Last night I watched a mouse die in my dining room. I despise mice in the house. I enter into the stereotypical behavior of jumping-on-the-couch-and-screaming , but I especially never, ever want to watch one die ever again. It's these strange moments of reality that make me appreciate - through the craziness- that my life AS IT IS RIGHT NOW is so, so beautiful. (This time I realize it's beautiful because I am alive. As opposed to the mouse, who is dead. I'm sad about that. No, I'm happy about that.
...I don't know how I feel about that.)
Jackson was fascinated with the mouse. I told him it was sleeping and not to touch it. Or come within 3 ft. of it. Meanwhile, I was frantically trying to wrap my brain around the idea of removing the mouse with my own hands. Mine, not Chris's. That's where the brain block occurred. I considered leaving it there until 9pm when Chris would be home. I even started making dinner while it lethargically occupied the middle of the dining room floor with Jackson on one side and our dog, Maus, on the other, both intently studying its every non-move. (I had let Maus in to see if she'd show an interest in removing it for me. She didn't. Her name is more of an ironic nod to her enormity.) Finally, I mustered up enough courage to spastically throw a tupper-ware container over it.
We all stood there staring at the blurry outline of the mouse through the transparent container. Maybe we were waiting for it to suddenly get up and say, "You know what? This is ridiculous. I'm just a mouse." And then walk out the front door by itself. I would only be so lucky.
And then my wise 3-year-old looked at me with pitty and slight irritation and said, "Mommy, just do it."
And so I did.
