Musing No. 17 - Coffee & d-Con

To preface this post - my night was held together by many MANY cups of this:

So around 1 AM my beautiful 37-week prego wife and I were sitting on our bed, watching various episodes of How I Met Your Mother that I have saved on my Mac. We've got it hooked up to our nice big tv, which is across the room, but I don't mind getting up to switch every episode because....well let's face it, it's not like I've yet achieved the perfect weight-class.

I know I already did a preface for this particular musing, but I think I'll add another. While I love living out in the more wildlife area of the southern Grand Rapids area - me and my wife really are city folk. By this point you are probably thinking, "How the hell are any of these factors related?" Well fear not, because I genuinely believe that I can somewhat bring this jumble of mish-moshed thoughts together....or if I fail, I hope I at least fail hilariously.

A.D.D. is awesome - back to my story. So one of the episodes of HIMYM ends and I get up to go change the episode. As I was walking over to the computer, the floor in front of me seemed to gain a momentary moving ink blotch. I stop in my tracks and stare for slightly too long. My wife, noticing my momentary lapse of concentration asks me what I was staring at. My first thought: "Damn...I really was looking forward to sleeping tonight." She asks me again, "Hun, what's wrong?" Sweat starts to bead slightly on my forward as I think to myself: "Play this cool and you still might be able to." "Uh...yeah hun," I say aloud, attempting to collect my thoughts, "I think I might have seen a mouse." "F*****ck. Nailed it."

Well clearly she wasn't going to go to sleep until I caught the mouse. Catch the mouse? Now - let's get this out in the open. Jack Hannah, I'm not. Crocodile Dundee, I'm not. I've never even won a game of Mousetrap. I'm sure there's a way to catch a mouse on the spot - but I have no clue what it is.

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong.

I lumber grudgingly over to the spot where I saw the mouse run, and pray to God to I just had a momentary contact malfunction. I start pulling things out of the way and the damn thing runs over my foot, through my legs and under the bed where my wife is now quite unhappily sitting. I also may have pooped myself. (What?! I told you I'm city folk!)

I then put on shoes and start squeamishly removing food from the end table next to the bed, as my wife had stockpiled a good amount of snacky things (it's a wonder why the mouse picked our room) as well as removing items from under the bed. I get a good amount of this done and still see no mouse. I quickly decided it was time for reinforcements. I go awaken my brother-in-law's basset hound upstairs and lure him into the bedroom. I tell him to go under the bed. He sticks his head under and then plops/lays down. Sooo I sigh and start pulling more things out.

Now we have our bed up on platforms for extra storage, but since there was no platform for the middle - we put a concrete cinder block. Those of you suspense novel connoisseurs are no-doubt figuring out what I am leading to. There was a very comfy looking mouse nest built inside one of the two sides of the cinder block. Fantastic. Experience has taught me that you can't see the little buggers inside their nest, after a rather unfortunate incident where I picked up what appeared to be a harmless a ball of white fuzz in the garage of a previous house and a mouse jumped at my face. I go and grab a mop and poke the handle into the nest expecting the worst. Nothing. I pull the nest out. Nothing. Not relief but lack of desire for having to go in farther slaps me in the face.

Evil lives here...

I concluded that I will be needing something stronger to fight this evil. I inform my wife that she should and the dogs probably hit up the couch in the living room for the night, since she informed me she wouldn't be able to sleep in the bed til I get the mouse - then I head off for the store!

Arriving to the local 24hour grocery store, (10 to 15 minutes away) I quickly locate the rodent annihilation aisle, and I proceed to grab - oooh about 20 bucks worth of d-Con items. I walk up to the front, proud that I will be attacking this unwanted visitor and reclaim my testicles from the 2 to 3 inch ball of black fur that stole them from me. I proceed to check out, only to find that my wallet is not located in my back pocket. "Damn," I think to myself, "Little bugger stole that too. He is good!" I sheepishly ask the unpleasant register laborer if he would hold onto my goods, so that I may return to pick them up swiftly. Annoyed he yells to his manager that he is going to the restroom. I take that as a yes.

