Mice, Elephants, and Cars

I got home from a late PWCL meeting last Monday night, hung up my coat and purse in the entryway, and saw some movement on the floor out of the corner of my eye. It was dark in the entryway, as it was nighttime, so I couldn't immediately tell what it was. My first thought was that I had maybe kicked a toy or something but why was it still moving. Then realization set it. It was a MOUSE! I may seem calm, cool, and collected normally (or maybe not) but mice have the effect of turning me into an instant sissy. I immediately squeeled for Luis (I didn't want to wake up the kids but I was still paniced). I yelled and yelled for Luis some more. To his credit, he made it up to the entryway pretty quick.

When Luis got upstairs, he turned on the light. The mouse was writhing a bit, apparently from an injured limb. How was the mouse injured you may ask...apparently I stepped on him when I came in the house. Eeeewwww! Aaaaahhhhh! There's a pair of shoes I need to burn (have I mentioned I don't do mice?). Luis heroically got the dust pan, gathered up the injured rodent, and plopped it out on the deck in front of the cat.

Meanwhile, at Yaya and Papa Ron's house on Friday, a Play-Doh sculpture was created by a very talented artist: Papa Ron. Siena loves it. The elephant now resides at our house.

Luis turned 34 this week and we celebrated several times. We went out to dinner at Rogue's on his birthday (Wednesday) just as a family. Then we had a nice breakfast out with the Cruz family this morning. Nice that is except for the old lady sitting behind us in a horrible wig that kept telling us our kids were too loud. That of course motivated us to to rile the kids up to be louder.

Now that Luis is a year older, he had a momentary midlife crisis one evening and gave himself a faux hawk! What do you think? I think it suits him.

Yaya and Papa Ron came down to our part of town for dinner tonight. We had a great meal at el Tapatio with them. Now the kids are playing a little bit before bed. Here's Siena in the playroom. It looks to me to be a bit like Radiator Springs looked after Lightning tore it up. That's how they like it though.

The playroom was so messy that the race tracks had to move into Daddy's office. However, the race must continue.

Unrelated, I've mentioned my love of the podcast Never Not Funny on here before. One of the surprising things about a podcast is how much you get to know the regular hosts on there after listening to them an hour and a half each week, every week, year in and year out. Their point is to make the listeners laugh and they do that, every week. In addition though, they share their lives with the listeners to a degree that you almost feel like you know them. To that degree, when something tragic happens to one of them, the sadness I find myself feeling is so much more than any other Hollywood/TMZ story, the reason being that these folks are entertaining as themselves, not as playing some character.

This week in Vancouver, Andrew Koenig took his own life. Most probably know Andrew as the actor who played "Boner" on Growing Pains. He is also the son of Chekov of Star Trek fame. I know Andrew as the "fourth chair" and camera man on Never Not Funny. He is the brother-in-law of the host, Jimmy Pardo, and always came across as funny and an all-round good guy. Check out the nice little tribute page at www.aspecialthing.com. Its short and sweet and is a fitting tribute to a good guy.