A creature was stirring

We have a mouse. Not a pet, but an unwelcome rodent invader.

Gross.

We last had a mouse during a cold snap in 2011 or 2012, and we hadn't seen or heard one since. Then one day last week, I heard a sound that could only be described as "scurrying," but whatever was scurrying stayed out of sight. The next day, my husband said that he saw a gray streak flash by; and then the day after that, I saw the actual live-in-the-flesh mouse.

So gross.

My husband called the exterminator, and they came out and set traps. Something, as I pointed out, that we could easily have done ourselves, saving the almost $250 per year that we pay the exterminator (but that's a story for another day).  After a few days, to no one's surprise, the mouse remained at large. So my husband took matters into his own hands, and built a better mousetrap.

*****

A long time ago, when the boys were little, the three of them were obsessed with keeping the rabbits out of our tomatoes. They'd set Havahart traps in the backyard, and in the mornings, they would drive to a park and let the rabbits go. This went on all summer, until one night, we left the gate open by accident, and some deer came in and ate all of the tomatoes. With the tomato crop ravaged, there was no longer any reason to force the rabbits into exile. We packed away the traps, and the rabbits roamed freely once again.

Another battle in the long war between my husband and the rodents involved unauthorized squirrel access to his beloved birdfeeder. After a few days of studying the squirrels and their habits, he fashioned a squirrel-proof birdfeeder out of an actual birdfeeder, several frisbees, and part of an umbrella. I can't describe it any better than that. Use your imagination. The thing actually worked, though it looked ridiculous hanging from the tree in our front yard.

*****
So the mouse is round three. There are mouse traps everywhere, and my husband has constructed barriers for the doorways, using cardboard boxes. The barriers have small holes, baited and booby-trapped. Wile E. Korean is quite sure that the mouse will be irresistibly drawn to the hole, and will run through it, only to be inextricably trapped on the other side.

Did you think I was kidding? 

It's now the third morning since these makeshift walls were erected (I have to step over them to get through the doorway) and we haven't trapped a mouse yet. I make my husband get up to check, because I don't want to be the first person to see a trapped mouse at 6 in the morning.

*****

We finally caught the mouse the day after I wrote this. Not a moment too soon, as I'd begun to worry about new and extreme measures threatened by the male members of the household. I had already caught my 16-year-old son patrolling the kitchen, armed with a loaded BB gun. ("Mom. Trust me. It ran under the stove, and it has to come out eventually. When it does, I'll pop a cap in its ass.") Again, teenage boys are idiots, in case you missed my last post. Meanwhile, I'd begun to be afraid to walk through my own house in the dark, for fear that I'd end up in a bear trap, or hanging upside down by my ankle from a zip line.

So the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and humans are the only creatures stirring, and that's the way we like it. Merry Christmas.

Ghosts appear and fade away

Sunday:  This morning was a legitimately cold December morning; cold by anyone's standards, which means bloody well freezing for me. But I couldn't sleep past 6:30, so I went for a walk anyway.

With enough clothing, the temperature was just bearable, and even I had to admit that it was a really beautiful, sparkling morning. There was still a coating of snow on the grass, leftover from the tiny bit of snow that fell on Friday, and it was sunny and clear, but just a tiny bit misty. Beautiful.

I walked past the pool, which was frozen over, with a dusting of snow on the deck. Later, I heard that one of the neighborhood boys had posted Instagram video of himself and his dog, walking on the frozen water. Teenage boys are idiots; this is something that I have personal experience with. No more so than the rest of us, of course, but idiots in their own particular way. I myself did more stupid things this week alone than I'm prepared to write about on this blog, but you can trust me that walking out onto the surface of a frozen swimming pool was not among them. Idiots.

*****

Sometimes I like to listen to NPR when I walk, but I usually like to listen to music. My husband and I share an iTunes library, and I usually just put the whole thing on shuffle and listen to whatever shows up (within reason), but this morning, I felt like selecting songs. I found a playlist with my name on it (literally; it was named "Claire") so I started the first song and was on my way.

