ‘oh let them live they are all Gods creatures’ kinda traps….I wanted her to get the snap the little bastard’s head off kind. The ‘gee this trap has my foot, let me gnaw it off trap.’ I wanted them gone and I wanted them to suffer on the way out. How dare they invade my house? Who do they think they are messing with? I am catwoman!
By the time we got up there….not a hint of a mouse and no mice poop. My daughter and her husband had cleaned up nicely and although the traps they bought were glue traps instead of snap the neck traps, I was glad that we were armed. I however would be sleeping with the lights on this night.
The hotel near my condo had a Scandinavian weekend. Or was it Swedish. No, Norwegian. Maybe Danish? Either way, there were lots of blonds. I tried my best not to call everyone Sven and Inga, but it was tempting. To distract myself from the mouse invasion and to placate my husband who has a incredulous need to see the show each and every time we are up there, we went to the Scandinavian show that night. Ula Oonga and Jaana Something-or-other were the headliners. While we sat and waited for the show to start, each remarking on how few people were in the nightclub so close to showtime, a blind couple were being helped in. They were escorted to the lower level by the stage and left there like floundering fish tapping their white canes. We couldn’t imagine why they hadn’t just sat down at any one of the vacant tables stage-side and enjoy the entertainment. When we saw the host come out and approach them we realized that they WERE the entertainment. He was the accordion player, she the piano. They bantered a bit first with each other than with the audience and then they began to play. We stayed for four songs, which was three songs too many, and when we realized they wouldn’t see us leave…..we left. Every song sounded like a polka and I only know the first two lines of Roll Out The Barrel. (which I am sure they weren’t actually playing) We left for the condo to battle the mice which seemed the lesser of two evils.
The night went well and no mice showed up but just in case my husband and I went to town and bought poison. Now poison is a tricky thing. You want it to kill the mice, hell you want them to down right suffer (well, I do) but we have a dog and 4 grandchildren, including one that would eat the mouse itself if she was able to catch it so we had to be careful where you put the poison. My husband wanted to put it in the cabinets. Nooooooooo….they hadn’t gotten in the cabinets and I was afraid the smell of the aromatic poison would draw them in. So he wanted to put it in the basement and garage. Noooooooooo…the kids play in the garage and the dog sometimes follows us into the basement when we go down to put on the water heater. He attempted to put it behind things, like the stove and the fridge. Noooooooooo…what if we move the stove one day and forget and the dog or the baby get it. My husband put the poison packets in his pocket and threatened to leave them there if I didn’t decide where I wanted them. Behind the appliances would be fine. I think.
That night we decided to treat the kids to dinner in the dining room at the hotel so that my daughter didn’t have to cook and we could spend way too much money on food that the kids wouldn’t eat and have to go home and make chicken nuggets anyway……..It’s the thought that counts! I called to see what the menu was. Seems that the Scandies like cabbage. There was stuffed cabbage, cabbage soup, cabbage slaw, and some kind of salmon and cabbage entrée that I couldn’t and didn’t want to pronounce. So we went to town to Michaelangelo’s where we could pronounce pretty much everything on the menu and the kids wouldn’t eat and we would still have to make chicken nuggets back at the condo. But at least we wouldn’t be farting all night from the cabbage.
This night we thought better about attempting the show since it too had names with double and triple A’s in them and if I cant pronounce you I am pretty sure I won’t like you. I did however see some cute little girls in cute little ethnic costumes go into to the nightclub, so either they were the entertainment or their mother dresses them funny. My daughter and I sat in the lobby attempting to steal a wireless internet connection without paying the $10 an hour they like to charge while my son in law frolicked throughout the hotel with my grandsons. The blind entertainment duo from the night before passed before us headed for the stairs. They seemed kind of lost so my daughter asked them if they needed help to which they said no. Then they made their way clicking and tapping over to the elevator bank. Thinking I was helping, I asked if they were looking for the elevators. Good job, I asked two blind people if they were looking for something. Why didn’t I just kick their dog while I was at it? Ok so there was no dog, but you get the analogy. An hour after that fiasco we saw them emerge from the coffee shop making their way across the expansive lobby. They were walking into couches, tables, doorways happily chatting as their coffee spilled and, I am ashamed to say, looked very much like the silver balls in a pin ball machine changing directions as they banged into things.
And then a thought came to me….if they had come to my condo they couldn’t have seen the mouse poop, they could easily have slept with the all the lights on, they wouldn’t be buying and fighting about where to place poison, or checking sticky glue traps for torn off rodent limbs. How lucky are they?
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