And then the house whispered, "GET OUT"

I arrived home last night in a foul mood around 7:30 after an excruciating three-hour meeting with my accountant (she is a lovely woman; I just hate dealing with money). I noticed a large-ish fur ball on the dining room rug (Miss Kitty likes to leave those around), felt uneasy about it, and turned the light on to discover a MOUSE. A real mouse, not a play mouse, curled up on its side.

My first reaction: Scream. But I didn't, because I'm an independent woman who is perfectly capable of ridding her house of bug and pests. I circled the mouse, holding my breath so I wouldn't scream and scare it in case it was still alive. It wasn't bloody; it looked like it was sleeping. But in the middle of my dining room floor? I know Miss Kitty had nothing to do with its demise, unless it died from fright as she stared at it. She won't chase her toy mice, so I know she won't go after a real one.

So I walked back and forth, thought I'd call Michael, remembered he was in Houston, peeked at the mouse again, tried not to scream again, thought about holding a mirror near its face to see if it was breathing, started hyperventilating. Decided to go out front and check my mail (in hopes that Rodent Monthly magazine had arrived and it would tell me how to dispose of mouse? I wasn't thinking clearly). My neighbor happened to be taking his trash out at that exact moment. He said "Hey" and I blurted, "THERESAMOUSEINMYHOUSE!" I think he said something like "I'll handle it" or "is it dead?" and then asked me for a broom and dustpan. I stood in the corner, trying to suppress my shrieking so I was holding my breath, but when he went to pick it up he jumped back and I SQUEALED(seriously) something like "OHMYGODISITALIVEIT'SGOINGTOGETME."

Neighbor didn't seem fazed. He got it into the dustpan and took it outside. When I took the broom and dustpan back, I asked him if it was dead. "I don't know, I just flung it across the street."

Jesus. That means it could COME BACK. Did I want him to bash its little mousy brains in? Maybe. I thanked him for the mouse removal, went back into the house, found my xanax, went into the kitchen to get water to take the pill and discovered that my kitchen sink was BACKING UP WITH BLACK SLUDGE. In less than 10 minutes, my house had turned from Shiny Happy Place Theater to Amityville Horror. I tried the garbage disposal and only got more black sludge and dirty water. I dry-chewed two xanax and decided I'd better start bailing the sink out before it overflowed.

I bailed into a bucket, was afraid to dump it outside BECAUSE OF THE MOUSE, so I dumped it in my bathtub, which promptly backed up. It was right around this point that I started checking the other rooms of the house to find out what demonic possession had overtaken them. If my fridge magnet letters had rearranged themselves to spell "you're dead" or if I'd even IMAGINED hearing "GET OUT" I would have run screaming from the house (after I grabbed Miss Kitty) with no shoes or jacket on.

I only got about four hours of sleep last night because I had to keep getting up to check for rodents and/or demonic sludge bubbling up from my drains. Not to mention the shame spiral I created by having to ask for help because I was afraid of a teeny little mouse.