Oh, just shoot me now.

Continuing what is obviously my best day ever, I have now managed to scratch the hell out of the bumper of my brand new car by scraping a low wall pulling out of a parking lot. It's not dented, thankfully, but I truly couldn't feel any worse right now. Most of the people who know me and read this blog know this already, but for anybody else who has stumbled in here, the current running tally of things that have gone wrong in the past two weeks in the Joopiter & Simon house:

1) Dead iPod (Simon)
2) Drowned computer now with fried motherboard (Simon)
3) Brand new glasses, worn for only a day, messed up by inattentive LensCrafter worker (Simon)
4) Scraped bumper of two month old car (Joopiter)
5) Invasion by Rodent Army (Simon & Joopiter)
6) Rodent Army builds outpost in bedroom (Joopiter)

As you can see, Simon is way ahead of me in the bad luck race. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to back up my hard drive and pray my television doesn't explode. Then I'm going to curl up and cry for a while, because I'm tired and I feel stupid and I don't have the money to fix my car but I'm going to anyway because I won't drive around with the blue & white badge of my own stupidity on my bumper and yes I'm fully aware of the situation on the Gulf Coast. Doesn't make my day any less sucky or make me feel any better.

I'd go to bed now, but, you know, mice and all.

Update, Part Quatre

It's been a couple of weeks since the last sighting, so one could forgive us for becoming a little complacent in our Rodent Watch. I, for one, have taken the lack of activity as a good sign, convincing myself that the box of poison pellets looked like it had been partially eaten and bracing myself for the inevitable discovery of Corpse Mouse. Surely we had thwarted the assault of the fearsome Mouse Army. All was good.

Right.

4:45 am. I'm awakened from a rather deep sleep. I rub my eyes trying to figure out why the hell I'm awake an hour and 15 minutes before my alarm goes off. I'm about to drift off to sleep when I hear something. A scratching sound that's coming from somewhere behind my bed. (Good place for the horror movie music to start. I'm really glad that I've seen enough of those "Emily Rose" trailers that they've lost their effect on me. Otherwise I'd be half way to Belize by now.) I sit up and listen again. Yeah, definitely scratching. I shut off my fan and turn on the light. Hmm. Scratching stopped. I wait for a couple of minutes. Nothing. Well, maybe it was the fan making the noise, I think to myself. Dust in the whoosy, a loose whatchamacallit. That could be making the noise. Yeah, that's it. I shut off the light again but leave the fan off. A minute later, scratch scratch scratch. Crap. I flick on the light again and sit up in bed. The scratching is definitely there and now definitely not bothered by sudden illumination. Great. My bed's not pushed up all the way to the wall, so I'm able to peer behind it down to the floor. Nothing out of the ordinary. I can see behind my nightstand on that side of the bed where the scratching seems to originate. Nothing. Maybe it's inside the wall? Or outside? Yeah, maybe it's outside! Our landlord spent a rather entertaining evening a couple of nights ago trying to get raccoons off the roof. Maybe they're on the front porch! Or on the roof near my window!

I get up and open the blinds, trying to get a look at the porch. Nothing there, although from my angle I can't see the furthest corners. The scratching persists. I look over to that corner of the room and notice that the box my fan came in is on the floor between my nightstand and the wall. Well, it's not coming from there... is it? On cue, scratch scratch scratch. Fuck. Whatever it is is definitely in my room and in that corner. It's now about 5:10 in the morning. This is way on the top of things I don't want to deal with before the sun rises. I look around the room and spot a garbage bag containing a bunch of stuff I rescued from my mother's attic before she moved and still haven't put away. Okay, good. I can use that garbage bag and shove the box into it, tie it up, throw it out, save the day, and get me some sleep. I'll be a hero because I Am Brave.

Chuckling at my ingenuity, I empty the boxes that were in the garbage bag and walk over to the box. I steel myself for the task at hand, open the bag wide, look in and....

FUCK! SPIDER! I AM NOT BRAVE I AM NOT BRAVE I AM NOT BRAVE!

I drop the bag. My room has now officially become the stuff of nightmares. I am not amused. I start stomping on the bag, trying to kill the spider while the scratching continues. The spider appears to be dead, but I'm not really in the frame of mind to use the bag anymore. I venture out into the kitchen to get another garbage bag and the tall, almost empty garbage can I have by my desk. I set myself up again to be The Hero again, put the garbage bag in the garbage can so I don't have to struggle with keeping the bag open, put the other bag with the hopefully dead carcass of the hell-spawn spider into the new bag, and...1...2...3...box into garbage bag! Tie it up, run out of the rooom, throw it on the porch and close the door. Phew. I smile to myself, thinking about how damn awesome I am and return to my room to the scene of battle to gloat triumphantly over my success.

I manage to get there just in time to see a tail curling back into the hole in the wall I've now exposed by throwing the box away.

Fan-fucking-tastic.