slickit cowering timorous beasties
Sep. 10th, 2010 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanI just moved the mouse to the left-hand side of the keyboard, because I was developing mouse elbow on the right side. I have very little ambidexterity, but I can use a mouse with either hand.
This does not mean that I have been dinking around on the internet when I should have been working on my book. Rather, it means that I've been cutting and pasting and opening and closing files and making mad furious notes to myself. It's hard to say where I am. There are files numbered up to 21 with things rather like chapters in them, but 18 is still requiring a lot of work, as I keep thinking, "Oh, no, wait, that has to happen before anything in Chapter 19," and then find that for various reasons, whatever it is can't really happen before Chapter 18. I have just decided to sacrifice two chapters I really like, in one of which Arry visits the market town associated with Heathwill Library and goes into a bookstore, and in the other of which both she and Ruth go into town to clandestinely mail some letters. Although, come to think of it, the letters have got to be mailed. Huh. Well, we'll see. The first trip is dead as a doornail, anyway.
Actual literal mice have also made themselves known of late. We had a mouse, at least one, in August. I hauled out the live trap, though it hadn't caught anything ever despite having been left temptingly around with peanut butter and crackers in it a half-dozen times before. I was charging from the front of the house to the back, on my way downstairs so we could all go have dinner at my mom's, when a mouse shot across from under the library radiator, where it was perfectly safe, and behind the filing cabinet the printer sits on. I heard a distinct hollow metallic bonging. I thought the mouse had bounced off the trap in its hurry, but then I heard faint scrabblings. It had run right into the trap. If I had been thinking, I'd have taken the trap along and let the mouse go around my mother's place; she lives in a modest wildlife preserve. I just thought, however, that it would have plenty to eat while I was gone. We ended up taking it to a local park, but I don't think, for various reasons, I want to repeat the experience.
When we got home, I decided to re-bait the trap -- the original bait having been tipped out with the mouse, in case it needed fortifying after its ordeal. I put the trap down in a convenient spot and put some peanut butter on a cracker. As I approached the trap to open it, a little mousy nose full of whiskers poked itself out of one of the air holes. The trap has two flexible metal ramps that mice can bend down with their weight to get in, but that then spring back into place; apparently mice can't figure out how to swing from the edges and make the ramps come down again. I suppose this second mouse was hiding under one of those ramps and did not care for the look of the park. I took the trap outside and let the mouse out in the back yard. It was more than ready to go, making a mighty leap of at least six feet.
A few days later I saw a very small, very dark mouse making abortive attempts to run in front of me so as to get out of my office; I was stomping around and the mouse was unhappy with this. A few days after that, David told me there was a dead mouse on the upstairs landing. When I got out there to clean it up, Aristophanes was tossing it into the air. I don't know if he came out of retirement to kill it or just wanted to play with the corpse. It was a dark little mouse like the one I'd scared. We haven't had any more on the second floor, but Arwen left Lydy a still quite good one, with a lot of spring in it, on the floor of her bedroom, just the day before yesterday.
I have missed two weeks of hiking, one because I could not make the schedule work and another because of a bout of vague but annoying intestinal malaise. I associate it with the lovely tofu dish I had at Peninsula when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pecunium was in town. But such associations can always be coincidental. My symptoms cleared up right on the one-week mark, which could mean it was a mild virus. Anyway, I have high hopes for getting to Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge with Raphael next week.
Eric and I have made spring rolls (well, he made them; I fetched things) and read the Small Change series together. David and I have gone to see his mother and also discussed my new camera, which I still feel must be put off until I get paid for this book, if it ever is a book.
Briefly, looking to the outside world, I ask, How is the Ground Zero Mosque like the Holy Roman Empire? I am very pleased that a federal court declared DADT to be unconstitutional. And I hope people in San Bruno will be able to go home soon, if they have homes to go to. I always thought natural gas was insane, even though it's almost mandatory in Minnesota and we have gas stoves and furnaces ourselves.
