atonement

Let me pick up where I left off last evening. You remember -- when Ed was sleeping on the floor and I announced that the trap had a mouse.

Ed dutifully takes the mouse up the road. He has been jolted out of a deep sleep and now is settling back to a restful position when I say again – Ed, we have another mouse.

And suddenly, the prospects seemed daunting. What if we have a huge family of mice stopping by? Are we in for nights of catch and release? Sigh...

Ed digs out a large plastic bin and slips the mouse into it for the night. He’ll take it further out tomorrow. I look at the mouse – that is one huge rodent! And she’s eaten all the peanut butter. Of course. First they eat, then they look around for an escape route.

It’s one o’clock. Do you know where you mice are?

And here’s an interesting fact: we have no more mice this night.

Could it be that we HAVE been trapping and releasing the same mouse or two? How far is their range? If you go on the Internet, you get yourself an evening’s worth of readings on other people’s experiences with mice. There are a lot of people out there and a lot of mice. Not surprisingly, they clash. People have a lot of ideas on how to prevent that from happening ever again.


Sunday. We talk about mouse proofing the farmhouse, but it is a daunting task. If you saw how the stone foundation interfaced with the rest of the structure, you’d know that there are perhaps a hundred places where mice could chew and enter the building.

We put it all aside for now. The wind is blowing the clouds apart. It's turning out to be a cool but fine day. Astonishingly green, with dabs of blooming color.





I clean the farmhouse, we stop for a coffee break and then I go down to the condo, to do a final cleaning before I hand over the keys to the next owner.

Between the farmhouse and the condo, I spend six hours on cleaning today. And if you add an after dinner clean up – we’re up to seven.

I cannot say that I enjoy cleaning much of anything, but I especially have a hard time cleaning the condo when I'm no longer there. Of course, you could tell me that I do not have to do this. The buyer is paying significantly less than the listing price, so you could say that distributive justice demands that I hand over a dusty mess,

But I can’t. I feel that I have been so lucky in life and so much of what could have gone wrong, did not, that I ought to now think not about the low selling price, but instead about how to make this transition smooth for the buyer and for me.

And so I clean. Hard and long.


The sun is fading. It's evening at the farmhouse. The light is lovely right now, showing off even the simplest flowers by the entrance door.


 


The mouse trap is ready again.Though it surely would be nice if no mouse came by to visit us tonight.