Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

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War Of The Rodents: Day 759,823

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So-and say it with me now-the bug guy is coming back again this week.

Forget the Bermuda Triangle, or what happened to Amelia Earhart, or why you can never, ever get your hair to look exactly the way it did when your hairdresser styled it at your last appointment. We are currently engaged in unraveling one of the knottiest mysteries known to mankind today: How in the world are these rats getting into our basement? We have had three different bug guys inspect the area underneath our house, and although they try to cover it up with fancy “exterminator talk”, the basic message I have gotten from all of them is, “Beats me!”

It’s like we’re dealing with some kind of mutant evil genius rats, rats who are apparently not subject to any of the physical laws of the known universe, super-Einstein-emulating, Mensa-joining rats, rats who can apparently teleport their bodies from the outdoors directly  into our basement using only the power of their tiny rat minds.

But even though we’ve apparently been under attack by Lex Luthor and the entire Legion of Doom, we here at the Hall of Justice have not given up hope. We will soldier bravely on, with our Lasso of Truth, and our Peanut-ey Glue Boards of Immobility, and our Really, Really, Big Stick, and justice will once again prevail.

Or not, in which case I’ll be back next week with a report on Day 759,824.

The Road Less Traveled

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You know how sometimes in life you start out with these great plans, and then unexpected things happen and you find yourself in a place that you never could’ve imagined? Well, that is happening to me now. But not in a misty, nostalgic, “oh, look at the funny twists of fate” kind of way. It’s more of an, “I wonder how I could erase certain parts of my memory without causing myself actual brain damage” kind of way.

Because, through no fault of my own, and totally against my will, I am becoming…an Expert In Rats. Believe me-I have fought this tooth and nail (no pun intended). But these people keep on foisting off all of this unwanted knowledge on me, and unfortunately it’s the kind of knowledge that really sticks with you.

I wasn’t even going to write about this subject at all, because deep down, I feel like I’ve been tainted by the stigma of having a known association with rodents. Like somehow, the fact that I have a rodent problem means that it’s really my own fault. Like somehow my lifestyle is so shameful that its cumulative effect on the world is to explode into an actual, physical, nirvana-like haven for rodents.

That’s not actually true, but part of me is strongly tempted to think that it might be. It probably comes from being a girl, since we are conditioned from the womb to feel personally responsible for the Entire Known Universe. (But that’s a different blog post.)

But seriously, I am wracking my brains and trying to figure out exactly what it is I’m doing that is inviting all of this extremely unwanted knowledge into my life so I can make it stop. It’s like when you’re a teenager, (speaking of how girls are socialized) and your mother warns you about dressing a certain way or acting a certain way, because you don’t want to give boys “the wrong message”. But see, here I’m kind of walking a fine line, because I want to remain open and friendly enough so that the bug guys will still come and deal with these rats for me, but not so friendly that they continue adding to my increasing store of rodent-related information. And finding that perfect balance is still apparently a mystery to me, much like the mystery of how the [CENSORED] are getting into our basement in the first place.

So anyway, I’m sure I will have much more to post on this subject later, because apparently this weekend somebody, and by “somebody” I mean, “my husband”, has to go down into the basement and clean up all the old, uh, we’ll just call them “presents”, so that the bug guy can come back again next week and see if there are any new “presents”, which he can then track to see if he can find out exactly where these evil beasts are coming from. And maybe by the end of next week I’ll have convinced my basement to stop wearing such slinky, low-cut, rodent-enticing outfits and trashy eye makeup, and I’ll have convinced the rats to stop acting like elementary school boys who show their affection for you by hitting you, or teasing you (or poo-ing in your basement). And then the bug guy can make some new best friends.

My Name Is Jenny, And I MUST Have Access To The Internet

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It’s a happy, happy day here in our household, because my Internet connection has finally been restored.

For the past couple of weeks our connection has grown increasingly worse, and I have grown increasingly more crazed.

As my husband has flitted from his office, to his various business-related travel destinations, to his various hotels, all with their perfectly functioning Internet connections, I don’t think he was really getting just how frustrated I was. When I told him last night that I was ready to throw my brand-new laptop-which I had just received a month ago for my birthday-out the window, that seemed to spur him into action.

He got online and set up an appointment for a technician to come to our house today (did I mention that his Internet connection was working just fine?) So I was starting to feel much better, until he shared the following observation with me.

“I wonder if we have rodents that are chewing through our lines?”

Then he said, “What are the chances of you going down to the basement to check that out?”

Have you ever been under the influence of an irrational belief so strong that, despite absolutely knowing that you are totally making this fear up, and despite never once seeing any shred of evidence that there is cause for this fear, it still powerfully controls your behavior?

I am that way about snakes. I am terrified of snakes and, despite all evidence to the contrary, I am CONVINCED that huge groups of snakes totally surround our house. There are certain places around our house where I will never go because I just KNOW that the snakes are waiting there to get me.

That information is important to this story, because in order to get to our basement you have to go outside, down the deck stairs, and across the backyard. There is no access from inside our house. So my husband was asking me to go outside, in the dark, past two of the places where the imaginary snakes live, into the basement, where he was pretty sure I would find REAL rats.

On the one hand, I suppose I could have been flattered that he thought I was brave enough to do this by myself. But I decided to respond with, “Are you insane?!”, with a little dash of, “Have you met me?!” thrown in to “kick it up a notch.”

I am happy to say that it was not necessary for me to go down to the basement last night, and even happier to say that when the technician was here he did not say one single word about rodents. And now our Internet connection is working perfectly.

Now, if I could just figure out who to call about those imaginary snakes…