In the meantime, I have to cut and paste some more bits together and see if they will walk like a chapter.
My best to you guys.
Pamela
This does not mean that I have been dinking around on the internet when I should have been working on my book. Rather, it means that I've been cutting and pasting and opening and closing files and making mad furious notes to myself. It's hard to say where I am. There are files numbered up to 21 with things rather like chapters in them, but 18 is still requiring a lot of work, as I keep thinking, "Oh, no, wait, that has to happen before anything in Chapter 19," and then find that for various reasons, whatever it is can't really happen before Chapter 18. I have just decided to sacrifice two chapters I really like, in one of which Arry visits the market town associated with Heathwill Library and goes into a bookstore, and in the other of which both she and Ruth go into town to clandestinely mail some letters. Although, come to think of it, the letters have got to be mailed. Huh. Well, we'll see. The first trip is dead as a doornail, anyway.
Actual literal mice have also made themselves known of late. We had a mouse, at least one, in August. I hauled out the live trap, though it hadn't caught anything ever despite having been left temptingly around with peanut butter and crackers in it a half-dozen times before. I was charging from the front of the house to the back, on my way downstairs so we could all go have dinner at my mom's, when a mouse shot across from under the library radiator, where it was perfectly safe, and behind the filing cabinet the printer sits on. I heard a distinct hollow metallic bonging. I thought the mouse had bounced off the trap in its hurry, but then I heard faint scrabblings. It had run right into the trap. If I had been thinking, I'd have taken the trap along and let the mouse go around my mother's place; she lives in a modest wildlife preserve. I just thought, however, that it would have plenty to eat while I was gone. We ended up taking it to a local park, but I don't think, for various reasons, I want to repeat the experience.
When we got home, I decided to re-bait the trap -- the original bait having been tipped out with the mouse, in case it needed fortifying after its ordeal. I put the trap down in a convenient spot and put some peanut butter on a cracker. As I approached the trap to open it, a little mousy nose full of whiskers poked itself out of one of the air holes. The trap has two flexible metal ramps that mice can bend down with their weight to get in, but that then spring back into place; apparently mice can't figure out how to swing from the edges and make the ramps come down again. I suppose this second mouse was hiding under one of those ramps and did not care for the look of the park. I took the trap outside and let the mouse out in the back yard. It was more than ready to go, making a mighty leap of at least six feet.
A few days later I saw a very small, very dark mouse making abortive attempts to run in front of me so as to get out of my office; I was stomping around and the mouse was unhappy with this. A few days after that, David told me there was a dead mouse on the upstairs landing. When I got out there to clean it up, Aristophanes was tossing it into the air. I don't know if he came out of retirement to kill it or just wanted to play with the corpse. It was a dark little mouse like the one I'd scared. We haven't had any more on the second floor, but Arwen left Lydy a still quite good one, with a lot of spring in it, on the floor of her bedroom, just the day before yesterday.
I have missed two weeks of hiking, one because I could not make the schedule work and another because of a bout of vague but annoying intestinal malaise. I associate it with the lovely tofu dish I had at Peninsula when
pecunium was in town. But such associations can always be coincidental. My symptoms cleared up right on the one-week mark, which could mean it was a mild virus. Anyway, I have high hopes for getting to Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge with Raphael next week.Eric and I have made spring rolls (well, he made them; I fetched things) and read the Small Change series together. David and I have gone to see his mother and also discussed my new camera, which I still feel must be put off until I get paid for this book, if it ever is a book.
Briefly, looking to the outside world, I ask, How is the Ground Zero Mosque like the Holy Roman Empire? I am very pleased that a federal court declared DADT to be unconstitutional. And I hope people in San Bruno will be able to go home soon, if they have homes to go to. I always thought natural gas was insane, even though it's almost mandatory in Minnesota and we have gas stoves and furnaces ourselves.
In the meantime, I have to cut and paste some more bits together and see if they will walk like a chapter.
My best to you guys.
Pamela
