Halloween challenged

I am just taking a moment to be grateful this morning.... grateful that the 14-year-old, as a freshman in high school now, no longer must have a Halloween costume.

I know, I know. Some of you are gasping for breath, unable to believe that there exists, right here on earth as your fellow human, a person who despises having to generate an idea for a child's Halloween costume, let alone find the time to create it from scratch. While I have some very good friends whom I admire immensely for their ability to produce an incredible, homemade, imaginative Halloween costume, I, myself, always depended on Target.

Therefore I am grateful this morning for my older son's status as a freshman in high school, exempt from all activities which prove his mother Halloween costume-challenged, and a younger son who is old and creative enough to produce his own homemade Halloween costume.

This year the 12-year-old is a "Cereal Killer." He is carrying a cereal box (a cereal which had no high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors or hydrogenated oils, mind you) with a fake knife plunged into it and fake blood spurting out of it. I could never have come up with that idea.

Though I am inept at Halloween costume creation, I can carve, as you can see, a mean pumpkin (assuming someone creative has already laid out the pattern for me on paper). I also do some pretty good iced Christmas cookies....

Would you, could you with a mouse?

We have stink bugs. Who doesn't? Before I found out that the unfortunate and grotesque result of two stink bugs' mating was 400 more stink bugs and that their only predators are my husband and I, I used to throw them delicately outside where they belong, as I do for other bugs I find within the confines of my house. Yup, I'm a pacificist when it comes to anything living in my house, big, scary spiders and those disgusting centipedes, of course, excepted. They die. I'm not really clear as to why God created those sorts of creepy crawly things that seem to serve no purpose except to give humans the heebie jeebies. Or maybe that IS the purpose. Perhaps it's part of punishment of the human race for Eve's greed in eating the apple? Being subjected to creepy crawly creatures?

I've digressed, haven't I?

My point is that when, 2 nights ago, the 12-year-old pounced down the stairs and, relatively calmly, informed me: "um, mom. There's kinda sort of a mouse in your bathroom."

After clearing up that he wasn't kidding and that there was, indeed, a mouse in the bathroom, trapped into a corner by a candle, ostensibly, I quickly yelled to the husband: "we are NOT going to kill him." See? I had already assigned the little guy a gender.

Chaos followed.

I was assigned to procure a pot and its top while the husband raced to the garage to put on his work gloves in case the little guy bit him in our best efforts to free him. The boys sped upstairs to get a glimpse of the action.

We arrived in the bathroom, closed the door to make escape more difficult, and carefully removed the candle to reveal a quivering, good size mouse in the corner, wondering what in the world he had gotten himself into.

"I'm not touching him," the husband proclaimed.

"Oh, fine," I said. "Give me your gloves." When I tried to grab him, though, he moved.... and he moved VERY quickly... into the room with the potty in it. The boys followed, the husband followed, and I followed. We were all chasing this little tiny mouse around the master bathroom.

"Cut it out!" the husband demanded, stressed out already by the ordeal. "I don't need you boys in the way!"

I laughed, but the husband wasn't yet seeing the humor in the situation.

He blockaded himself inside the potty room with the door closed... just him and the mouse.

A loud and chaotic struggle ensued, audible but not visible, with the husband muttering various things to himself or no one in particular... "F_ING MOUSE!!" Clanging of the pot could be heard clearly. It sounded like world war three in the tiny room behind closed doors. At one point the request for a tall trash can in lieu of the pot was made.

Then... a silent moment.

"Did you get him?" I asked.

"Kind of," answered the husband.

"You didn't hurt him, did you? What do you mean kind of?"

"Well, I've got him under the trash can but don't know how to get him IN."

Finally, after a lot more noise and perserverance, the husband triumphed. He emerged from the little room, sweat covered and holding the tall trash can.

"Athletic little guy, geez," he observed.

We unceremoniously replaced him outdoors, as far away from the house as we could (as if that will prevent his visiting again...)

Now it's back to stink bug eradication around here...