A Mouse?

I am also amazed by how my mind can trick me into conjuring up things which have no basis in the evidence before my eyes.

I live in the downstairs apartment of a house halfway up a hill. It is surrounded by nature - quite lovely. A drought resistant garden, boasting succulents and lavendar bushes.  A bamboo hedge on the kitchen side, and on the living room side a hibiscus tree,  shrubs, herbs, and succulents.  In summer I sit outside to admire the setting of the sun as it drops behind Mt. Tamalpais.  Stripes of crimson, fuschia, orange, and deep gold shimmer on the bay.  On the other side I sit on the patio and contemplate the humming birds flitting in and out of the hibiscus tree.

My microwave sits on a shelf near a water closet. In the space between are wooden chopping boards and a wooden tray. One evening when I moved the boards to take out the tray I saw cumin seed in the corner,  next to the water closet.  I do use cumin seed quite often, but hadn't used it recently. Also, there is no reason on earth that I would spread it in a corner.  But that is what I saw, so I cleaned the shelf and thought no more about this.  A couple of nights later, the same thing.  Hmm, I thought, interesting how the cumin seed must cling to the chopping boards and succumb to the laws of gravity overnight.  Again, I cleaned them up, and carried on with this ritual almost every morning.  Always more cumin seeds, and I hadn't used them the night before.  Fascinating.

My landlords  returned from one of their exotic vacations, and I was no longer alone.  This allowed me to consider the fact that these were probably not cumin seeds.

I emailed an SOS and down came the landlord to check. I showed him the seeds and he confirmed my buried suspicion - mouse droppings.   Mice freak me out - they feel to me like creatures of the underworld, deeply disturbing. I went off to ACE Hardware and invested in a couple of humane traps. My landlords assured me they would take the trapped m;ouse away and let him go in a field far away.

According to instructions I placed a blob of organic crunchy peanut butter in the trap. (The instructions did not call for organic peanut butter, but I was quite pleased with my largesse.)  The next morning i checked the trap;   droppings,  no mouse. And the next morning.  The morning after that, neither droppings nor mouse. The rains had stopped so I presumed the mouse had left for outside.  After a week of neither droppings nor mouse I replaced the boards.  The next morning, droppings, but no mouse.

I am bamboozled. Does anyone know why a mouse (or mice) favor wooden boards?  I am not sure if I can cohabit with this creature.  Where is the Pied Piper when I need him.

Advice - help

As we are now

And then there is the one about the middle aged Jewish man who would like to live forever.  He asks his Rabbi if he can give him the secret to eternal life. The Rabbi thinks for a while, scratches his beard and looks at the earnest man seated in front of him.

"Yes," says the Rabbi. "Go home and read the news everyday."

The man looks at the Rabbi with raised eyebrows. "OK," he says, "I'll do that, but how will this help me live forever?"

Clearing his throat the Rabbi says, "it will cure you of your desire to live forever."

I have no desire to live forever.  What I would like is to live a somewhat peaceful life, free of constant negativity and concern.  This desire is increasingly difficult.

I have stopped listening to the constant bombardment of news items. I have never had alerts on my phone. I don't watch talk shows with their endless discussions of who said what, and what the latest polls indicate.

When reading the newspapers (which I still do) I try to look for small glimmers of hope.  The Monarch butterflies have returned to Mexico in their hundreds of thousands.  First I read this in the paper, and then, the same day, listened to an interview with an environmental scientist. Yes, they have returned this year, but no, in fact it is not a glimmer of hope - and then he went on and on about the degradation of the environment, the pesticides, the fact that although concerned citizens in the US and Canada are growing milkweed it is not nourishing like it used to be .....  lets not be overjoyed at this bountiful return this year.

Then, later the same day a talk on the coral reefs.  Oh my goodness - by the year 2050 there will no longer be coral reefs, no species of fish, no this, no that - all caused by climate change ....

I have beautiful vivid recollections of snorkeling in he reefs in the Sinai desert - a surreal and glorious insane artist's rendition ...

The elephants, the giraffe ........

And this all in one day of not really listening with attention.

Oh, test tube fetuses - how could I forget that tidbit!

This isn't even broaching the ghastly political climate - Government shutdowns, an insane President raving about walls and drugs and terrorists, and fake news, and how scientists don't know what they are talking about ......

I work a couple of days a week in a really lovely woman-owned boutique surrounded by luxurious textiles, hand blocked fabrics, unique garments which are not made in a sweatshop.  I go to the gym, and to art classes.  I participate in a writing group, and an enneagram group.  All these activities enrich my life.   And yet, yesterday after yoga I sat on the bench putting on shoes after class. Someone I haven't seen in years sits next to me and groans as he bends his leg to put on his shoes.   I jokingly commented on how our bodies are now protesting smaller amounts of exercise.

"Courage," he says to me, "it is only going to get worse."

Today at the gym I met two women I haven't seen in a while.

"How are you," "good" we all reply, then comes the qualifications.  "As good as can be expected with this ......... and on we all go about all the 'unbelievable' that is believably happening.

So this is a brief summary of my life as it is!

And here is my latest piece, in oils.  It is from a photo I took in Carson City in summer of 2017.