I was sitting on the living room sofa, happily absorbed in some good writing time, when my children materialized in front of me, bearing wriggling, squirming, breathing mice.

I hit the roof.

“OH MY WORD! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING! GET THEM OUT OF HERE! OUT! OUT! OUT!”

They slunk outside. I followed, equal parts curious, disturbed, and grossed out.

The dog discovered the nest, they said, and then they saved the mama and her babies from the dog. They had her in a bucket. She was wild-eyed and slightly chewed on, her babies still nursing away.

“Take her down in the field and feed her to the dog,” I ordered.

“But we want to take care of the babies, Mama!” the girls pleaded. The younger one was sobbing wildly.

The kids took the bucket of babies and the mother out in the yard and held a conference. Then my older daughter took them out in the field. Relieved, I returned to my couch.

But all too soon, my daughter was back. With a handful of babies. “Please, Mama? Can we feed them?”

The mother was dead, but my younger son kept carting her around, refusing to chuck her. “Her babies need her milk!” he wailed.

Now I had three crying children. The idea of nursing babies and a dead mother—it was just too much for them. Especially for my littlest one who still remembers the safety and warmth of his breastfeeding days.

“Fine,” I said. “Get that dead mouse out of here and then go get a box. Here’s a medicine dropper and a cup of milk.”

And that’s how our house came to be a mouse NICU unit. The kids salvaged the nest (the mama had stored all sorts of seeds, they reported). They fought all day long over who would get to hold which mouse when…to the point that I threatened to flush them (the mice, not the kids) down the toilet.

My daughter wanted to do research on how to care for baby mice. “If they’re alive in the morning,” her father (who was even more grossed out than I was) and I said. “And no, you may not get up to feed them in the middle of the night, either.”

They were alive in the morning, so, with my daughter breathing down my neck, I typed in “how to care for orphaned baby mice.” I read about formulas and sugar water solutions, stimulating the genitals so they could pee and poop, the signs of pneumonia, feeding methods, etc. She weighed the mice and calculated the amount of food they would each need.

Three days out and the mice are still alive, though I think they’re weakening.

Considering my children’s fixation on raising these helpless baby rodents to adulthood, what happened Friday morning might strike some people as a tad bit ironic.

1. I saw a mouse streak across the back hall:
2. I screamed and yelled.
3. The kids all picked up shoes and ran to my rescue.
4. The children tore about the back hall in a frantic search for the scrabbling mouse.
5. They children threw shoes at the mouse and missed.
6. The mouse jumped into an empty backpack that my younger son was holding.
7. My son picked the bag up and shook it.
8. The mouse jumped out and ran straight for my feet (my shoe missed) and under the washing machine.
9. The mouse ran behind the toilet.
10. Et cetera. 

And on and on and on until the mouse ran out to the kitchen (and straight for my feet again, eeek!) and I chucked a shoe and maybe missed and the mouse ran/limped/stumbled under the stove. Where my husband found it, dead, that evening. So apparently I have better aim than I thought. Or maybe it was the backpack jitterbug that did it in. We’ll never know.

So my children tenderly care for baby rodents and hurl shoes at the grown ones.

No one said life has to make sense, right?

This same time, years previous: roasted carrot and red lentil soup, creamed asparagus on toast, together

Two days ago, a bird fell down the chimney of our wood stove. At first, it stayed in the chimney (which was a good choice, seeing as the stove was still hot from the morning’s fire), but by evening the bird had moved into the stove part and was scratching around all panicky and desperate. It gave me the willies.

So yesterday morning, once the kids were up and breakfasted, I closed all the blinds, put blankets up at the windows that had no blinds, and opened the doors wide. The girls stood on the stairs with a blanket in front of them to keep the bird from flying up yonder, my younger son and I stood out on the porch, and my older son opened the stove door.

The dumb bird flew straight into the bright, lace-covered windows. The kids promptly abandoned their posts and ran to the curtain-swinging, wing-flopping bird. I yelled at them to get back to their places, but my younger boy positioned himself right smack in the middle of the doorway so he could see better, so of course the bird crashed straight into him on his way out. The poor boy (who didn’t listen to me so I wasn’t really all that sorry for him) (except I was totally sorry for him because flapping birds are terrifying) was moderately traumatized and cried quite loudly for a couple minutes. Then we shut the doors, folded up the blankets, opened the blinds, and went about our ordinary day.

