There's A Rat Among Us

This is not a humor blog, although from time-to-time you'll find some humor. The story I'm about to tell you is completely true and maybe a little bit funny.

You may recall that on Saturday, Grandad and I undertook the cleaning and de-cluttering of our garage. Like most suburban homes in South Texas, we have a two-car attached garage. We use it primarily for storage and I park my car inside. Before Saturday, there was so much clutter that I could just barely fit my mid-sized SUV in it. Lots of stuff gets stored in the garage including the lawn mower, weed-eater, Christmas trees, outdoor holiday decorations, Grandad's tools, fishing equipment, just to name a few. It also serves as the collection point for anything to be donated or sold. Our bicycles used to be stored there until they were stolen a couple of months ago, when we carelessly left the door open one night.

We used to be really good at cleaning it once a year and making a donation to Goodwill and/or having a garage sale. But in the five years that Grandad was sick, we've not been able to get it done. A lot, and I do mean a lot, of stuff has amassed there. There was so much that we didn't know where to start. We just dove in and started.

We worked for several hours and got a lot done. We filled both our trash can and our recycle bin to the point of overflowing. There were several domestic accidents that mostly included broken glass. There were no injuries, so it was okay.

After 36 years, I have come to realize that I am married to a potential hoarder. If I let him, Grandad would keep EVERYTHING! He comes by it honestly. It took several days and several collection bins the size of 18 wheelers to clean out his Dad's shed.

My Father-In-Law's shed

 I have decided that we've just got to have some rules.

• We now have a plastic cabinet with three large drawers to hold "shop rags." He can keep all the rags that will fit in that cabinet and no more. Any more than that must go into the trash.
• We will only keep a limited number of pieces of plywood. He probably has 15 different scraps of various sizes of plywood leftover from various projects. They have been in the garage for at least ten years without being used. Plywood is readily available and not expensive. We will no longer be storing plywood scraps in our garage.
• Dangerous and poisonous substances that are stored in the garage must be moved to a safe place. We often have little ones here, therefore everything must be moved out of reach of little hands.
• We will get rid of all the stuff that we've been saving to use for nonspecific projects, especially those that have been waiting for several years.

We made a lot of progress, but we only got about halfway done. Sometime around 3 p.m. things went horribly wrong.

We moved a cabinet from one side of the garage to the other and in doing so uncovered a stack of posterboards. I was kind of happy to see them, because some of them were the signs we used for our last garage sale. All we have to do is darken them up a little and I won't have to make new signs. So I picked them us and stacked them to one side and turned back around to see what was on the other posters. I picked up the next one and behind it was a rat ... not a mouse ... a rat ... a big, black rat. It actually hissed at me. I screamed and ran out the garage door into the yard. The rat ran through the kitchen door into the house and ultimately into our bedroom. Grandad attempted unsuccessfully to close the kitchen door, thereby keeping the rat out of the house. Instead, he bumped into two 8 feet long glass shelves that had been destined for the garage sale, causing them to crash and fall onto the concrete floor and explode into millions of pieces.

Grandad pursued the rat into the house where he found it under our bed against the back wall of the house. In a flash of genius (?) Grandad decided that he should just shoot the rat with a pellet gun. I suggested a shotgun, but he thought that would be too messy. Grandad closed and sealed all the doors thereby trapping the rat in the bedroom and went next door to borrow a pellet gun. Meanwhile, I camped on the swing in the front yard.

He returned 20 minutes or so later, with not a pellet gun, but with a bb gun. While I stayed on the swing, he went in and started shooting. He did manage to hit the rat several times, but not enough to kill it. So now we had a bleeding rat in the bedroom. When Grandad came out of the bedroom, the mouse hid. At this point I decided to go buy a rat trap. I made a quick trip to HEB and returned with a very large trap and peanut butter. We set the trap, closed the door, and waited. Nothing happened. Around 7 o'clock, Grandad went and bought sticky traps and placed them around the room, also baited with peanut butter. He spent quite a long time looking for the rat and could not find it. We picked up something for dinner and continued to wait.  Around 9 o'clock I announced that I would be sleeping on the sofa, Grandad said he'd take the recliner. I had Grandad get me a pair of pajamas out of our room and I went to the bathroom on the other side of the house for my shower. Grandad bravely decided to shower in the master bath. While he was in the shower, the rat emerged and got stuck to the sticky trap. More precisely, the mouse's back feet got stuck. His front feet were still on my floor. He was so big that he was dragging the trap around the bedroom.

Grandad ran to the garage and grabbed a shovel and a box. He had to whack the mouse a couple of times with the shovel to knock him out, because he kept running, with the sticky trap attached. He was approximately 9 inches long, not counting his tail. We both breathed huge sighs of relief. Neither of us was looking forward to sleeping in the living room. But mostly neither of us was happy about sharing our home with a 9 inch rat.

