Explanation #1

“I know what dead mouse smells like, and that’s dead mouse.”

For those of you who are squeamish at this sort of thing, I suggest you don’t read the rest of this entry. Even thinking back to this sometimes makes my stomach churn.

I have heard that a smell can trigger a strong emotional memory. Like when you smell a particular food cooking you remember being a child and your mother’s cooking. Certain colognes trigger memories of my old boyfriends. And for some reason, I remember the smell of a dead mouse. I guess if you’ve ever had one, you wouldn’t forget it.

My cat is great at catching mice. I am not worried about the little creatures now that Gracie is around. She will spend most of the night waiting for a mouse to come out of its hiding place, and then the rest of the night playing with the terrified mouse.

But one mouse got away.

We started smelling it in the bedroom. It was enough to make you sick, if you thought about it too much. I spent two evenings cleaning the room, searching under the beds, even under the mattresses to find the source of the smell. My husband suspected the smell came from a dirty diaper that escaped and was hiding somewhere. But I knew better. “I know what dead mouse smells like, and that’s dead mouse.”

Since we don’t have a washing machine or dryer at home, I have to take the laundry to a Laundromat. I have huge duffle bags specifically for that purpose.

While searching for the stinking dead mouse, I packed up the laundry. But I never found the dead mouse. Interesting enough, the smell lessened. I didn’t go away completely, but it wasn’t so nauseating.

You guessed it, the dead mouse was in the laundry. Imagine my shock when unloading the laundry and a dead mouse fell out. Fortunately, I am not squeamish about such things, and was able to discreetly use a plastic shopping bag to pick up and throw away the poor creature. No one at the laundry knew.

I was glad that we finally found it. I was glad that I was right about the source of the smell, but I was not happy that the cat let this one get away.

You got your Salmonella In my peanut butter!

No, got your peanut butter in my salmonella!


My husband, in his infinite wisdom, buys peanut butter just about every time he goes to the store. He says that it’s a good thing to have around, in case of emergencies. So, we currently have several jars in our pantry.

As you probably know, there was a recall on some brands of peanut butter for fear of a salmonella contamination. The FDA issued the warning that people should not eat Peter Pan and Great Value (Wal*Mart brand) peanut butter if they have a product code beginning with number '2111' on the jar's lid or label.

One of my jars may be contaminated. The rest are okay. If we would have eaten the bad jar, it defiantly would have been an emergency - Emergency room visit!

But look on the bright side, I could have lost a lot of weight AND eaten peanut butter too!

Thursday Thirteen #44 - Final Edition

13 Things I Never Imagined I Say

1. I know what dead mouse smells like, and that’s dead mouse!








2. Great, the dog found another frozen mole. Good dog!






3. We’re out of water again!






4. Stop dripping deer blood on the floor!






5. Darn! The truck is stuck in the front yard.






6. Okay, I’ll pick up some diatomaceous earth on the way home from work.






7. I’m bored. Let’s got to Wal*Mart!






8. I can’t wait to use my new string trimmer!






9. Gosh darn deer ate my beans.






10. Get me the flashlight, I’m going to get the mail.






11. So how did that beaver taste?






12. Don’t forget to tie the dog up, Ron’s setting traps for that fox again.






13. Don’t mow over there, it’ll make the bees mad.




This is my final, official Thursday Thirteen post. The sponsors have retired the MEME for some reason. But I will try to keep up with my posts, at least every Thursday.

Thursday Thirteen Edition # 43

13 Things That Has Happened In the Past Two Weeks

1. My son has had school called off several days in the past two weeks.








2. My son would have missed a couple of days anyway, since he got Strep.








3. I couldn’t participate in last week’s Thursday Thirteen because I took last Thursday off of work to be with my sick son.








4. I got sick too. It was the kind of sick that anything other then staying warm in bed was dreadful.








5. But I did make a great roasted garlic and sun dried tomato hummus.








6. We watched The Legend of Ricky Bobby. A funny movie.








7. We also watched An Inconvenient Truth. Very interesting.








8. Right after watching An Inconvenient Truth and all the information about global warming, we just had to watch Ice Age: The Meltdown. Kind of brings everything together.








9. There was snow a few days. I joke that a lot of people around here call it “White Death From Above.”








10. Snow doesn’t phase me, but I won’t take unnecessary risks, either. So I left early from work to drive in the 3-4 inches of snow that had fallen. I was glad that I did.








11. We did decide to drive home on the forest route instead of the safer, straighter long route. Either way, there was a lot of snow on the road and we would have to climb up our small mountain to get to the house.








12. I didn’t have any troubles. But our neighbor asked why we didn’t stop and instead just waved as we drove by. They were joking—they knew we didn’t want to lose momentum.








13. My son can come to work with me on days that he has off. He and another employee’s boy get along great and play video games in the back room all day. What a perk!






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