Jumping back into my vehicle I see that I am bumping the bottom of my gas tank. How convenient. At around 2 AM, many many gas stations are open in my area - and are quite coincidentally very open to giving their precious commodity away to wallet-less patrons. I pray to baby Jesus that I can make it home and not make this a more embarrassing story than it already is. I take off out of the parking lot and down the road.

Baby Jesus was not in the mood to be kind. A stranger with an awfully coincidentally full portable gas tank was, though, so I will now be saying all future prayers to 'Beat-up Chevy-driving Hobo-looking, Possibly-homosexually-pedobeard man.' What can I say? The gays love me.

SOOO back on the road! I get home, grab my wallet, make a detour to a gas station so I don't have to give more than a smile to the next strangely flirty good Samaritan and head back to the store. I arrive to see that all my items have been returned to the back of the store where I found them (FANTASTIC) and fly speed racer style through the aisles once again. Checking out and then hopping in the car I stop for not one, but 2 cups of coffee at McDonalds and then return home.

Little bastard won't know what hit him.

As I now sit here, on my couch, waiting for mickey to step in a sticky trap, get severed in a cheese clamp or eat a lethal dose of mouse poison I ask myself, "More Coffee?"

End of Musing No. 17

Musing No. 11 - Option 3 through Number 2

Remember when this world was your berry for the picking? Remember when the world was your oyster, with pearls begging to be plundered? If you've lived long enough, chances are that your views of the world have changed since those innocent beginnings. Reality is a unwelcome arrival - much like waking from a restful sleep to a gun barrel in your face can ruin your morning and alter the liquid content of your bed sheets and undergarments. Regardless, reality is something we all must face at one time or another.

Haha, suckers - my sheets are already yellow.

For the pessimists this is a simple feat to accomplish. It doesn't really change things for them, they just now have confirmation of their suspicions that the world sucks, and can't get too much more depressed than they already are. Realists take it in stride, as they already knew as much so they've had time to deal with it before the rest of us. Surprisingly the optimists many times take it the hardest, and often join the ranks of the pessimists - as much of their ability to fly rode on the bubble that just burst.

Isn't that a weird picture? I forgot why it was relevant now...

I would say that I probably fall into the Realist category, as I just see a glass and don't really care if it's half empty or half full as long as there's still something left in it for me to drink. (Ok so I'm a selfish realist...no one's perfect)

But what do you do after reality hits? Your golden dreams and plans are suddenly quite a bit harder than you had originally anticipated. The yellow brick road is suddenly piled with monkey feces and you don't remember that part from the book. (Flying monkeys have a great deal more bowel movements than pigeons)

My photoshopping resume just hit a low-point.

Well, you have three options:

Option 1 - Stop there, and find solace in the fact that you are on the yellow brick road, (even though you are no longer moving on it). Yellow is really a nice color, let's stare at it awhile.

Option 2 - Try to find a way around it. Sure that sign says 'Evil Talking Trees' followed by 'Witch's Castle' but I'm sure I can find a short cut. And I'll have the trees to have nice conversations with along the way.

Option 3 - Jump into the monkey shit. Anything can be swam through - just ask Andy Dufresne.

Get busy livin, or get busy dyin.

If you chose option 3, Congratulations - you're not stupid and you have a wonderful musky aroma you should remember to wash off once you reach the Emerald City. If you chose option 1 or 2 - enjoy working for Option 3'ers.

Yes you will have to go through obstacles to get to your dream. If it was easy everyone would have done it and it wouldn't be something worth dreaming about. And yes - It sucks. It sucks real bad. You can't see what's ahead, you're trying not to breath in and you promise God never to look down upon a hobo who smells funny again if he can please send Moses down to perform a Brown Sea encore. But you know it must be done.

Look what you did now, you damn dirty apes...

Just ask any man who's ever made anything of himself, and he will tell you that Armani suits feel just as good stained brown and that a dry-cleaning bill is much more rewarding than a welfare check. If you ever plan on getting ahead in life, plan on smelling like crap for awhile - but remember that it's only for a season. This too, shall pass.

End of Musing No. 11