Sunday, January 18, 2009

Storm clouds

No, I'm not talking about weather, although I've noticed the arctic blast this past week dominated all my favorite blogs.

No, we're talking about the mood here at Chez Chapeau. Two of my girls had friends spend the night last night. Granted, grumpiness due to lack of sleep is a normal result of slumber parties. However, we have had a bit less sleep than normal at this particular party, due to some rather unusual excitement late last night.

Earlier in the evening, Hubby took Hockeyman, Dancing Diva and DD's friend to a concert in Minneapolis. After watching a full day of hockey (with some "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" during intermissions of the Wild Game), I tucked the Bubba, Peeps and Bubba's friend down to bed for the night. While making the rounds of the house to turn off lights and check doors and windows and such, I heard a ruckus going on in the basement. With the intuition born of an insane and illogical paranoia about mice, I concluded that one of the cats was chasing a heat-seeking rodent around the music room.

Completely committed to keeping the knowledge of the vermin invasion from the slumbering elementary-age girls, sleeping on the floor on the main level, I surreptitiously grabbed the telephone and called Hubby to see how soon he would be home to rescue me from this life-threatening situation. While he was already homeward bound and a mere 10 minutes from the house, he advised me to take some towels and block all the cracks at the bottom of doors in the basement, to keep the mouse contained until he got there.

Well, being the ever obedient wife, I faced my worst nightmare and ventured into the basement to do his bidding. All was going well, with the mouse cowering behind a bag and trapped by Harley. I was able to get the doors blocked as instructed and was tiptoeing back toward the stairs and my haven of safety (under the covers of my bed on the top floor of the house) when Harley managed to flush the little varmint out. With a leap and a dash, the mouse scurried past my feet, causing me to scream wildly and jump onto the nearest high surface.

Well, so much for keeping the knowledge of the mouse from the girls.

As I perched atop the arm of a chair and watched Harley make a valiant effort to capture the horrid thing, I hollered words of reassurance and comfort to the now wide-awake and hysterical girls and prayed Hubby would arrive soon to rescue us. Which he did - eventually.

After a good laugh with Hockeyman at my expense (perhaps I should have reminded him of a certain arachnophobic tendency in his own make-up), the men managed to catch the mouse in a shoe box and release it back into the wild.

Needless to say, after the adreneline rush, it took quite awhile to get the girls settled back to bed. And now I have a very tired, grumpy Peeps on my hands.

The moral of the story - don't ask your normally camera-loving child to model your latest FO for a photo after a late night of panic and mayhem unless you're willing to settle for a grumpy, pouty-lipped shot for the blog.

2 comments:

Guinifer said...

Well those are some very sweet little lips, pouty, but sweet.

sheep#100 said...

Neatnik would have helped to catch it and asked if we could keep it as a pet.

If not for the possibility of disease, I'd probably say yes.