And Poof! I Turned Into An Old Lady

I'm not one of those people who fret about getting older. The way I see it, age is a state of mind, so I'm only 22, 23 tops. I'm not going to be "old" for a long time. (Especially if I continue this state of mind business. I was 19 for 8 years!)

Apparently I'm cashing in my Old Broad chip sooner than I thought.

This week I opened my mouth and an eighty year old woman fell out. It was scary. Especially since I don't know what the hell happened. It literally changed overnight. I don’t know the exact process. Was there some sort of youth exchange program that I wasn’t aware of? Because I don’t even remember filling out the application to be a sponsor for this program  and I don't think I donated my body to science. Maybe I fell into the Twilight Zone?

Maybe you think that I am over exaggerating. (And frankly, I am hurt. Would I EVER exaggerate anything? I’m not that kind of girl…oh, who am I kidding? Of course I am.) This time though, I’m serious. It’s not even an isolated incident that is making me feel like this has come to pass, but rather a series of events. A very unfortunate series of events sadly.

It all started the other day. In an effort to feel health conscious (A.K.A. like I give a crap about exercising), I walk with co-workers during our fifteen minute breaks. It's good for the circulation and the whole "don't strangle your office mates" policy that most companies have in place. But I digress.

So, we are walking and this car comes whipping around the corner on a road that has a 15 mile per hour speed limit. I hold my hand up, and in my best old lady impression, I yell at the driver to "Slow Down!". 

Oh. My. God. I just turned into my grandmother. I'm not even old enough to qualify for this club. I'm only 37. I haven't even hot the big four-oh yet. Well, it's been a chaotic week. Maybe it was just an oversight. A slight tremor in the fabric of the space time continuum. Yeah, that's it.

Except that's not it. It gets worse.

So I'm doing these online college classes in a whole effort to find new things to hold over my kid's heads. ("I went to college online, working 40 hours a week, while raising 4 kids and I did it barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways!") One of the components of online classes is discussion posts, designed to be the equivalent of verbal interaction between classmates. And I found my inner old lady again. This time she has disguised herself as an English teacher from 1955.

Now, I know that kids have grown up in this technological age and that texting is a huge part of their lives, but the written word still EXISTS, right? I mean, we haven't gone backwards in time to the caveman era where grunting was an acceptable form of communication, I'm fairly sure. (Although occasionally my husband makes me wonder.) Written expression is still relevant kids. Punctuation, spelling, grammar....these are all still integral parts of communicating. Especially spelling. We live in an age where spell check is an actual available tool and still I'm seeing a lot of "Your a good person" and "There shirt is purple". It's down right cringe-worthy. Now if you misspell obsequious, I might cut you some slack, but you should have mastered you're and their by middle school at least.

Now that I think about it, the signs that I was channeling my inner crotchety old lady have been there for longer than just this year. Like the time I thought it was appalling that they had the word hell in a song 25 times and it was played on the regular radio that my kids could be listening to right now! (Gasp!) Or any time that I've started a sentence with "You know what's wrong with kids these days?" (Spoiler alert: It's a sense of entitlement and not being spanked anymore.) 

I guess I'll just have to embrace it. After all, back in my day, women didn't worry so much about things like this. They just strapped their babies on their back and continued making meatloaf while simultaneously vacuuming and ironing their aprons. And this was barefoot and pregnant and in the days when women weren't given the right..........

What? No memes either?

Grouse About That Mouse in My House

We have a mouse in the house. It happens every so often and every time it does, it makes me feel dirty. I have a strong compulsion to scrub the kitchen down with a combination of bleach and holy water. Be gone thy demon rodent from thine house! (Insert holy Latin mumbo jumbo here.)

I know that it shouldn’t bother me. I’ve heard stories from other people who’ve had a mouse, caught it, and moved on with their lives. Can you imagine? Just went about their normal daily lives without any sort of therapy or alcoholic absolution. This is mind boggling. Personally, I think I might need severe chocolate therapy followed by copious amounts of binge watching Netflix. Perhaps I would have the chance to go on with my life after catching this mouse if it wasn’t the animal equivalent of a ninja.

I’m not even kidding.

No matter where I seem to place the trap, it manages to dance around it and escape unscathed. After a week of trying to catch the savviest mouse I’ve ever encountered, the trap broke. So I ask my husband to get some more. I ask for 73. I tell him that I want them strategically placed around the entire kitchen. I want the kitchen to look the Mexican standoff in the movie “The Three Amigos”. He returns from the store with two. TWO!?!? Listen dear, I don’t think you truly understand the gravity of the situation. There’s a mouse in the house. He needs to NOT be in the house. He needs to not be on this planet. When it comes to spiders, bugs, and mice in my house, I turn into Al Pacino in any mafia movie.

“I want him dead. I want his family dead. I want his friends dead. I want his existence erased from the records of history. I want his house burned down, razed, and converted into luxury condos.” (Unless his house is my house, then it’s fine, but the mouse still needs cement shoes.) I say all this while sitting in some little Italian dive restaurant, bib over my girth, twirling spaghetti onto a fork with two goons on either side of me. I’ll call them Sal and Big Tommy. “Find him and bring his head to me on a platter!” (I just had a picture in my head of a huge silver platter and in the middle this tiny little mouse head.)

So my husband reads the directions and tells me that we only need a pea sized dab of peanut butter on the trap. I think he (pointedly) tells me this as he has seen the quarter sized blob I usually slap on there. “Sure, whatever, just catch the ba*tard.” I reply.

We go to bed that night and I am buoyed by the thought of dead mouse, finally! (It’s much easier to be happy about this when your wonderful spouse leaves for work before you do and can do mouse removal without you having to view the evidence. I want him dead but I don’t want to get my hands dirty, just like all good mafia bosses.)

I shower, dress, and go to the kitchen, ready to have a jubilant day now that I have Godfathered the little pest issue. I check the traps and see no mouse (thank goodness) and also, no sign of the peanut butter. Hmmm. Well, maybe the hubs took care of it Big Tommy style.

So I send him a quick message. “The peanut butter was gone from both traps. Either we caught something and you took care of it or it's a wily f**ker!”

He didn’t take care of it.

So needless to say, I’m now convinced that the Tom & Jerry cartoons were not fictional and that the great-great-grandson of the original mouse is now hanging out in our humble abode. If he’s out there, I want him to hear what I have to say:

Listen up, punk, mi casa is definitely not su casa! Drag it. Vamoose. Scoot. Or I’m going to have to call in Big Tommy and the hired guns.

Now all youse others get outta here and fuhgeddaboutit.

I think ours might be less animated but related none the less.