Thank you, Mr Rat.

I wasn't going to post this, because primarily I was concerned that if I did, no-one would come around to dinner ever again.

In the interest of breaking the conspiracy of silence of grotty housekeepers everywhere (the silence that keeps us grotties from realising that half the population is at least as grotty as we are) I decided to be honest, however. I can only hope that the wardens don't read this and demand an immediate inspection of the vicarage.


We've been cooking up a storm at home this week - being broke always forces us to eat better, falling back on our kitchen resources and concentrating on producing the best possible food with the goods we have. We should pretend we are poor all the time. But, I digress.

Inspired by my domestic frenzy, Stompy decided to cook a date fudge slice. The result was beautiful and sat to cool on the bench. I went to bed early without doing my usual kitchen rounds, and didn't realise that the darned thing sat out on the bench all night... and when we got up in the morning, a delicate tracery of cocoa powder and icing sugar, spread from the top of the nibbled cake to up and down the wall, revealed that a rodent of uncertain and hopefully only mouselike dimensions had been enjoying the fruits of her labours.

Amidst squeals of "ewww" and "gross," we hurled the contaminated fudge in the bin, disinfected the bench top, baked a new batch of brownies, and then cruelly baited a mouse trap with a piece of the new brownie (since the rodent clearly had a taste for it), and left it on the bench top overnight.


Last night, just after midnight, I was prowling up and down the hallway with a heavy and sleepless Tom squirming in my arms, when I heard a clatter from the kitchen. It was either Toxic Teen raiding the kitchen... or the mouse! I put Tom in his cot, stood outside the closed kitchen door, and listened, afraid to open it. If the mouse had been caught, then I had the moral obligation to dispose of its probably still-twitching body. I could pretend I hadn't heard a thing and then go back to bed... but my scruples about letting Clarebear discover the mouse carnage got the better of me, and I opened the door and turned on the light.

The mousetrap had been set off, indeed. And there, scuttling across the top of the stove, glaring at me as it made for the shadows, was a grey, ghastly, gigantic RAT.

I turned off the light, slammed the door and stared wide eyed into the darkness. My dilemma had now increased. Should I open the door again and see where the wretched thing with its fat, sleek body had gone? Should I try to whack it with a broom and risk it tearing up my leg and biting my chin or something? Should I do what I felt inclined to do, stamp up and down and shriek and shudder and make gibberish noises?


I gathered myself and instead did what any sane person would do, and I tiptoed down to our bedroom, mindful of Beloved's tired state as he lay there snoring gently, and bellowed, "THERE'S A GIANT RAT IN THE KITCHEN!!!!"

To his credit Beloved didn't curse (much), but got up, surveyed the useless mousetrap and the resultant blood smear on the wall (more shuddering and gibberish ensued from me as I thought about how maybe his whiskers had been ripped out) and set a rat trap after cleaning off the bench, baiting it with yet more brownie. We retired to bed, where my mind was otherwise occupied by the ever wakeful Tom, who clearly had heard the call of Mr Rat and wanted to get up and play with it.

The next morning, the rat had been back and demolished the rest of the brownie on the mousetrap (which Beloved had not removed, but which I could not criticise him for after I had shrieked him out of his slumber at midnight) but the rat trap was untouched. Clever Mr Rat. By the time I got out of bed, Beloved had bleached everything and the kitchen was shining like a new pin.

Except for the pantry.

We have a wonderful pantry, in our old farm-style kitchen. Wall to wall shelving, and just enough room for our huge fridge. While the rest of my home has been gradually becoming uncluttered, however, the pantry has been one of those areas where sometimes I just have to close the door. It's not that it's been dirty, it's just that there's been so much stuff in there that I wouldn't have any idea just what sort of state it was in, really. And the cluttered shelves have just sat there in their grimly disorganised sort of way, chastising me every time I went to get the milk.

Well, Mr Rat had decided for me that this situation had to be remedied. The traps weren't working, as he was clearly a superior type of smarty-rat, and I needed to make sure that there wasn't anything in there making him feel that it was worth risking life, limb and whiskers to continue to have ratty raves in my kitchen at night. I hardly dared entertain the fear that perhaps it was a Mrs Rat, with the attendant equally sleepless Baby Rats keeping her up all night behind the flour bin. (Shudder, gibber.)

I girded my loins, sent Tom to daycare for the day, and set to with a bucket of hot soapy water, garbage bags and grim determination.

There was no evidence of a Ratty Residence, much to my relief, but I did find a half open packet of dried noodles that I swear has followed me around from the last four house moves, never being touched. I also found four half opened packets of linguine (and all my shopping trips of the past twelve months where I've asked Beloved, "how are we for long pasta?" flashed into my mind), no fewer than six tins of pineapple (we never eat tinned pineapple), five tins of beetroot (although to be fair, two of the tins of baby beets are for a salad I'd planned for tonight), and packets of half used spices that I remember buying when Toxic Teen was in nappies that I would never dream of using but for some reason had left to sit as some kind of archaeological record at the back of the spice rack.

We also have probably the largest unintentional collection of food dyes, hundreds-and-thousands, cachous and writing icing tubes in the Southern Hemisphere, thanks to my immutable believe that We Don't Have Any Of Those So We'd Better Pick Some Up.

I threw out everything that had been opened and not sealed in a container, including the open packets of linguine (so now I know we're all out of long pasta!) and cleaned out every corner, nook and cranny.

