Mouse, thy name is Algernon.

I spent last weekend on a chair, screaming like a girl. A little annoying girl. The one on the playground that you fucking want to push in the dirt because she is the most ridiculous little girl you've ever seen.

Correction: I also spent part of the weekend locked in the laundry room with the Good Doctor, drunk and screaming. (Not the first time this has happened, probably won't be the last.)

We have a mouse; we killed it. We have another mouse. Following is the procession of mouse:

1) Jeano notices tiny holes chewed in food, pretends they are manufacturers defects, lets instant potatoes snow on floor, convinces herself it is not a mouse;
2) There are tiny poops in the cupboard, in her food cupboard, and they are either fairy poops or mice poops; for one time in her life, Jean is hoping for fairy;
3) One night last week: Jean is tired, but she swears, that while sitting in the living room, she sees a shadow move across the floor. James tells her she's fucking nuts, she really is, but looks under the futon anyway and sees nothing;
4) James cleans Jean's cupboard for her, organizes foods, eliminates poops;
5) James buys mousetraps;
6) James puts cheese on mousetraps;
7) Next morning: cheese is gone from both traps, no mouse is dead;
8) Next day: The Good Doctor, his friend Matt, and Yellow Dog come to visit, so does Liz. Jean has about two bottles of wine in her system, but dinner is over and it's time for dessert. Jean is going to make white mocha ice cream treats in the blender. She goes to grab the blender, and in doing so, sees a gray flash on the counter behind her; Jean screams, screams, screams, screams, screams, screams, screams, screams, screams.
9) A mouse, kill it kill it kill it kill it, she says;
10) James doesn't believe her, but goes to check, and the mouse skirts across the back of the kitchen sink and runs up the wall into the back of the cupboard;
11) Jean is still screaming, the Good Doctor joins her, then they lock themselves in a room and continue to drunkenly scream even though they can't actually see the mouse nor anything that is happening in the kitchen;
12) Liz and James are on a mission, Liz and James are on the cupboard and looking up the hole, but I don't know what else happens in the kitchen, as I am drunk and screaming and doing "squeamish hands" in the pantry, but I think they determined that the mouse has an intricate system running through the cupboards, which explains how he found his way into my food and into the utensil drawer, where he has shit on every spatula and wine opener we've got;
12) Jean leaves pantry, but only by the back way, which doesn't involve going through the kitchen,
12) Liz asks for a wire hanger, Jean tells her this is no time for an abortion, and then jokes are made about Liz making money by performing abortions for farmer's daughters back behind the chicken coop and with a sign in our front yard that says: Liz! Abortionista extraordinaire!;
13) Jean returns with wire hanger, Liz creates a device that pokes up through the cupboard and tries to poke the mouse out and then sets up a plastic bag below the tiny tunnel of the corner cupboard, as though to catch his corpse like a body bag;
14) No dead bodies fall out of the tunnel;
15) We give up, because it's time for Trivial Pursuit;
16) Next day: No incidents in the morning, but as we are cleaning up after our day of baking...;
17) Out of nowhere, a fucking mouse skitters his tiny feet across the floor. He has come out from under the dishwasher;
18) Jean screams and screams and screams and screams and screams and runs into the living room and leaps onto the couch and nearly cries;
19) James and Liz look for the mouse under the oven, but they find nothing, Jean moves over to the dining room chair in the kitchen so she can watch them perform this feat;
20) Nothing;
21) That night: James sets up the trap--really squishes that cheese down and puts the trap out in the open, in the kitchen;
22) Jean wakes up at 4:00 on Monday morning because she has a lot of work to catch up on before school, and she walks into the kitchen, and she sees a dead mouse in the trap, and she screams, but it's not loud, and she tiptoes past the mouse in order to get to the bathroom;
23) The mouse's tail curves a bit around the refrigerator, and it looks like a slippery earthworm that has been forced to come out by a cold rain;
24) Jean writes James a note, as he has told her to do, but she has not put a towel over the mouse as he has told her to do, because then she'd ruin a towel and every time she dried her hands, she'd wonder if it were the "mouse towel";
25) The note says: James, ish and on it, Jean has drawn a dead mouse and we know it's dead because its eyes are really xs;
26) James disposes of mouse promptly after Jean has gone to school. He leaves the traps out, in case the mouse has "a friend,"
27) Two days later: James says, I think our mouse has a friend that cheese from both traps is gone;
28) Jean feels fear in her heart, but first that fear has passed through her stomach and esophagus like bile;
29) James continues to set up traps. Jean wakes up this morning and notices a mousetrap has moved at least a foot from its original position, that the cheese is gone, and that there is a mysterious white substance on the floor--food, perhaps?;
30) James wakes up, because he had to wake up early this morning; Jean points at the floor and says I had nothing to do with that;
31) James touches the white, and it is, we discover, foam. It is a foam substance from the soft mat he has in front of the oven, and upon inspecting the soft mat, we discover teeth marks and a missing corner;
32) Jean emails Liz, Liz tells her the mouse is a lesbian for "eating rug";
33) Jean concludes that this mouse is a super-rug-munching mouse--he has the power to manipulate traps of all forms, he can leave ginormous teeth marks in a rug, and he probably knows math;
34) He is deemed Algernon, although she once called the first mouse Algernon. It is decided that that mouse was more likely a Ralph like the mouse who had a motorcycle, or Stuart Little, the mouse who grew up to have Parkinson's or Pinky from Pinky and the Brain. This mouse is Algernon. He is too smart for his own good, and someday, he might give a retarded man (likely James) some sort of hope and the chance to have sex with Miss Kinnion, who is engaged and an inappropriate teacher;
35) Jean tells James the cheese probably isn't working because it is so fucking cold in this house that the cheese probably freezes and just falls off the trap so Algernon can get it, so James elects to use peanut butter this time;
36) Jean is not looking forward to the possibility of seeing another dead mouse tomorrow, but then again, a dead mouse is better than an under-the-stove-living mouse;
37) The only way Jean is bringing flowers for Algernon better be at his fucking funeral tomorrow, meaning when James chucks his body into the backyard, across the field, and it hits the freezing ground with a soft thump and light thrash in the long, brown grass.

***

P.S. I am quite convinced that this has been the laziest week of my life. I bring clothes for the gym after school, and I still don't go. Instead, I come home, eat a bunch of cookies that I baked last weekend. Today I ate about 20 cookies, then I had two bowls of Apple Jacks for dinner, then I went to bed at 4:00 in the afternoon and woke up at 5:30, and then I decided I was still tired and went back to bed until 8:00, and then I watched The Office, and then I ate another cookie and then I opened a glass of wine, and then I blogged and there you go. My original plans--my only plans for the day were: DON'T BE A FUCKING FAT ASS, and it turns out that was the only thing I did. Why does it have to be so cold? Why do I have to have such chronic, disabling fatigue? Why can't I just make myself run? Why can't I do it, when clearly I care that the fat around my waist grows like a protective tube-like flotation device? Winter, I hate you, and I hate you even more, wind from the North, and lack of motivation, I hate you the most. Sonofafuckingbitch I have to change. But it's so hard to change your routine when you're happy with everything else in your life. Work is great, and amazing, and I'm learning a bunch of shit everyday; therefore, I must be fat. This ain't done no fair.