It was a good playlist, beginning with my beloved Erasure's "Heart of Stone." Sometimes, I get tired of even my favorite songs, and I skip past them, but I can't remember ever skipping over "Heart of Stone."

It got even better, with Gladys Knight and the Pips "Midnight Train to Georgia." I'm always all aboard for "Midnight Train."

Three excellent songs in a row! The third was Men at Work's "Overkill" (the acoustic version). I've always liked the original recording of this song, but I really love the acoustic version, and the lyrics are my life on the radio:

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know will be all right
Perhaps it's just imagination

But day after day, it reappears
Night after night, my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away. 

Anyway, these songs were among my favorites when I made the playlist, probably sometime around 2012 or so. They held up. 

*****

One reason why I like to go out walking early on Sunday morning is that I like to sing, and there are only a handful of people out at 7:30 on Sunday morning. Running Lady, The World's Happiest Dog and his person, Bike Helmet Guy, and maybe a few others here or there, but mostly, I have the streets to myself. And I need the streets to myself. Alone on the streets, I'm free to really cry for your heart of stone. And when L.A. proves too much for the man, I can sing, loudly, about his decision to leave the life that he'd come to know. In fact, I usually sing "Midnight Train" twice: Once as Gladys, and once as a Pip. 

I know both parts equally well, and I slay them both. 

The low battery warning came just as I was turning back on to my street, about halfway through a performance of David Bowie's "Modern Love" that would have blown the roof off the joint, had I not been outside. It was a good walk, and a good morning.

Winter

In addition to The System, I'm also been reading Muriel Spark's The Hothouse by the East River. I usually read e-books at night, in bed; and actual books in better light. Plus I like to read more than one book at a time.

Every time I think I've read everything that Muriel Spark ever wrote, I find one that I missed. I'd never heard of this one, and it was a relatively late novel for her (1973). I think that Spark was preoccupied with mental illness of a particular sort, and in some of her novels, the reader is never 100% sure if we're supposed to accept a character's version of reality or not. This is one of those. The main characters are a very wealthy couple living in a luxurious Upper East Side apartment in the early 1970s. The apartment is always overheated, and despite their wealth, the man and woman can't seem to do anything about the excessive heat except to open the windows, no matter the temperature outside.

The reader knows that both the husband and the wife worked for British intelligence during the Second World War, but we don't know what they did. We do know that they're haunted by the war, and that they have never adjusted to peace and the post-war world.

I've been reading this in bed, a few pages at a time, and the combination of real and surreal as I'm falling asleep has left me unsure about what is actually happening to the characters, especially the wife, who might or might not be dead. I'd forgotten how crazy Spark's novels can be. I'm glad I found this one.

*****
It's actually really cold now, legitimately winter-cold. I've learned that dreading cold is worse than actually living through it. Not that I like it, but I'm kind of reconciled to it; for now, at least. There's a little bit of snow, and the house is decorated for Christmas, and it's kind of cozy. Plus, I have new boots. No season that involves Christmas trees and new boots and Washington Capitals hockey can be all bad. It's not good, but it's not all bad.

*****

So I finished The Hothouse (still neck-deep in The System, too, God help me), and have moved on to Joan Didion's Play it as it Lays. I read one Joan Didion essay once and that's all. I'm always late to every bandwagon. I like the book so far, though I'm only one chapter in.

*****
It's December 15; Friday night and a week before Christmas vacation. Another high school swim meet tomorrow; and at some point between now and December 25, I must do the thing that I dread even more than winter. I complain about cookie-baking every year, and although the cookies stubbornly refuse to bake themselves, hope springs eternal.

Officiating

I have to referee a high school swim meet tomorrow. It's my first refereeing assignment this year, and I thought I took notes after last year's Google incident, but if I did, I can't find them. I've been through a lot of notebooks since last year. Anyway, this time, I'm supposed to help train a freshman parent, and I think I'll omit to mention that I once had to Google instructions on when to blow the whistle. I want him to feel that he's in competent hands. Ignorance is bliss. Do as I say, not as I do.