Once I had finished (see the results below), I took that big black plastic rubbish bag out to the bin, and, having forgotten Mr Rat and having rendered my pantry shudder-proof, the weight off my shoulders was literal and figurative. Now I want to go and bake, just for the novelty of not having to scrabble for a single thing. I am also able to start a pantry inventory, and I know that if we ran out of money, I could feed the family for a week out of what I have in there right now, as long as they were in the mood for pineapple.

I've not been able to go out for the bike ride I wanted to do today, but I've got a horrible job done, and I have Mr Rat to thank for it. If you'd like to come and receive your reward, Mr Rat, I've got a piece of brownie laced with ratsak with your name on it....

 

In which I pretend to be Good At Stuff

Today I packed away all the Christmas stuff (a few days late, but Epiphany came at an awkward time).

For the first ten years or so of married life, my "clearing up after Christmas" routine has consisted of hurling everything into one of those striped carry bags, chucking it in the shed without looking, and hoping for the best. This has of course led to my collection of Christmas angels being chipped and de-winged, and spiders making a home in my nativity scenes. Not good. I also had to buy new Christmas stuff each year to replace the unloved ruined stuff.

So, two years ago, I was inspired by one of those OCD cleaning blogs I torture myself with to Do Things Differently.

I went out and bought myself a few packets of tissue paper, I kept the little gift baggies that people are increasingly using rather than wrapping things, and I kept all of the boxes that things came in. I also bought a huge bin that everything would fit in. I wrapped, packed, padded and folded everything up, and it all fitted in the big bin, and with a smug sigh, I popped it in its new spider free home into the shed. This year when it came time to put up the Christmas decorations, out came the bin, and we all had fun unwrapping and decorating, and everything was in pristine condition. All the lights were fine, and nothing was broken. It was revolutionary!

The only thing that didn't work was those little chains of plasticky stuff with bells on. They always tangle and this year was no exception. So I got smart when I packed away today. I grabbed sturdy Christmas cards, and I wrapped those nasty chains around the cards, and popped them in a Christmas stocking for storage. So next year I will report whether or not it worked and those pesky chains were tangle free.



Oh, and here is the Christmas star we used this year. Clare made it for us.

Welcome back!

Sometimes changes come in sharp tremors that shake you and leave you in no doubt that your life has altered irrevocably. Sometimes it creeps up on you, and one morning you wake up and realise that they way you look at the world when you shake open your bedroom curtains is vastly different from how you looked at it a year ago.

I've had changes of both types over the last year. Major Tom's arrival in April was one of the first, and marked a change in some large and prosaic ways - a year's maternity leave, an alteration of our lifetime expectations, a whole new child and a boy at that! - and in some less tangible ways. Major Tom completed us in a way we didn't know we needed to be completed. From the moment I knew he was coming, I realised I had to readjust. Career, family, hopes, money - it was all going to have to be totally overhauled. Okay.

The second type of change has surprised me. It took the Night of the Great Spew to make me realise just how much I have changed.

Saturday was a harbinger of what was to come. On the way to Wangaratta, Clarebear vomitted and I had to turn around and bring her home. Because I hadn't got far, I set out again, only to have Major Tom vomit in short order, stymying our trip completely. Then, nothing. The calm before the storm. Sunday morning Clarebear was vomitting again, and vomitted and vomitted... all day. By dinner time both Beloved and I were feeling queasy, and by bedtime, he and I and Gennabug were all vomitting. Then ensued a night which saw encore performances from Isobug and Toxic Teen (who is really getting too old and mellow for that label).

This morning I awoke to find that Isobug and Gennabug had both missed their buckets in their bedrooms, and Isobug in the loungeroom also, and that the bathroom was a special kind of hideous carnage. Despite my own delicate state, I hastened to clear away all the evidence so that the house was smelling of bleach and fresh air and not some kind of third world latrine.

We rested most of the day, with me puttering around after the family, fixing toast, mixing hydration solution, doling out icy poles and resting a maternal hand on somewhat febrile brows. Beloved slept for much of the day. I spent the afternoon getting some tedious jobs done that have been shrieking at me for weeks - sweeping cobwebs out of the back entrance way, wiping out the cupboards under the sink, picking up bits of debris out of the back yard, sorting out the kids' shoe cupboards. The children kept me company in between their naps.

The only remotely resentful moment I had was after feeding Major Tom at 6pm, I came out to find that the planned meal of baked beans on toast (we had barely the stomach for even that) was still in its can/packet, and that Beloved had fallen asleep (again) on the chair and everyone was waiting for me to get it for them. I sighed a little, but then got on with it, and then tidied up afterwards.

This is hardly some kind of amazing feat of motherhood, is it? But for me, such a day, after such a night, is a major turning point for me. Last week I lamented to my sister that I was missing something, that whatever it was that enabled other people to cope and be good and reliable and tidy and organised, I was clearly missing it. I was basically deficient.

And yet, after today, I'm not. And tomorrow I wake up knowing that I'm not, and I can open the curtains and look out on a day that will be full of me being just fine and capable.

Brief thoughts for the day? My new favourite blog is Our Red House. The best thing I have done this month is start up a Home Control Journal. The funniest moment has been laughing about The Worst Vomit You Have Ever Done over lunch today. And tomorrow Gennabug has her orientation day for highschool....

Pic of the day:

When I got home from buying up my Sick Food (potato chips, Coke and Tic-Tacs) there was a little noisy miner bird chick sitting outside the church door, as if waiting for sanctuary. Its mother was swooping down and depositing food in its wide open mouth. I took a snap of it and she was flapping and shrieking at me. I called for Beloved to ask him what we should do, and he told me to leave it. It was gone an hour later. Hopefully not into Mungo's stomach.