Valentines And Car Adventures...And Mice

Last night, while Lone Star Pa was taking the Lone Star Girl to get her allergy shot and then onto their weekly Comic Book Day ritual of comic books, window shopping and (ugh) Arby's, the Lone Star Baby and I were preparing Valentines for her to take to school on Friday for the El Dia de Amor y Amistad exchange.

I had bought a box of Tinker Bell valentines that the Lone Star Baby is going to give out to the kids in her class. Her school wisely instructs that we only fill out the "from" part of the valentine, not the "to" part, to expedite passing them out. At first, after I separated the sheets of them at their perforations, the Lone Star Baby was filling out her name under where the cards say "from" but she got pretty tired of that after about eight or ten cards, as I expected. We then switched to a system where I filled out her name and folded them and she sealed them closed with a heart sticker. That lasted better. We then taped tiny valentine Kit-Kat bars into the space inside the fold of each card - quite respectable offerings, I thought.

For the teachers at her school, the Lone Star Baby happily assembled the lovely lacy-white-doily-heart-glued-onto-bigger-shiny-red-doily-heart-with-stickers kind that are THE BEST VALENTINES IN THE WORLD, but that are really no fun to have to assemble for 24 classmates (she had also previously made some of these to take to Story-time on Monday at the library, where they were quite distracting). We made one extra trip to the store for more glue and tape but I figured it wouldn't hurt to go to bed a little late and get it all done - little did I know the night that awaited us!

Before we were quite finished, Lone Star Pa called at a bit before 8:30pm to let me know that his car wouldn't start. My car had failed to start on Monday and he had jumped it. It had gotten me through the morning drop-off and home again and he hooked it up to my dad's battery charger that night until it was fully charged again, but...I knew the jump was going to kill his battery, which he had been periodically having to charge...I just knew it. And there we were. I loaded the Lone Star Baby back into the car and we drove to the Arby's parking lot and jumped his car while I called the AutoZone down the street to ask when they closed - 9pm.

Shit.

We got the car started and hurried over to get us both new batteries before both cars died - got there at about 8:50 and really, really pissed off the AutoZone people who wanted to go home - but I really don't think we would have made it home on those batteries.

So that was an adventure.

We got home and bustled around finishing up the valentines and getting ready for bed. Suddenly, we heard hysterical pleas for quiet coming from the Lone Star Girl's room. She had discovered that one of her mice had escaped - through the ventilation holes in the habitat - and she was trying to not scare it away from where it was messing around on (and pooping all over) her already very messy desk. Well.

I was pretty sure we were just going to have to resign ourselves to a loose mouse in the house. I mean, really - how were we going to catch it? The Lone Star Girl was really upset. We got a paper towel tube, duct-taped one end, put some mouse food in it, and the Lone Star Girl kept vigil for about an hour and a half. Just as I was about to tell her to give up and get some rest, she called, "I've got her!" -wow. I opened the cage for her and we emptied the mousekin into it and taped up the larger vents.

It was very late so the Lone Star Baby slept in our bed and the Lone Star Girl slept in her sister's bed (and poop-free room). Now the Lone Star Girl is cleaning the mouse poop out of her room.

Quite a night, no?