The fun never stops around here

As the snow started melting a few weeks ago we noticed our tiny backyard looked rather different.  We put grass in a couple of years ago, and last fall it looked just fine.  Now, it looks like this:

This, my friends, is the work of a vole, a hamster/mouse-like rodent that burrows and eats roots and grass.  For a couple of weeks we could not figure out what sort of creature would make runways in the grass.  Then one day recently I saw it poking it’s little head out of one of the holes, causing a scramble by my husband to exterminate the rodent.  He tried drowning it by sticking the hose down one of the holes, but it soon emerged soaking wet from another hole and began scurrying along it’s little runways, my husband dousing it with water the whole time.  The thing suddenly made a dash for the open doorway, where our daughter was sitting in her highchair.  With a flying leap Brady jumped onto the patio and sprayed the vole into hiding under our BBQ.  When he came down the steps to inspect it, the vole charged him, causing him to let out a scream, leap back onto the patio, and spray it with water more vigorously.  The vole then disappeared down another hole and we haven’t seen it since.

Well!  Cut to last Saturday.  After returning home from the blogger brunch I attended, I was showing my mom (who was kind enough to baby-sit) the damage the vole had done to our backyard.  As she was looking out the window she suddenly exclaimed, “Rache!  There’s a snake out there!”  I dashed to the window, and to my horror there was indeed a snake just chillin’ on the grass.  Oddly, the first thing that popped into my mind was well I hope it ate the vole! But then reality hit again: there was a SNAKE six feet away from my house.  At least this time it wasn’t IN my house, but if one got in before, this one could too.

My petite, super-brave little mother marched right out there with a rake and told me to get a trash bag.  Already shaking, I handed it to her and was about to dash inside, but the wind was blowing and she couldn’t could the bag open and scoop the snake in at the same time and needed help.  I tried to pawn it off on Claire, but she turned me down.  Slacker!  Darn kid needs to start earning her keep around this place.

I hope none of my neighbors were out, because they would’ve overheard this:

mom:  Ok, just hold the bag open…come on snake…ooh, yuck…come on…

me:  ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!

mom:  ok, almost got him!  Now, Rache, just hold the bag open-

me:  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

mom:  Crap!  Lost him, ok here we go.  Haha!  Ok.  Rache, hold the bag- yeah, just hold the bag open-

me:  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

mom: Rache, come on, just hold the bag open!  Just like that!  Haha!  Ok, I think I’ve got him!  Crap, you can’t drop the bag!  Just hold it open for a sec…

me:  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

As you can tell, I was a huge help.

By some magic we were able to get the horrid thing into a bag and tie it off and throw it in the dumpster down the street.  I didn’t know what else to do with it.  And it smelled. The snake, that is, not the dumpster.  Well actually, yes, the dumpster did too, but you know what I mean.  Have you ever heard of a snake smelling bad?

So.Gross.

One step forward, two steps back

Last week I briefly mentioned that in my quest to be more frugal, I was following the advice of the book and tackling my grocery bills.  Oh, I so wanted to write a post on the beautiful, organized spreadsheet I had developed in order to compare prices.  I wanted to talk about the shock I felt when I realized how much more money I was spending than I should have been.  I had big dreams!

But then…we were struck with the thing that can bring a home with children to its knees:  illness.  With some pretty crappy timing too. Not that any time is particularly convenient to get sick, but still…  The husband and I started school again and in an attempt to make our schedules work, coordinated a baby swap a few times a week with a neighbor also trying to finish school.  In the midst of the craziness the husband and baby were hit with a doozy of a cold.  That’s right, a DOOZY!  Poor little Claire especially, and any parent knows that there is little worse than having a sick child.

My schedule for the last week basically looked like this:

4:02 AM- Baby crying, offer comfort.

4:37 AM- More crying, more bleary-eyed comfort offered.

5:15 AM- Baby too congested to sleep.  Sit in rocking chair with baby to keep her upright and help her breathe.

6:20 AM- Crawl back into bed.

6:35 AM- Baby cries.  Discover diaper leak, urine everywhere.  Awesome.  Baby in tub.

7:55 AM- Leave for school.

10:00 AM- Baby swap so husband can go to school.  Tend to sick child.

