So many post ideas, so unable to sit up for that long yesterday

What would you like to hear about first? The dead mouse I found? Or my horror that pleats seem to be coming back into style?

I’ll get to those in a minute. But! Our house is on the market. We even have a yard sign. I had to tell my elderly neighbor that we are moving and she was very very sad. I knew that would happen so I waited until about five minutes before my realtor called to tell me to go ahead and put the sign up in the yard. The neighbor said “I thought I saw that woman carry that sign up to your porch but I thought if I ignored it it would go away.” See? Sad. I felt awful.

Yesterday we had a group of realtors come over to see the place and then a potential buyer. And I was SICK. I was up all night Monday night throwing up about every hour and was generally miserable and unable to sit up on Tuesday. The group of realtors insisted I sit on the couch and not worry about them but I thought I should be gone for the potential buyer so as soon as I saw the big fancy car parked out front I got in my car and drove around the block. I thought about going to the coffee shop but the thought of having to walk ALL THE WAY to the front door made me queasy so I parked across the street a few houses down and watched what was going on (and almost threw up into a Starbucks cup hastily emptied of its original contents onto the curb. Only then did I notice that the door of the house I was parked in front of was open. Awesome). Feeling much better today, thank goodness.

So the mouse! You may remember me mentioning a “dead thing smell” in our kitchen over the last month or so. It was a truly awful smell. Ryan-the-mouse-hunter checked all the glue traps we had in the cabinets but found nothing. Every time the realtor came over we had this candle that we burned to try and cover up the smell because “Great curb appeal! Two living areas! Smells like rotting flesh!” is not what I wanted on our listing. Anyway Sunday night I made pancakes for dinner and before I put the electric skillet back (when Ryan had already gone back to work) I stuck my head in the cabinet to see if I could find the smell.

DEAD MOUSE. ON A GLUE TRAP. RIGHT WHERE THE ELECTRIC SKILLET HAD BEEN AND ALSO ABOUT SIX INCHES FROM MY FACE. I ran all over the house looking for my phone, shrieking “EWW EWW EWW EWW!” Found my phone.

Me: “EEEEEEEECH BLARGH SHITSHITSHIT!!!!”

Ryan: “I’ll be home in five minutes.”

You would have thought he had bagged an elephant on a safari he was so proud. (He’s like the groundskeeper in Caddyshack when it comes to mice. One night last summer he came to bed at two in the morning and said “Little effer stood right in the middle of the kitchen counter and flipped me off.”) He seemed a little hurt that I couldn’t be happy for him.

Now for pleats! I went to Old Navy this weekend as part of a yearly tradition I call “I need a new pair of jeans even though actually shopping for them will make me hate myself, stop eating for a day or two, and then eat wild amounts of junk food for a week before settling into a more normal pattern.” They had tons of stuff on clearance, including some of the knee length denim shorts I’ve been looking for since everyone besides me started wearing them this spring. I found several nice pairs in my size. Only problem? They had PLEATS! A brief check of several other styles resulted in more pleats! What is going on? Didn’t we all agree that pleats are flattering on no woman, no matter what her size (and certainly not mine) like ten years ago? I looked around for the cast of 90210 because obviously I wasn’t in Old Navy, I was in 1994!! I do not understand.

Good news is they had great jeans for cheap cheap cheap and because they seem to have instituted a policy of vanity sizing I wear my old size again. Sweetheart Fit, you are my new bff.