The fun never, ever ends in Elgin, even if you want it to.

I just answered the doorbell, at nine at night, to find a steak salesman standing on my porch and his van with the headlights on in our dirt driveway. Normally it's people with tiny Bibles and a "greater" agenda, but tonight it was cold, raw meat.

Let me ask you this, he said. Do YOU LIKE STEAKS?!

Um. Yup. I said. Steaks are all right.

Great! Because we have a special--normally 10 dollar steaks for three bucks. Let me run into my van and get some for you to look at.

I had no idea what to do here, because I certainly didn't want to paw at cold meat in the dark night. I don't even know how to look at a steak. The only thing I know about steaks is how to eat them, and that's after they've been prepared by someone who is not me, who knows how to cook them. So while he was ambitious in grabbing those steaks from his non-windowed steak-mobile, I told him that we probably weren't interested and wished him a good night. Of course, now I wonder a couple of things--like: Why. Why is someone selling steaks from his van. Or, what if I'd told him I was a vegetarian? What if he really had cattle in his van and was going to butcher a cow in front of me to show me that steak? What if he was the Mister Steak, from the restaurant?! Should I have asked for his autograph? More importantly, did this just happen? Was a man just on my porch offering me cheap meat?

No, even more importantly: Will I, now, for the rest of my life have forever-regret for passing up my probably-only chance to buy meat from the back of a mysterious van?

*

Mouse poop, in case you're curious, looks exactly like little human poops. Of course, it is smaller, and I would argue that it's probably darker. But if Thumbelina or Tinkerbell took a shit, it'd look like mouse shit, as they are little humans.

I know this because I found mouse shit in my food cupboard yesterday. I'm trying to ignore your laughter right now. I'm trying to pretend that you don't know that two years ago moths invaded my food cupboard and mine alone, that it took me months to get them out, that those moths served the sole purpose of procreating near my food and laying their little moth maggots in my cereal. Now it's a mouse.

I'll be honest. I suspected, but I ignored. I was unwilling to accept the fact that my food was near the teeth of a hungry mouse. When that bag of tortilla chips had a little tear in the corner that looked like it could've been gnawed through by a mouse (possibly a mouse wearing a sombrero) I just took it out and threw it in the garbage. I didn't "check" for anything. And when my little pouch of instant potatoes gushed little potato flakes on the floor when I picked it up--thanks to a big tear in the corner of the bag--I convinced myself that it had been a flaw in the packaging. That Betty Crocker food servers neglected to check that one pouch in that one box and made me make a big snowy instant potato mess all over my floor.

I owe Betty Crocker an apology.

It wasn't her fault; it was the mouse's fault. Those chips didn't get a hole by themselves. There's a reason that when I open my cupboard I do it with a secret fear, that I refuse to dig around in there, that I wonder if I hear things scratching even if it's only in my imagination. There's a reason I slam that door shut, that I don't organize my food, but instead, when I buy a new box of Mac & Cheese, open the door, literally throw it in, and then slam it as quickly as possible. It is as though I'm a zookeeper feeding a scary, hungry bear by having to open his cage to throw the meal in and simultaneously avoid an attack.

I've secretly known. And yesterday I had to confront that fear: I found the poo. I found the poo.

I took the risk of organizing my food, then I found it, and then I waited until James came home. Mouse. Cupboard. Poop. I said. I went for a 4 mile run in the 20 degree weather, asked if he'd take care of it while I was gone. (You know, like a 40-year-old boyfriend leaves for awhile when his 17-year-old girlfriend takes "care of" the pregnancy.) When I got home, my food was organized, and James reported no mouse. But I'll have to get some traps. Don't know how he got in there--maybe you left it open one night?

I'm sure that's what happened. I'm sure he's not secretly hiding in there, waiting to attack the next time I want some Saltines. Scratch. Scratch. Squeak. Poop.

*

Saturday was one of those days of unexpected fun, one of those days when you're watching cartoons and the news somehow simultaneously and your roommate comes down and says: Dammit, we're hauling garbage to town today.

We don't have garbage service; we have a lot of garbage. Lots of beer bottles, lots of Lean Pockets boxes and wrappers, lots of old bananas that I thought I'd eat before they'd gone bad and that I'd once thought would become bread long after.

And we've been keeping it in the old chicken coop.

This is the luxury of Elgin. You don't have garbage service, you just throw bag after bag into the garage, and then when you realize there's no more room to keep your car in there, you move the trash over to the chicken coop, right alongside the empty boxes from the day you moved in last May, right next to the box that says "Winter Clothes," and the plastic bin where you keep all of those candles that you bought on clearance the Christmas season you worked at Pier 1.