We have now moved the sticky traps to the garage. Hopefully, he doesn't have any brothers or children.

Grandad has taken the day off tomorrow and again on Wednesday to work on finishing the garage and getting it ready to set up for a garage sale on Saturday.

We Have Too Much Stuff

I'm still on my clean out and de-clutter crusade around the house. Today's target was Nick's room, more precisely, Nick's closet.

Nick graduated from high school in May of 2000, then left for college in August. After that he came home for summers, and then he lived at home for about eight months after graduation until he found a job. For the most part, he's been gone for more than ten years now. But the problem is, he never completely moved out. Oh sure, he's married and has a house of his own (which is more than twice as big as ours), but he's never really moved all his stuff. It's like he's trying to keep a foothold here in case he ever needs to come back home.

My question is ... do they every really move out? Don't get me wrong ... he's gone, but his stuff is still here. And by stuff, I mean clothing that he hasn't worn in many years, shoes and boots that he occasionally wears when he comes home to go hunting, college textbooks and notes, photos of his high school friends, the suit we bought him for job hunting, a catalog case from his first job that he can't remember the combination to unlock, notes from a basketball camp he went to in 1996, assorted trophies and medals from high school sports, both high school and college letter jackets, a beautiful onyx chess set that has never been taken out of the box, and a variety of other "stuff."

Now, in all fairness to Nick, we also found a bunch of other stuff that we had just been cramming into his closet for the past ten years or so. I had stored pillows, mattress pads, quilts, blankets, picture frames, books, a picnic basket, stacks of magazines, a bunch of clothes that Grandad has outgrown, a briefcase, several overnight bags and suitcases, boxes of memorabilia from the kid's school years, a pair of lamps I want to rewire, and assorted other "stuff."

In short, even though I've been working on it for months, we still have too much "stuff" all over the house. Next up on the clean out list is my craft closet and then the closet in Katy's room. My goal is to get it done this week and have a garage sale within the next couple of weeks. My real goal is not to end up like those people on Hoarders. None of this stuff is coming back into my house. Anything that doesn't sell goes to Goodwill.

"Anyone who has ever cleaned out a closet and taken stuff to Goodwill knows how liberating it is. You feel lighter, your mind feels clearer." - Cecile Andrews

What I Want To Be

Grams and Grandad enjoyed a short visit from Our Little Princess and Her Highness this weekend. Their parents celebrated Travis' birthday by spending a weekend sans children. Bonus for us! We loved having the girls. We make the exchange in Three Rivers. It's only a little more than a one hour drive for all of us. We got them on Saturday morning and returned them on Sunday afternoon.

Our Little Princess will be 3 years old in February. She's beginning to go through that shy stage where it takes her a while to warm up to anyone that she hasn't seen in a while or meets for the first time. But after a few minutes she definitely comes out of her shell. Her Highness is seven months old and is now crawling and pulling herself up into a standing position. I think she will be walking in very short order and when she does, big sister better look out. There will be no stopping her.

A couple of hours after they returned home on Sunday evening, we received an email with this video. It was so cute that I had to share it. Our Little Princess is wearing parts of the Tinkerbell costume that I made her for Halloween.

If you listen all the way to the end, you'll hear her tell her dad "I'm on TV."

A Quick Post

This is just a quick post to let you know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. The past two weeks I've been sick with a sinus infection. It's so common here in South Texas that we actually call it the Corpus Christi Crud. I've been to the doctor and completed a round of antibiotics, but I'm not better yet. I just don't feel good enough to do any writing or sewing or anything. In fact, I've only worked two days in the last three weeks. Hopefully, I'll feel better in a few days and I'll be back to posting on a more regular basis.

The Substitute Diaries - Serendipity

On Wednesday Grams substituted for Ms. Story's second grade class. The night before, at the PTA meeting, the second grade had presented their annual program. So the next morning, they performed the program again for the entire school.

It was serendipity. There is little I love more in this world than primary school programs that include singing and dancing. This one did not disappoint. The theme was Surfin' Safari and it had everything ... hula girls in grass (plastic) skirts, sharks, straw hats, cardboard surfboards, leis, tropical flowers, limbo dancers and a few other things I probably don't remember. 

Fish

Leis, flowers & sunglasses

Hula dancers in grass skirts

Cardboard surfboards

The director of this musical extravaganza was Betty Murphy. Betty has been a PE teacher at our school district since my kids were in elementary school. You can just see her in the photo below leading the audience participation section of the program. She has been involved in these programs at least since My Favorite Christmas Pageant Ever which would have been sometime around 1986.

