There is a mouse in my house

There is a mouse in my house. I know this, because I saw it come out of the hole in the wall just the other day. I didn't know I had a hole in my wall until a few days before, when I moved the tv to a new spot in the living room. After I saw the mouse, I shoved a poison block into the hole and placed other blocks around the kitchen. That night a mouse dragged a half-eaten poison block into the middle of the kitchen floor. I think it was a 'horse head in the bed' message. I talked to my father about it. He said that the use of poison is cruel. He suggested that I use traps instead. While we talked, I stared at the hole in my wall and my father stood in his garden holding a pitchfork trying to kill a rabbit.

I should be used to mice, but I'm not. There were mice in my parent's house, but my father always took care of the traps. I was the son who would wake up in the morning and make loud noises before putting on his eyeglasses. This routine helped me avoid many unpleasant mouse encounters. When I lived in Guatemala, my housekeeper took care of the rodents.

I'm going to keep shoving poison blocks into the hole in the wall. When I run out of blocks I'm going to move the tv back to its old spot.

Hiking outside of Quito

A few days ago I hiked up a mountain outside of Quito. I made it to about 4300 meters. I now have six-pack lungs.

I don't hike much. I once climbed an active volcano in boat shoes. I followed everyone's behind for five hours.

Like most professional climbers, I scaled the first part of the Ecuadorian mountain in a taxi and a tram before setting out on foot. I caught a draft behind a six-legged family. The boy was about two. The pace was surprisingly steady. The family stopped after some time. I continued on towards the summit. Eventually, I stopped and waited for my breath to catch up to me. I looked back that I hadn't gotten much separation from the family. I could still see the brand name of the crackers that they were eating.

I sat down. Two men walked up to me and asked if I was ok. One held out a bag of coca candy. I reached in and grabbed one piece of candy. The man said that I should take two.

I didn't make it to the top of the mountain. If I would have gotten there, then I would have codified all my anxieties and created a religion for the untethered. I'm ok with not making it to the top, because the child didn't get there either. The family headed down the mountain after eating the crackers. Vincerò!

"Once"

I went to see "Once" last night. It's a movie musical about two people in transition who meet in Dublin, Ireland. I thought the story, the actors, the music, and Dublin fit together perfectly, like The White Stripes opening up for AC/DC. There was a scene early in the movie when the woman brings her vacuum cleaner downtown, so the street musician, who works as a repairman during the day, can fix it. He doesn't have his tools, so she ends up lugging it around on their first date. He sings a song called "Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy" on the bus. I would be surprised if anyone left the theater only half-smitten. Tonight a taxi sat outside my apartment building. My neighbor's pregnant wife and her three year old walked upstairs and came down a few minutes later with their vacuum cleaner. The mother told her child to say goodbye to the apartment. I was surprised to see them. They haven't been around the past three weeks. The husband has been here alone, but he was somewhere else today. The scene outside my apartment was unsettling and unmelodic. It didn't feature a song about vacuum cleaners. There was just a disappointed pregnant woman, a running meter, a screaming child, and a working appliance. Try to make a song out of that.

Fork

I lost my fork. It was my last fork.
I arrived in NYC with a "set" of at least four or five forks. (I place quotes around "set" because none of them matched, all were strays that had been left by others or forked over by mom.) Two of the forks disappeared in October when I was getting takeout everyday. Dinners were eaten, tv was watched, and forks were accidentally thrown away. I w(sh)(c)ould have gone with plastic forks, but I sometimes have environmental protection anxiety (epa). By February I was down to one fork. At that point, I became determined to hold on to that fork. Everything was fine until last week. There must have been a distraction. Was it a car horn? Did the phone ring? Was I distracted by a pigeon doing the "hot plate" dance? Did a Modest Mouse song make me smile? I don't know, because I don't remember when it happened. Now I have no fork. Most items have become finger food. I sometimes use a spoon. As of now, I have plenty of spoons.