The non-luxury of Elgin is the day your roommate comes downstairs and says: We've got garbage in that chicken coop since the fourth of July. I figure that garbage service is $90 every three months, but we can haul it to Red Wing and get rid of it for $20.

I brew coffee, download new songs on my ipod for the trip, and James puts on his dirty clothes and old gardening gloves and starts throwing our wet, slimy black and white bags of trash and recycling into the back of the truck.

I put on my dirty clothes, then join him. We have a lot of garbage. We are the King & Queen of garbage. I feel disgusting. I feel so disgusting. And it's cold outside, and I imagine the garbage steaming even though that's just our breaths.

We take back roads to Red Wing, 45 minutes away, and because the truck is full of garbage, we drive slowly and check rearview mirrors for bags that have escaped and left white tufts of paper towel and crushed cereal boxes on the road. James has had to tie the garbage down with bright orange bungie cords. It's as though we have an important haul. We're on a garbage barge, hauling trash from New York, except it's all our own, and we have to take ownership of this human mess. I feel so disgusting.

We can't find the incinerator, so we call and drive around until we do, but not after I almost talk James into illegally dumping our trash in a mysterious dumpster we find alongside Busch Street. It will cost $20 to get rid of our pickup load. We pay the woman, she tells us where to dump it, and then she tells us that we'll have to sort all of our recycling.

We have a lot of plastic and a lot of glass, and right now, they're all mixed up in a lot of bags. his will be sticky.

James climbs in the truck on top of the garbage--I told you, King of Garbage--and starts whipping bags freestyle into the dumpster, over each shoulder, like a jumpshot, and I say Ew, ew, ew, ew about 100 times and start to separate the recycling. It takes a good twenty minutes, but it's cold so the garbage doesn't stink, and we feel good about not being douchey and actually recycling instead of throwing those recycleables in the garbage dumpster, which would've been the easy thing to do.

Plus, I got to see a trailor that was called Maxi-Dump on the side, and that made me laugh for a good five minutes. I'll let you imagine what I thought of on your own.

We'd originally planned to go to Red Wing that night, for a trip to the casino, but since we were there--well. We elected to have lunch (at Randy's, a Red Wing tradition, of course) and then to drive to Treasure Island. We were covered in trash; we looked like trash.

James hated Randy's and wasn't afraid to tell me so, and I hated that he played the stupid slot machines at the casino and wasn't afraid to tell him so. I pulled up a chair to a five dollar Blackjack table, cashed $20, and eventually walked away up $70. The best part, though, was that I managed to keep a straight face, and gamble--in the outfit I was wearing. A colorful stocking cap with a giant yarn-like ball on the top, which I refused to take off because my hair was a disaster, and my big puffy green vest. They shouldn't let people like me in there. But, luckily, they do. James walked out $40 up from those damn slots, which I still argue don't pay. He says he can read them because they're computers. I say I flirted with the Blackjack dealer, but now I realize how ridiculous this is, as I looked like a hobo with her last $20 ever.

The ride home: we, in James' big red Big Horn Dodge Ram hit a deer. It was actually more like the deer hit us. We're driving on County Road 2, back from Red Wing. Miles before, we see a whole family of deer, the three of them crossing together. A driver coming East blinks his lights so we see them. There are no drivers coming East the second time. We're driving, talking about--who knows, probably some president, because that's all we ever talk about it U.S. History--and I feel James slam on the brakes, and I see the fawn near the headlight. But James doesn't slam to a stop, he slams to slow down. And then the deer looks like it might turn around and not be a stupid deer caught in headlights--but then we hit her with the big red man-truck.

Actually, given that the dent was only on the driver's side door, I would argue that that stupid deer ran into us.

James got out, assessed the damage. It was dark, but through the light of our red tailights in my big square rearview mirror, I could see the dead fawn lying in the middle of the road, half side in each lane. No blood. But I felt her skull crack, I really did. I felt her body fall apart as she was hit by that truck, the bright lights the last thing before a poor decision. Why are deer so stupid. Why couldn't she just see all of it coming? Why did she run into this disaster, this empowering beast, when she had that split second to turn back the other way?

Stupid deer. Why can I relate to you right now, why can I almost see myself in red tailights, my body split between the East and West direction, my last breaths a puff and then a softer, foggier puff in the cold November dark? Damn, deer, why did you have to be crossing then? And if you hadn't, would a hunter have found you? Was this just your better way to go? Where is the reason. Where is it.