A Mouse in the House & Other Tidbits.

Yesterday we found a mouse in Katy's bag of dog food. Yuck. It was a scrappy looking mouse too. Perhaps it had been injured by the kitten/cat that has taken up residence under our back deck. We haven't seen the cat lately. I think Katy scared it off. Good thing too; it had been giving Katy the heebie-jeebies* every time she went outside.

That the mouse ended up in Katy's food is poetic, but I doubt Katy would have offered the mouse any sort of refuge status. Katy is a part time cat. She really is. She bats her toys around in the air while playing on her back - arches her back to stretch like a cat... I swear she purrs sometimes.

The mouse probably came in through the basement. In any case, I thought if there's one mouse inside, there are probably more, so we high tailed it to the Safeway close to our house. We chose to walk. It's not that far and the rainstorm that swept through left the area looking and smelling wonderful.

Today is garbage day so we put out the garbage last night before we left to get the mouse killer. Mr. Field Notes gathered up the weeds he had pulled and then collected all of the trash that blows into our yard. Living on a busy street means that we frequently have garbage in our yard - usually plastic bags, fast food containers, and scraps of paper. Once we found a beer can - which reminds me...

... that Katy found a half-full beer around the corner while we were walking her earlier this week. Before we knew what she had done, she grabbed it by putting her mouth completely around the top - like you would if you were trying to drink it while simultaneously showing off how capacious your mouth is. She was so incredibly goofy looking and had Newfed up the can so much that we couldn't really return it to the lady she lifted it from (someone who had set her beer down on the sidewalk while she was moving boxes into the house she was moving into). We were walking toward the campus recycling center so I figured we could just let her have the beer until we got there. So, there we were - two giggling people flanking a giant dog with a Tecate hanging out of her mouth.

Yeah - so back to the stuff that washes up on the shore that is our yard. Last night in addition to finding the usual trash, Mr. Field Notes also found a half-used package of blue construction paper. Seriously the best thing that has ever washed up in our yard!!! why am I so excited about this? Well, I have been meaning to make some more of my totally gorgeous handmade paper but lacked the supplies to make what I want to make - lavender colored paper with bits of lavender and lavender seeds embedded in it. I want all of it to be post-consumer recycled waste which means that if I want the paper to be colored purple, I need blue and red paper for the pulp. I can use the Netflix envelope flaps for the red and now I have the blue! Sweet - now I can make 100% post-consumer waste recycled handmade paper :-)

I have been making boxes out of cereal box type cardboard (post-consumer waste!) which I then cover with the paper I made out of junk mail and newspaper inserts. The beautiful boxes are nearly 100% post-consumer waste. The only parts that aren't recycled are the glitter I added to the paper to make it sparkle and the beads I use on the pull top.

* heebie-jeebies: Slang,. Uneasiness or nervousness; the jitters. [Coined by William De Beck (1890-1942), American cartoonist, in his comic strip Barney Google.]