Not a Creature Is Stirring -- Well ...

Even though freedom is both blessing and curse, lately I've been finding it a blessing. It's cold and flu season, and I've succumbed to neither so far. Know why? Because if I do something at night, I'm free to sleep an extra hour to make a full 9 1/2. When I get up, if I feel the slightest bit under the weather, I can sit on my couch all day, sipping grapefruit spritzers. It's the good life.

Unfortunately I have company. Mice have been runnin in or across the most unexpected places. Nothing seems to deter them. I've been screaming whenever I see them but it isn't working. Calling my super (why is he called that) doesn't work because he says he'll come with traps and he never does. Something keeps me from buying my own traps. If he buys them and sets them, the murders are on his hands.

Here's the most unfair thing of all: I used to think long periods of inactivity and reading on my part were what allowed mice to think they were alone in the apartment and could venture out. But the other day I was crashed out on -- where else? -- the couch watching the Colbert Report and a mouse dove across my front hallway as if it were his personal athletic field. Where do they get this brazenness? If I'm still for a long time, I watch TV as a mouse deterrent! But it's not working. Don't tell me I'm going to have to become active, clean up the piles of crap, and move around the apartment like I care if it's clean. I'm not up to that charade.

Except for the mice. I'm not happy with the mice. I don't like them because they seem to confirm something about the stasis I feel I've been living in for a while. It's so still that now mice think it's fair game. Well, I've had just about enough. One of these days I might get up off the couch and clean. Then who'll hold the power? Hm?