My favorite part of the program was Ms. Murphy's instructions to the students in the audience who were all primary school students. She spent the first few minutes explaining to them how an audience behaves. Her instructions included how to applaud properly, the importance of staying in your seat, and being respectful to the performers. She touched on how it's not polite to laugh if a performer makes a mistake and how proper audiences don't hoot and holler. I was very impressed.

She also took a moment to speak to the performers about the example they were setting for the other students. She explained that the kindergarteners and first graders would be learning how to put on a performance from watching them.

Grandad and I regularly attend live theater performances in Corpus Christi and occasionally in San Antonio.  I am often appalled at the lack of proper etiquette exhibited by audience members. I can only hope that these young people grow up to be proper theater patrons.

These photos were all taken with my HTC Evo Shift phone. Considering that I was sitting at the very back of the cafeteria, they're not too bad.

Discipline & Bitchiness

There are a few things that make me absolutely crazy. Over the years of our marriage, I have tried to identify and minimize these things. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much.

In the 36 years we've been married, we have spent countless hours searching for keys. That was easily remedied by hanging a set of hooks that are designated for keys. No one is allowed to put their keys anywhere else. I even had to impose this rule for our adult children and their spouses when they visit. Life is too short to spend it looking for keys.

When our kids were little we once lost a set of keys at my in-laws' house. One of the toddlers had been carrying them around and playing with them. After many hours of searching, they were found inside of a pair of cowboy boots in a bedroom closet. From that day forward, keys were no longer toys for the babies.

Now that the key problem has been successfully solved, there are places in our home that have become "drop spots" for a variety of things. The worst, and the one that's making me crazy right now, is the dining room table. When the kids lived here, we ate dinner at the table every night so it was not a problem. We had to clear it every night before dinner. Now that it's just the two of us, we eat in the living room in front of the television so the table doesn't get cleared regularly. We come in from the garage, through the kitchen, and drop whatever we're carrying on the dining room table. I can't blame it all on Grandad, we both drop stuff there. Here's what is on and around it tonight.

• a stack of t-shirts I picked up Saturday at Goodwill's half price clothing sale (to be upcycled for my Etsy Shop)
• an old non-working VCR that Grandad took out of our bedroom two weeks ago
• two bags of candles from Bath & Body Works sale last weekend
• a Tupperware cake-carrier that's been wating about a month to be returned to storage
• one of my sweaters which needs to go back to the car
• a new jacket that needs to be put away
• a bottle of Tylenol that should be in the medicine cabinet
• a metal repair kit that my son left there when he was home last about three weeks ago
• two baseball caps
• my purse
• the bag that I take to school when I sub
• a couple of empty plastic grocery bags
• a couple of reusable shopping bags that I made last week
• several note pads
• a few receipts that need to be put away
• an e-mail that Grandad printed
• the dirty t-shirt and shorts that Grandad wore to mow the lawn on Saturday
• a folding cooler and a clock that we got last week at our electric co-op's annual meeting
• and, on the floor right next to the table, Grandad's huge Crocs (size 15 shoes are a tripping hazard)

The two pedestal cake plates with covers are the only things that actually belong there. Everything else needs to be put away. We just don't seem to be disciplined enough to do it on a regular basis.

I don't really have a solution for this other than discipline and bitchiness. I will have to discipline myself not to drop and leave things there or to clear it off every night. And, if Grandad doesn't take the hint, I'll have to get bitchy about it. I'll let you know how it goes.

It's A Big Day

Today is a big day in the Valenta household.

Yesterday, Grandad saw his cardiologist here in Corpus Christi. They discussed the results of the nuclear stress test he had last month. I am so happy to report that the results were really good. They have taken him off of Coumadin (warfarin), the blood thinner he's been on since his initial heart surgery about five years ago. He is now off of all prescription drugs except for two that keep his blood pressure and heart rate under control. The really big news is that she released him to begin exercising for the first time in a long, long time. The last two or three times they send him to a medically supervised cardiac rehabilitation program. Each time they made him stop within minutes because of irregular heart beat. We started walking tonight. Last time we tried walking, he had to tell me to slow down. If you take our 16" height difference into account, it should be the other way around. Tonight, we walked for 25 minutes, which is not very long and not very far. But we did it ... and he kept up. That's a big deal!

The other thing that happened today is that I shipped my first order from my Etsy shop. My shop has been open about two weeks and I've been eagerly anticipating my first order. When I got home from work yesterday, there it was in my inbox ... my first order. I got so excited I called my kids to tell them and I confess, I did a little happy dance. Here's my first shipment ready to go in the box.

I made a quick trip to the post office this morning and it was on its way! So, I guess I'm actually in business. That's another big deal!