Let's See, Where Have I Been?

Well, there was a massive migraine this weekend. The kind that includes throwing up..bile....yum. And what else? Oh yeah. Rats. Yes, rats.

Call PETA. I killed two of them in the last week. There is a long story there that includes the fact that my 6'5" husband is really, very disturbed by rats, dead or alive. That puts me (voluntarily) in charge of rat clean up. He is really a wonderful husband and father, so in this one area, it is my pleasure(?!) to take care of cleaning little bloody paw prints from our very own Remy off of the floor, and picking up his lifeless body after it has been ferociously snapped by my baited trap.


Rats in your kitchen suck. If you have never had a rat in your kitchen consider yourself the luckiest person in the world. Our neighbors removed a ton of brush from their front yard (big bushes and 500 + square feet of juniper). It is better for the neighborhood to remove the habitat, but in a pinch, it turns out that the space behind the kitchen baseboards in my house makes a decent enough home for two rats for a week. I am normally a generous hostess.

We spent nearly all day on Sunday removing the baseboards, then taking wire mesh and stapling it up under the kitchen cabinets so that the 1 1/2" opening was sealed. I then crawled under the back kitchen window box and discovered where they were coming in and sealed it up with steel wool and more fine metal mesh. Let us pray that there were a)only two of them b)if there were more than two, that they are all trapped outside the house and not inside and c)in the current torrential downpour the little buggers do not attempt to get in our home through any other narrow secret rat passage.

Perhaps I will recover soon and share more exciting things like:

• Jake pooped on the potty at school AGAIN!
• Lucy, at 20 months has begun speaking in 8-word sentences: "Mommy, I want to wash my hands please."
• Descartes and I had a lovely first play date with a couple and their two children... where Jake's (dis)abilites were neither feared nor obsessed over. We just had a plain old relaxing time. The mommy works with Descartes and the daddy is a kid watcher like me.. but he is a master home brewer.. play`dates are always better with beer!
  
• The backyard patio is done and Descartes has re-worked the pergola thingy and we have enough amps in the outside subp-panel to put a hot tub out there!
• Jake has been answering more questions with yeah and nah!