“uncle!”

i ran my dishwasher last night.

i know it’s a few weeks too soon, but i have declared my lenten ‘fast’ over. no, i didn’t just give up because washing dishes by hand was too ‘hard’.

rewind to 8:30ish yesterday morning. i went to get micah some cereal and discovered that there were like 4 mini wheats in the bag in the cupboard. given that i buy cereal at costco most of the time AND that i have no pantry, i usually take one of bags out to keep in the house, and the remaining bag, in the original box, is stored on a shelf in the garage. i went out to retrieve the second bag. it was empty.

HUH?

the empty bag, was in the box, unopened.

then i discovered a hole, somewhere between the size of a tennis ball and a golf ball, in the side of the bag.

HUH?

then i looked down on the floor and around the shelf and discovered some small samples of telltale ‘evidence’ to backup the suspicion i didn’t want to acknowledge.

<insert favorite swear word here>

so i started looking around some more. i discovered more ‘evidence’ on other things and in other locations around the garage.

<more swearing>

then i looked in the laundry room, on the floor by the water heater. BIG ‘evidence’. and by BIG, i don’t mean lots. i mean BIG – in size.

<louder and stronger swear words>

we had a few mice in the garage last year, about this time. it happens. it’s kind a creepy, i’d prefer they stay out, but as long as they’re JUST in the garage, and there’s not like hundreds of them, i can cope. i try not to let the kids eat stuff out there, so as to leave crumbs all over the place, encouraging them to invite their friends. i sucked up any ‘evidence’ w/ the vacuum and they eventually moved out. no biggie.

RATS, on the other hand is an entirely different ball of nasty, disgusting, rabies-bearing wax (so to speak).

i know we live by the lake, and therefore, there are rats around. i’ve heard neighbors complain about them. i quit using my compost bin for food scraps, because of a rat sighting like a year ago. we actually caught one in a trap in the backyard about a month ago.

all slightly disturbing, but par for the course, right?

come in my HOUSE and that’s a whole other story. GAME ON, SUCKAH!

my husband called it a half-day yesterday and came home and cleaned out the ENTIRE garage. pulled everything out, tossed, shredded, reorganized, etc. moved shelves, swept, investigated areas generally ignored out there. bless him!

our next order of business will be to set a bunch of traps and figure out where they are getting in. we also need to get something different for the outside dryer vent. the one that’s on there has a flap that apparently opens when the dryer is on and (supposedly) closes when it’s not. when i went outside to look at it, it was most definitely open, and the dryer was most definitely NOT on. there is also a definite hole dug in the ground just outside. near where the dryer vent is. grrr…

SO, long story short, i feel like my cleaning efforts are better spent in cleaning endeavors OTHER than self-imposed handwashing of dishes.