The Baby and the Bathwater

It's two months post-Weinstein now, and everyone seems to have came to a sort of simultaneous mass agreement to enforce zero tolerance on sexual harassment or misconduct. All of a sudden, any man (well, ALMOST any man) who has ever behaved or spoken inappropriately has to be punished, severely and possibly permanently. 

Like lots of other #metoo women, I have mixed feelings about this. Weinstein deserves his comeuppance (the word of the moment), and so do lots of other prominent men. With super high-profile people like Weinstein and Matt Lauer, the worst offense is not so much the wildly inappropriate or even illegal sexual behavior; it's the gross abuse of power. In those cases, the public downfall is more than deserved. (And it should have happened to Donald Trump. And it should have happened to Bill Clinton. And it's not too late.)

But there's the baby and there's the bathwater. I would like to drain the dirty bathwater, and then thoroughly scrub the tub, but I don't want to discard the baby. I like the baby. I like a lot of men who might, at some point during their personal or professional lives, have said or done something offensive or stupid. In fact, I love some of those men, and I don't want to see them--my friends, or my brothers, or my cousins, or my colleagues might be among them--cast into outer darkness forever. Should we judge the behavior of twenty or even five years ago by the standard of today? Because if so, then who among us will stand up to scrutiny? 

On the other hand (there's always another hand, isn't there? It's why we have two) I have extremely limited patience with the men who are now crying that they just don't know where the line is anymore. They just don't know how to behave! They don't know what they're allowed to do or say! Because it's not that hard. If you're not intimately involved with a woman, then she does not want you to touch most parts of her body. If you work with women, then they do not want to see naked pictures of you or anyone else, and they don't want to talk about sex, either. Because it's work. See? Pretty easy. 

The larger implications of this whole thing are just beginning to become clear. Or at least one specific thing is clear, and that's that the sex-soaked culture of the last 50 years, in which every aspect of entertainment, art, sports, music, politics, and pretty much every other field of human endeavor is permeated and dominated by sex, will have to change. If we're going to hold men (and women, of course) accountable for maintaining a level of decorum that excludes recreational sexual aggression, then we probably can't shove near-naked bodies in people's faces 24 hours a day anymore. 

On its own, that's a good thing. Even if I wasn't a Catholic, I wouldn't actually want to see sex scenes in every movie. I'm disgusted and bored by crude sexual humor on the radio and on TV. I cringe when I hear the lyrics of some of my children's favorite songs. I'm tired of seeing so-called cheerleaders dressed like pole dancers.* 

But the baby is still in the dirty bathwater, isn't he? Bari Weiss** said something about revolutions taking on a life of their own, quickly swallowing everyone in their path, devouring the guilty, the innocent, and the indifferent bystanders, and it's not unlikely that this revolution will have unintended consequences. Ideally, the culture will shift toward an idea of sexuality that acknowledges and respects human dignity. But if you have been on this blog for more than five minutes, then you know that I never expect the ideal outcome. The worst case scenario is my default option. I even have a tag. 

And what's the worst-case scenario? There are any number, but the one that I can see rising to the top is a new Puritanism that combines the very worst of radical feminist hatred of men and radical religious hatred of women, in a country so divided that you won't be sure which standard prevails from one county to the next. In this scenario, Roy Moore wins in Alabama and ten years later, he's part of the moderate wing of whatever new party replaces the Republican party; the moderate wing being the one that believes that a man should only beat the women he's related to, and that a man shouldn't marry a 14-year-old girl without her father's permission. Meanwhile, in what we now call the blue states, men will be fined or arrested for smiling at women they're not married to, and state-financed abortion up to forty weeks will be a basic civil right. 

Or maybe the whole thing will blow over, and everything will be back to normal, whatever that is, in six months. I don't think so, though. I think that a hard rain is going to fall. I think there's going to be a sea change. I'm praying that it's the right one. 