Except I didn’t. Because I went outside to hang a sheet over the clothesline and my shoulder/back/neck seized up, so I spent the rest of the day propped up in bed watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy interspersed with TED lectures.

As far as I can tell, it’s the very same affliction that I got when I was vacationing at my aunt’s house two years ago. I do not know why it happens or if there is anything I could do to prevent it. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be smoted? First there were the warts and now I get zapped? If I were a superstitious person, I’d be knocking on wood and shaking salt over everything.

Instead, I just cried tears of self-pity and pain, rotted my brain out with stupid shows, and took so many painkillers that I could barely carry my end of a phone conversation with my mom.

And then I slept really good and woke up somewhat improved. I still walk around like my spine is tied to a pole, and the weight of my heavy head on my achy neck completely wipes me out, but I’m at least doing things like making tortillas and putting kids on time out and organizing the bathroom cupboard (and delivering some pretty powerful lectures on lying and trust-worthiness and responsibility to my four darling children who took advantage of their mother’s smitedness to live the high life). But no hanging up laundry for me, for sure.

And maybe forever.

This same time, years previous: drama trauma, the perils of homemade chicken broth, sticking my neck out, the Monday rambles, shoofly pie

Our internet went out this weekend. There was a lot of rain and a little lightening, and boom, the towers that connect me to you went down.

It wasn’t too bad, actually. We still had electricity, and that’s what really counts. Besides, the message on our internet company’s answering machine said I would be able to resume my addictive habits by Monday afternoon at the latest. That took the sting out of the loss. With an appointed end time to my forced internet abstinence, I was no longer in purgatory.

Still, I took my laptop to church on Sunday, and after the service I sat out in the parking lot to see if there was any accessible wireless waves floating around in the air. There weren’t. On our way out of town, I kept the laptop on my knees so I could see my options. When a new server popped up with the name “getyourowndamnwifi,” I laughed till my eyes watered.

We ended up pulling into a bagel shop parking lot just long enough for me to check mail. I felt subversive, huddled in the front seat of our van full of hungry kids, the windshield wipers flapping back and forth in the pouring rain. Ten minutes of internet were all I needed, and it was all I got.

It was rainy again yesterday (there was even some snow!), so I made soup for supper. One of Ree’s latest recipes was floating around in my subconscious, and I had a bag of red potatoes on the counter and a freezer full of frozen cauliflower (and no great ideas about how to get my kids to love it), so a giant pot of potato cauliflower soup felt positively providential. Plus, the internet was back up so I was able to actually find the recipe so I could cook it.

Ree’s recipe looked ridiculously rich (no surprise there). I figured I’d tweak it as I went along. But you know what? Even though I changed the proportions, added potatoes, and fiddled with the method, I didn’t cut back on the half-and-half, butter, or sour cream at all. The soup needed that richness—who wants a watery cauliflower soup?—and the sour cream gave the soup a marvelous punchy kick.

Cauliflower Potato Soup
Adapted from Ree’s blog Pioneer Woman Cooks

The soup was a bit brothy. Next time, I’ll cut back on the liquid and/or increase the vegetables. I wrote out the recipe to take into account those changes.

2 onions, diced
4 stalks of celery, diced
1 pound carrots, chopped or in slices
2 pounds frozen cauliflower chunks (or two fresh heads, chopped)
4-8 cups potato, small cubes
1 stick butter, divided
6-8 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
1 cup half-and-half
6-8 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon parsley
3-4 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 cup sour cream

Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a large stockpot and add the celery and onions. Saute until tender—about 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium low, add the carrots, cauliflower, and potatoes, and cook, covered, for about 15 minutes.

While the vegetables are cooking, make the white sauce. Melt the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter in another pan and whisk in the flour. Whisk in the milk and bring to a gentle boil, stirring steadily. Off heat, whisk in the half-and-half. Set aside.

Increase the heat under the vegetables to medium high and add the broth. Simmer until the vegetables are tender. Add the white sauce and seasonings.

Measure the sour cream into a mixing bowl. Add a scoop of hot soup and whisk to combine. Add several more scoops and stir until smooth. Pour the sour cream-rich soup back into the pot. Taste to correct seasonings.

This same time, years previous: me and you, and the radishes (but it’s actually on blogging, and I still agree 100 percent with what I said back then—in other words, I still struggle)