10:12 AM- Wipe snot

10:23 AM- Wipe snot

10:37 AM- Restrain child in order to wipe snot

10:42 AM- Give up on keeping snot river under control and accept that everything will be covered in mucous for the next several days.

11:00 AM- Naptime!= homework time for mom

12:45 PM- Baby awake, wipe snot, lunch time, sick and tired husband comes home

1:15 PM- Work, work, work…

8:30 PM- get home, start getting baby ready for bed.  Baby’s coughing fit induces BARFING.  Baby in tub.

9:15 PM- baby finally asleep.  Eat late dinner.

9:35 PM- Lapse into a coma from exhaustion

So!  As you can see, there has been no time for organized spreadsheets or meal planning or even checking my email.  Besides, had I even printed off one of those lovely spreadsheets I’m pretty sure it would be covered in snot.

Let’s hope this week runs a little more smoothly.

Tags: feeling crazy, schedules, sick baby

When it rains, it pours…part 2

So as mentioned before, the week (which is now a little ways past…sorry for the delay), continued to be an adventure.  Thursday brought more barfing, but Friday and Saturday seemed to promise some much needed normalcy.  We were so optimistic that we actually rented a movie, I know, CRAZY right?  Somebody stop us, we might go to bed at 10:30!  We put the kid down to sleep and went downstairs to our little home theater to enjoy the show.

Not 45 seconds after starting the movie Claire started crying.  The hubby ran upstairs to get her, and I decided to follow in order to assist where needed.  Now, let me pause a moment to describe our basement.  It’s not particularly large, most of it we recently finished.  When you come down the stairs you are met by a door to our unfinished laundry/storage room and then there is a short hallway to our entertainment room.  As I was running down the hall to the stairs I noticed a grayish rope sticking out under the laundry room door, which I found extremely odd since I didn’t remember us having a gray rope.

I stopped dead in my tracks.  We don’t have a gray rope.  We especially don’t have a gray rope with scales.

My heart started pounding and I raced up to the baby’s room where the hubby was trying to console her.

With a shaking voice I said, “You need to come downstairs right now…we have a SNAKE in our basement!”

The hubby’s face went white and all three of us raced back downstairs to see that the SNAKE (shudder!) had fully revealed itself and was just chillin’ in our hallway.

We were paralyzed.  Never in my entire life have I had any type of reptile in my home.  I never really thought I was afraid of snakes, until I saw one in my home. Hubby hates snakes with a passion.  Not quite as much as he hates mice and rats, but snakes are right up there for him.  We just stood on the steps, mouths agape, and wondered what on earth we were supposed to do next.  We couldn’t kill it with a shovel, blood would get all over the carpet.  That meant we had to catch it.  Ugh!

We took turns watching the snake and running around the house to find something to put it in, however, while it was on my watch it got tired of hanging out in the hallway and quickly slithered back under the laundry room door  and into the mess of the storage room, all while I stood there screeching and clutching at the baby.

We couldn’t find it in the storage room.  It really seems to have disappeared into some small hiding space, and we’re too afraid to go poking around with much gusto.  We created an entire fortress around the base of the door in an attempt to keep it from escaping and prayed that it would go out the way it came in (which is a mystery to us, since we have no idea how it got in).  My brave sisters came over the next day and poked around, but we couldn’t find anything.

So now we still have a snake in our basement.  It’s been almost 2 weeks.  Doing laundry is a two man job as one person has to stand guard as the other throws clothes around as fast as humanly possible.  The sucky thing about snakes is there is no real easy way to get rid of them.  You have to either catch it or kill it.  There’s no such thing as snake traps or snake poison.  Yuck yuck yuck!  Someone pointed out that at least we won’t have mice in our basement.  Yeah, way to see the bright side…we don’t have mice, we just have a 20 inch long SNAKE!  No biggie!  The person who pointed that out is apparently some sort of snake enthusiast and said that it’s no big deal, we just have to hope that it isn’t a female that is going to give birth to a whole LITTER of snakes IN OUR HOUSE!  Yeah, no big deal.

Hang on for a second while I hyperventilate.

So, there you have it.  Snake in the house, mystery to where it has gone.  Possible infestation of baby snakes on the horizon.

So how are your holidays shaping up?

Tags: gross stuff, phobias, snakes