November is half over!

I just realized that I haven't posted in awhile, and before you know it, November will be over with. The months are flying by. For those of you who are quite young yet (perhaps 20 or so years younger than me?) I realize that time sometimes crawls, but know this: the older you get, the faster it goes. At least for me it does. And time used to crawl!!
I am wishing my life away as we speak. I am wishing it was spring, and that we've finally found our dream home, and we were moving in. Wouldn't that be nice?!! It would be nice if I could stop obsessing over it. I have to remind myself to get of the 'hamster wheel' about moving. To try and live in the moment. Enjoy today. Make today count. Do what you can do now. Bloom where you are planted. Sigh. I've been trying to do that for over 10 years. Another sigh...
Christmas is coming. I'm about 1/2 way there I think, in being ready. I've gotten at least 50 percent of the gifts bought. It took nearly 26 years, but I'm getting the hang of early Christmas shopping, and I really like the feeling of being prepared in advance. My mother was the queen of being prepared. I used to wait until November or even December, sometimes the week before Christmas to buy gifts. Not that I wanted to, mind you. The money just wasn't there. It was a case of waiting for that Christmas bonus. There were years that wasn't in the picture, depending on where we were, so there was a year in which only 2 people got gifts, because I couldn't bear the thought of telling them how poor we were. Thank God, we are doing so much better now. He has blessed us in that area, for sure. We still have to watch the pennies, but at least there are an adequate amount of them now.
Oh yes. Mice. We've had 2 or 3 of them about. I had seen them once or twice in the garage - Max would be out there playing with one, but let it escape. That's a male cat for you.
Then, one night after my husband let him back in (Max has this thing about being able to go in and out of the garage from the house - he's an indoor cat, so the garage is a novelty), we were sitting in the family room watching TV, when I thought I heard mouse like sounds, as if it was squeaking at something. I thought for a minute that my husbands' recliner had a squeak in it, but then realized he wasn't moving. So I said: MUTE IT MUTE IT MUTE IT!!! He looked befuddled for a minute, then grabbed the remote and muted the TV. I jumped up from my chair, walked quickly into the kitchen, just in time to see Max's face drove into the corner of the hot water register. I knew instantly that it was a mouse.
Sure enough, he was hiding in there, face down, in behind a piece of the kitchen flooring, which was rolled up the wall slightly, with his little bottom sticking up. Poor thing. It was terrified. So, we plotted how we were going to get him out. We took apart the register, used the long metal piece as a shield to guide him outside if necessary, opened the french doors (right next to the register, fortunately) and tucked Max into the basement out of the way.
First, Rick used a coat hanger. I badgered him, worried he was going to poke holes in it.
Since the tail was sticking up, we got pliers and gloves, and managed to finally grasp it's tail, and gently fling him out onto the deck. We shut the door, and watched him scurry off into the night.
I thought, that's the end of him.
For some reason, the next night, I turned the light on out on the deck about 9:30pm. There he was, scurrying around in a zigzag manner, gathering bird seed. We just chuckled and shook our heads. We knew there were neighborhood cats very good at mousing.

Just a few days before this, I had been in the furnace room in the basement, checking the water filter, when I noticed some small specks in the dipper underneath. (used for a very slow drip from the last filter change) You guessed it - mouse poops.
So I set a trap, and by the next day, the cutest little fellow had ate his last meal. He was all white underneath, with a pretty warm brown color on his back. Much cuter than a gray mouse.
We set the trap again, and a few days later (after we freed the one upstairs!) there was another one. Somehow I think it was the same one.
There's been no more since then. But we are much more careful about keeping the garage door shut.