There’s a mouse in the…well, office, actually…

We’ve had some excitement in the office recently in the form of an eensy-weensy rodent.

Yes, we have a mouse.

We discovered him/her/it on the 19^th, when a colleague, thinking she was losing her mind, opened up the bottom drawer to a currently unoccupied desk after hearing noises coming from that area for several days.

Cue much shrieking.

After the theatrics, which we figured would have frightened said rodent away, we started to clean out the desk drawer, removing the vaguest beginnings of a nest, amongst other items not suitable for mouse bedding. Being the Resident Rodent Expert, I was doing most of the stuff-shifting, and was being very gentle and careful in case the mouse hadn’t scurried away out the back of the drawer. Then, suddenly, there was a pair of tiny ears and a set of tiny eyes looking up at me in terror.

“Oh, hello, pumpkin! You are still here!” I cooed at the wee, quivering beastie.

The wee, quivering beastie continued to quiver.

While I looked around for a suitable container, the rest of the office got all squeamish, which only upset my poor mouse friend more. I heard one colleague say something akin to, "Just leave it with Elizabeth, she's the fricken' Pied Piper," while another tried to shoo people away saying, "Just let Elizabeth do her thing," but their curiosity got the better of them. I was trying to work out the gentlest way to scoop my new pal into a pen cup when he/her/it had a sudden moment of bravery and hopped out of the drawer and away behind the cubicle wall, gone forever.

I was crushed. I wanted to take him/her/it somewhere suitable outside...after a decent amount of fussing and clucking over him/her/it, obviously. I love me a little squeaker!

I baited the little critter with paper towels and peanuts before I left for the day with the intention of trying again the next morning, a plan which ultimately failed. I tried again over the weekend, still nothing.

The next week passed, and we had the prolonged holiday weekend, and I got into the office again on Monday and as I was settling in...I heard a little noise. Coming from my bottom desk drawer. Where my snacks live.

No mouse.

But he/she/it had been there and had themselves a holiday feast.

 

Lookit those wittle teef marks!!! ::hearteyes::

Alas, a mouse in the office is not ideal, so I IM'd my manager:

"So our little furry friend returned. It got into some of my snacks over the break. While I personally don't begrudge the wee beastie a holiday feast, I realize that this is not an ideal situation, so we should probably inform the relevant property management people. Just maybe don't tell me about their chosen methods to rid us of said beastie, because I'll cry."

They're coming tomorrow with a humane trap for catch-and-release.

It's Thanksgiving

 Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate. Happy Thursday to those of you who don't.

And always remember: Woodstock was a cannibal! An adorable little cannibal!

And it's somehow November already?

 Yes, it's November. The middle of November. Thanksgiving (in the US) is next Thursday. T-1 Week an counting.

I've talked about holidays here before, I know. My family doesn't do the big 'everyone over to so-and-so's' get-togethers anymore. Sometimes I go to my aunt's for Thanksgiving. Sometimes I have it with my parents. This is a parents year. They're coming up and staying in a hotel. I'm not thrilled about the hotel part, considering current circumstances, but they didn't like the idea of staying with me, so...parents gonna parent, amirite? To be fair, my place is infinitesimal, but *I* offered to be the one sleeping on the air mattress! Oh well. I tried.

 PU1 and PU2 (that's Parental Unit #1 and Parental Unit #2, for those of you who don't call your parents weird things,) will arrive Wednesday evening and depart Saturday morning. They'll be with me during the daylight hours on Thursday and Friday. We'll eat. We'll chat. We'll sit in silence, staring at each other. Hooray?

 No, Thanksgiving won't be much different than normal.

 Christmas, though? Hoo, boy, is the wind blowing in a strange direction on that one. Well, not really the proper holiday--the Christmas Eve & Day holidays, those will be a half day of work and a three-day weekend of blissful solitude--but the One Christmas Thing I Love So Dearly has a completely different look this year.

We're doing the carol-singing party on Zoom.

 No, for real. We can't get together to sing, so we're doing it online. But it's not going to be a bunch of people trying to sing together over the internet. There's pre-recording involved. Before settling in to write this, I spent an hour and a half recording myself singing carols. I got through seven tonight. I did five last night. I'm only halfway through the list, and that's not counting the ones I may go back to to record a second part in a different vocal range.

 "So how exactly is this going to work?"

It's quite simple, really. My mom and the party hostess (they're BFFs from college,) have already recorded the two piano parts, and the party host has spliced those recordings magically together to form an accompaniment for the rest of us. A select handful of people have been invited to record themselves singing the carols, which the host will then compile into a marvelous digital choir.

MacGyver, eat your heart out.

 I mean, they could have chosen just not to have the party, but it means so much to so many people that they figured out a way to do it in spite of everything else that's going on. We'll still sing, it will just be on mute along with the digitally reconstructed choir. We won't get to pick out the carols as we go along, but the set list has a number of beautiful, lesser-known carols along with plenty of favorites, so that's all right. We've been instructed to have our favorite party food to hand so that we can "share" it with the group, show-and-tell style.

Yes, it's going to be different, all right.

But it's still going to happen.

Thank Your Veterans

 I'm writing this on Wednesday, 11/11/2020. Veteran's Day.

Both of my grandfathers served in WWII.

My maternal grandfather served in Korea.

My uncle served in Vietnam.

One of my best friends was nine years a Marine, and she did tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I am grateful for them all.

Thank your veterans. And that's an order.

::takes deep breaths::

Nothing I say will bring any sort of relief to any of us at the moment.

So I shan't say anything.