So, anyway...Critters. That's the topic of the evening. And oh, what a topic it is!
Matthew and I moved in to an outrageously priced condo off of Dickson Street in Fayetteville after our house in Maumelle didn't sell this summer. Renters for Life…gag!! Maybe I was trying to feel like I could live the sorority life I once dreamed since I raised a child during my college days. Maybe Matthew was making up for lost time to living in the same neighborhood in downtown Little Rock for his ENTIRE LIFE until he met me. Maybe we just wanted to feel young and trendy (of which we are neither). Who knows? But we rented a swanky (or so we thought) condo downtown.
We had been living in our new abode for about 2 weeks when my sweet MIL decided to come for a visit. She wanted to see our new place. She had never been to Fayetteville and wanted to make sure Matthew was living in a nice place, and I wanted her to know he was. It was the Historic District. Prime Real Estate, right?! That's what the price point of homes told me, anyway.
I'm not sure she knew the treat she was in for. We showed her around NWA as much as we could in 24 hours: Fayetteville Farmers Market on the Square, Mount Sequoyah (we live at the tip top of Dickson near there), Crystal Bridges, Table Mesa, the Bentonville Square (she loved Sam Walton's old truck), multiple Dickson Street patios, Hammontree's, whew, we were exhausted. We retired home for an evening meal and Pinot (Noir, of course).
I cooked dinner. Tilapia, cold pasta salad (although unusually cold, it was still July), veggies, dessert, and WINE (thank God). Jesus had that shitzu down. He knew just what he was doing with the water. I prefer to think he changed the water to Pinot, since its the best, but I'm sure his partakers like would have been almost as pleased with Merlot or a Cab-Sav blend. Any way it turned out, I bet Jesus liked the good stuff. And by good stuff, I mean reds. But maybe I shouldn't bet, Jesus might not like that, like the peddlers and tax collectors in the temple. Eek!! Anyway... Back to dinner.
I love all things vinegar based. Pickles. Pickled okra. Pickled veggies. Vinaigrette salad dressings. Salt and Vinegar chips. You get the picture. So when I read the recipe for the cold salad: quinoa (another love of mine), red onion, garlic, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, vinegar, and some obscure spices...I was stoked!! I mixed it all up, taste tested, and bleh...bland. So I threw in a little more garlic (she's Jewish, she loves it, right?) and some vinegar, because it's yummy! Tasted again...not salty enough. So I threw in another splash (or four) or vinegar. PERFECT. On to the dessert: whipped ricotta with a base of lemon rind and sugar and topped with freshly sliced strawberries prepared in red wine vinegar and honey. My salty heart was in heaven based on this menu!!
Anyway, long story shortish, my Mother in Love hates vinegar, unbeknownst to me, and vinegar just happened to be the base of my salad and desert. Thanks be to God for Pinot. And a LOT of it.
After a horrendous dinner experience for all parties involved, and after much consumption of vino (if you haven't tried Big House Pinot Evil boxed wine...sounds excessively redneck, I know...you should), we retired to the overpriced dinky living room with a good view. As we sat there solving life's mysteries and consuming more Pinot Evil, I became increasingly aware of sporadic movements in the kitchen out of the corner of my eye. I even said something to the effect of, 'man, there's, like, a groundhog running through the kitchen.' I began to wonder if the Pinot Evil was causing me to see things. That's been known to happen a time or twelve, but that's another story for another time, so I blew it off as not knowing the after-dark lighting in the new place. Then it happened. I saw a tail. And not just any tail. A rat's tail. I'm talking straight up Muppet's Take Manhattan rats riding the hand-held blender, city-rat's tail. I FREAKED. I stood up in the club chair. Screamed liked an idiot. Pointed to the beast in the kitchen and screeched, 'MOUSE!!!' It was horrific. Sharon, my sweet MIL, didn't even flinch. She knew the mouse was there all along (she's from NYC, yo?!). She'd sensed it, saw it in the kitchen.
I immediately ran out of the house, in slippered feet, to Walgreen's for a trap to catch the hideous beast, feeling humiliated. I'd taken her son away to a rat-infested, over-priced condo (he pricked it out, by the way). We set the trap. I barely slept. We caught the mouse 3 days later, and I survived. It was the fattest mouse I'd ever seen. All dead and shiz, on the snap-your-neck mouse trap. My first Critter encounter of many in our outrageously-priced condo. I survived.
A couple of days later, a maintenance man from the property management company named Jesus, ironic, I know, came to patch up any obscure areas the mouse might have gotten in through. I think I may have found a mouse turd or three baked in to some oatmeal bread the next month. I can't be sure. The mouse may have left dookie in my flour, and there may or may not have been strange, hard brown pieces baked into my bread. But, miraculously, I survived.
Stay tuned for Critters: Part Two.
