The Mafia came over yesterday to carboload. It was carboloading for the sake of carboloading, not because we're training for an athletic event, or working toward any kind of nutritional goal. On occasion, we pretend we're Eskimos. Mainly because we like Eskimos, but also because we get to establish an extra layer of flesh for the upcoming winter months, concocted of a delicious champagne and croissant base.
One thing you will notice upon entering my apartment is the aproximately thirty two mouse traps set up on the floor. Call me the kid with the dirty fingernails in elementary school, but having thirty two mouse traps in your apartment is awkward and embarrassing. I might as well have a jar of AIDS sitting on my coffee table, next to the remote. The Mafia, as always, are polite, pretending my apartment is the Guggenheim, and the traps, an art installation. But, for all I know, they all went home, vomited, and then three-way called each other and said, "God, she might as well have had a jar of AIDS sitting on her coffee table, next to the remote."
Nevertheless, as we guzzled prosecco, and rolled around in muffins, I knew the dirty truth. The mice, discovered in August, had not left yet. My situation with rodents was not a severe as Ex-Page's, but nevertheless grim, and disgusting. They were still running amok, and they liked making themselves known particularly while I watch The Bachelor.
Dealing with New York City mice was not my first run-in with unwanted rodents. In the eighties, my parents believed they were farmers, even though we didn't live on a farm, and we got our eggs from Quik Mart while my dad filled up the station wagon with gas.
The fact that we lived in the middle of nowhere helped along their delusion. My dad began to buy things like hoes of the garden variety and wheelbarrows and compost and pete moss. My mom measured our growth against the sunflowers. They planted things that we ate for dinner. My brother and I were forced to shuck corn in the garage, like Laura Ingalls and her blind sister Mary. I began to suspect that my parents had re-read The Grapes of Wrath by a campfire one evening, and decided it was a great idea. The Depression was such a good experience!
The summers as I remember them were fantastically hot. Realistically, it couldn't have been more than 75 degrees, but my pale Polish body was unaccustomed to light and heat. I would drip sweat, and fantasize about when it would snow again, so I could wear long underwear and avoid the outdoors.
On a particularly blistering day, my mother decided it was time to start up a sixth herb garden, because we might starve if we didn't have access to more rosemary and basil.
Nevermind that Wegmans was but a short car ride away where you could buy rosemary in a jar and avoid direct sunlight. It was much more adventurous to plant your own rosemary, and involve children in the process.
As my mom mentally plotted out her herbs, sweat poured down my face, I could feel the SPF 57 liberally applied ten minutes earlier melting away. I just knew my mother loved her herbs more than she loved me. Why else would she torture me like this? In another life, she would serve as an interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, but in this one, she birthed children and then made them plant rosemary. I desperately wanted to call my grandparents and inform them of this grave injustice and have them wisk me away in their minivan and take me to Dairy Queen. But alas, they were embarking upon their eleventh trip to Pennsylvania Dutch country to buy more apple butter and no face dolls, leaving me to put up with my own parents and their farming ways. I just knew that if my grandma was here, she'd call me in the house, and lovingly feed me hot chocolate and pierogis.
Instead, I was instructed to go get a bag of pete moss from the shed.
As I staggered across the lawn, I couldn't quite figure out when exactly Buffalo started having the same kind of weather as Africa. I made a mental note to myself that I never wanted to expose my own children to anything horrible like a shed or a riding lawn mower for that matter. Inside the shed, I shifted the bag of pete moss to get a good grip. I weighed eighty pounds, and the bag weighed eighty pounds, what could possibly go wrong? As I attempted to lift the bag, a tiny pink mole appeared, stared at me, and then crawled out. I screamed so loud my parents thought I had stabbed myself with a rake.
Most moms would realize a mole crawling out of a bag of pete moss was a horrible thing for an eight year old to witness. Most moms would feel guilty about it, and then go buy the eight year old an American Girl doll.
My mother re-assigned me to another duty in the garden. Weeding.
My brothers got to weed when they drove the riding lawn mower into the creek. Weeding was a punishment for them. For me, it was a consolation prize. Where the image of the mole lurking could play over and over again in my head.
As I pulled weeds, the sun beating down, I might have hummed a Negro spiritual, I can't quite remember. I do know I had an epiphany. It was my Scarlett O'Hara moment, but instead of fashioning myself a hoop skirt out of curtains while running around Atlanta, I vowed to move to a city as soon as I could, so i would never have to deal with rodents crawling out of unexpected places.
The exterminator comes tomorrow.
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