*****

*That's not so much an attack on NFL cheerleaders as a defense of pole dancers. Why should we consider a stripper a social undesirable; while NFL cheerleaders, who dress and behave in the same manner, are held up as examples of wholesome young womanhood? 

**By the way, I agree with a lot of Ms. Weiss's column, but I've never heard anyone say "Believe all women." There's a huge difference between "Believe women" and "Believe all women," always and everywhere, just because they're women. It's the baby and the bathwater again. Don't throw away the very reasonable "Believe women" because it sounds almost like "Believe ALL women." They are two different things. 

Books and movies

So a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I bought a pile of books at the Friends of the Library book sale, one of my favorite semi-annual events, and I think I promised (threatened) to tell you all about the books that I bought. Here's the list.

Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters. I had never heard of either the book or the author, but the cover and the hand-drawn illustrations appealed to me. I read this one first. It's very, very sad, and funny in bits (though not "hilarious" as many of the blurbs exclaimed because spoiler alert, there's only so much humor that you can wring out of the life of a drug-addicted homeless man who suffered horrendous abuse as a child and eventually took his own life at age 34). It's a life backwards because the author begins with the present, and then works backward through Stuart's teenage and childhood years. Apparently, there was a movie, starring Tom Hardy, one of the last actors I'd expect to see in this role.

Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II, Strobe Talbott. Not sure if I'll ever get around to actually reading this, but I'll report back if I do.

Fortunes of War (The Levant Trilogy, Volume II), Olivia Manning. I normally won't watch a movie if I loved the book, but this is a rare case in which I saw the movie first. It was actually a Masterpiece Theater miniseries, starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson when they were still married. It was very good, and I always meant to read the book; or books, because it is a trilogy (not sure how I feel about starting with Volume II). Anyway, if it's half as good as The Cazalet Chronicles, then it's money well spent.

The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point, Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder. I'm actually reading this now. Despite the hilarious quaint nostalgia of the subtitle (and the whole premise of the book, if it comes to that), it's actually a very lively read. The aforementioned premise is that the American political system (kind of annoyingly referred to as The System throughout the book), which comprises politicians and elected officials, political appointees, journalists, lobbyists, and consultants, broke down into complete fragmentation and chaos during the Clinton/Gingrich years.

Adorable, right? If only the authors had known what was coming.* But they're right in many ways. I once had to write a paper about the Carter White House, and while I was researching the malaise speech, I ran across a Hugh Heclo essay that blamed Bill Clinton for the "permanent campaign" that has so damaged American politics. Clinton and Gingrich share the blame. Both of them paved the way for the swamp that Donald Trump has shockingly failed to drain.

Anywhere but Here, Mona Simpson. Oddly enough, this is the second book in the group that I have seen the movie version of, but have not yet read. I liked the movie.

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (1st ed.) I read the Nook version of this soon after it was published. I don't remember much of the plot, except that it opens with a terrorist attack in a museum, and then follows the protagonist around the world as he lives his life while concealing an immensely valuable painting that he took from the museum in the aftermath of the bombing. Although I don't remember many details, I do remember that it was astonishingly good. I might read it again, but even if I don't, I'm happy to have a hardcover copy, and a first edition, at that.


Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, Mikhail Gorbachev (1st ed.) Another first edition! I'm only a bibliophile in the sense that I really love to read books. I don't really care about their cash value as objects. But this one has huge historic significance, and it's exciting to have one of the first copies in print. I'll definitely read it, because the only thing better than reading about the Soviet Union is reading about the end of the Soviet Union. Another common element: This author, like Broder and Johnson, probably had no idea what was coming.

*****

*Case in point: I wrote that sentence on Tuesday night, before Trump weighed in on Matt Lauer and all but accused Joe Scarborough of committing a murder. The System is literally deteriorating by the day. Though they didn't know it at the time, Johnson and Broder were writing about the good old days.