It's the little things that get you.

All was right with the world. There I was, sitting on the toilet, enjoying a passage from Terry Pratchett’s latest novel, MAKING MONEY, not at all worried about the shady publisher who’s managed to miss his deadline for paying what he owes me YET AGAIN, or the bills that are going unpaid because of it, or how much the American cheque is actually going to be worth if/when I actually get it as opposed to how much it would’ve got me if it arrived when it was supposed to…None of that is bothering me (then. Writing this has managed to piss me off all over again.)

I’m as serene as I am ever likely to get until/unless I (or Tiina) somehow become fabulously wealthy, I’m calm, I’m at peace…

I’m being watched.

Crouched behind the bathroom garbage bin is a teensy little brown mouse--well, more grey, but you get the point. It’s staring at me with its quivering nose (I know how that sounds, but I swear, it was staring at me WITH ITS NOSE) and it’s one of the top ten cutest things I’ve ever seen.

And it’s creeping me the hell out.

Something about the proximity of this probably mostly harmless disease-carrying vermin really unnerves me. This is worse than the kid I saw smoking crack on the street corner just beyond the wall of trees that protects our front yard. This is worse than the discovery that someone had actually set up a makeshift home in a nook of one of our protective wall trees, complete with a dumbwaiter-y plant bucket on a chain. This is even worse than the guy who tried to talk his way into the house before running away when the police pulled up behind his friends’ car.

This is a cute, inhuman little monster watching me, uh, read.

I want it dead. No, for my own peace of mind, I NEED to know its life has met a premature but definite conclusion. I need it.

Throwing Jewel into the bathroom for a half an hour did not yield the desired results. She’s a cat, and she kills according to her own schedule.

So now, at the back of my mind, there’s this oppressive, inescapable awareness. There is a THING is scurrying around my home, sleeping in my clothes, eating my food, and using my pots and pans as a toilet (probably).

Ewwww…

Foley