Fire, Pestilence & Plagues

Whatever lesson God is trying to teach me right now, I'm crying "Uncle!" and begging Him to just say it directly into my apparently thick head, because I am just about done with the toads, locusts, hail, and other sundry and assorted calamities that have befallen our household in recent weeks. All right, maybe the toads and locusts are a slight exaggeration, but consider the following:

• We've had mice in our house, AGAIN. I don't know if I mentioned the fun little episode where I found a mouse IN OUR COUCH by sitting down on it, and seeing a little gray tail between the cushions making its way toward me. I did not know I could simultaneously scream in that high of a pitch and leapfrog into the air such that I nearly hit my head on the ceiling. We trapped and removed that little bugger, but then caught two more with a snap trap and a sticky trap. I removed the still living mouse from the sticky trap with some used cooking oil, and released him outside. Hopefully that mouse learned its lesson and didn't come back inside. I am really going to fire our pest control (or lack thereof) company now, and have bought fine steel wool and constructive adhesive and a caulk gun to seal up all crevices under our cabinets myself. And, I am going to have to move every heavy piece of furniture in the house to make sure I have vacuumed & mopped up any and all mouse droppings. And I have to clean out the pantry floor & do the same. And finally finish sanding and painting the pantry door, so they can't get in there again.
• My DD, not content with bringing home Every Cold & Flu Bug Under the Sun, has topped off our cold season with the Cold That Never Ends®. She got this cold over two weeks ago, and STILL has the wheezy, slightly phlegmmy cough. She has shared this cold with every other member of the family, including myself. I finally succumbed about four days ago and have been miserably expelling mucus and dealing with my own nighttime phlegmmy cough. DS is completely and utterly miserable, being as he is cutting teeth again, and is sick. Baby Vicks is nice, but it doesn't quite do the job when mucus production is in high gear. So DH & I have been perpetually sleep deprived for going on, oh, about three weeks.
• DS & DD had their first dentist visit, and DS has EIGHT cavities. Yes, EIGHT. No, we are not feeding him Caro syrup in a bottle at night. However, I have been night-nursing him still (at 15 months of age) and we took away the pacifier from him at 12 months of age, which apparently was a recipe for Calamitous Early Childhood Caries. Now, I won't dwell on my deep, undying bitterness at being told that both of these things were okay by our pediatrician unhappiness with the conflicting nature of the advice we were given by the pediatrician, to which our pediatric dentist cheerfully, as she pictured the vacation to Maui we are going to fund when we pay the bill for DS' dental care said in a blasé fashion, "Well, this is why the pediatric dentist association is now recommending that you bring in your baby for their first dental visit when the first tooth erupts, because it can cause problems to have the pediatrician give good nutritional advice which conflicts with good dental advice." Oh, gee, thanks for the warning, now that my son's teeth are cavity-ridden. I'll be sure to bring that up with my pediatrician, when I bring in my son for a physical exam necessitated by the fact that he has to go under general anesthesia to get his cavities filled! Nope, no bitterness here, folks!
• Our kitchen sink began backing up a week ago, which caused several rounds of plunging of the sink, plus opening up the drain clean-out under the window, and even borrowing a neighbor's snake (and the neighbors) to disassemble the p-trap and check for clogs. It seemed to be okay again, finally...until we discovered we had left the clean-out cap off, and all of our kitchen sink and dishwasher draining was just flowing out there and into the (fortunately gravel, and therefore absorbent) driveway. I had a plumber come out on Monday. He snaked the whole drain line and couldn't find a clog, so said it was either a clog in the 3" line or that the septic tank was full, and asked for a check for $95. I paid him and called a rooter service, after rummaging through our house paperwork and reassuring ourselves that the septic was pumped 2 years ago, and thus should not be in need of being pumped again. The rooter fellow came out yesterday, and found that our kitchen line was sludged. He got it all cleaned out and working, and $175 later, we were back in business, with the caveat that our drain line is improperly bracketed, causing sags between brackets, which are more prone to sludging. So DH can look forward to a messy and smelly hour or so in the crawlspace sometime soon, installing more brackets so our drain line is mostly level.
• This morning, I woke up and stumbled out in search of coffee & breakfast, and my designated time to catch up on email and get myself ready to teach today. No email! No internet! No phone, even! I spent an hour on my (pay as you go, how much did that cost me) cell phone with tech support for our cable company, unplugging our modem, disconnecting the battery, disconnecting the splitter, all while DS howled endlessly because I wasn't devoting 100% of my attention to his feeling-bad self. Boy was that fun. Oh, and while I turned the phone away to cough and blow my nose multiple times. Then, after a service call was set up for today, I called my neighbor. Her internet was out too. So I was just the first on our road to call, apparently. Two hours later, and it is back on and we are back in business. I just happened to notice.
• I have to call my former employer who, in a remarkable show of their efficiency and drive, sent me a ticket two years later asking for $25 because I didn't return my parking pass gatecard. Are you $%^*ing kidding me? I am tempted to call it the Last Revenge of the Parking Nazis. I have the gatecard. I want to send it to them, I just need an address. And I want them to take their ticket and waive it, because it did take them TWENTY-FOUR MONTHS to ask for the thing back! Also, I have to call my old cell phone company, who want me to pay them $65 per month for the remaining 6 months of my contract. Erm, no. Just cancel it. I said this to them six months ago, and instead they put my contract "on hold". I'm willing to pay for April's service because I hadn't called them yet, but that's it. I should have done it when I initially said I was going to, but DH said, "Why are we going to pay them $200 to cancel it? I don't want to do that." Because the MATH says it's cheaper than paying $65 a month for 6 months! So now I get to pay the Stupid Tax. Grrrr. Note to self, when you've done the math, just make the call--or tell DH, "Fine, it's now your responsibility. Make the call and negotiate."

So I'm done now. I don't want any more nasty events, thanks. I've had my share for the year. And if you're trying to teach me something, Lord, I'm begging you to just whisper it in my ear. Because I just can't pay attention well when my ears are clogged and my son is pulling on my leg. Thanks.