My no-kill trap worked beautifully. The only problem I have with it is that the dark green translucent plastic it’s made of is difficult to see through. You have to look really hard to see if there’s a mouse inside, and I think I might have missed my victory the first time I checked, meaning that I was bustling around the kitchen within inches of the trap while the poor mouse inside was scared out of his mind. Sorry mouse. I tried moving the trap at one point and didn’t feel the weight of them, so I figured it was empty, but they’re light that you can’t feel them anyway.

In the time we’ve had the mice, I’ve only seen two: a bigger feisty one I named Ben (after the movie) and a slightly smaller one that was more timid, called Baker (because he was in the stove). I released them into the (subsequently scrubbed) bathtub; Ben burst out and immediately began trying to climb the walls, while Baker cowered in the trap. Rob put them into a cardboard box for me, and we brought them to the park. When all was said and done, I didn’t have the heart to give them to Bra like I’d planned.

It looked like the city had raked all of the leaves from the park into an enclosed fenced area, and I released them there, figuring that the leaves underneath were decomposing and creating warmth. I didn’t want them to freeze to death.

Watching them go off into the pile of leaves was fun. Ben was all, “FREEEEEDOM!” and went hoppity-hoppity away, and Baker needed a little encouragement to get out of the box, and then he hopped away, too.

I am hopefully de-moused now, but I re-baited the trap just in case, and I’ll move it around the house for a few days.

I am so sick.

New Years eve, in the morning, I slipped on my bathing suit for the last time in a long time, threw on a gauzy skirt and tank top over it, and padded down to breakfast with the family in my flip-flops. Afterward I slathered myself with sunscreen and collapsed into a chair poolside in the hot sun, trying to soak as much of it in before I went back to New York, and the cold, and the snow. I went swimming with Rob’s super adorable nine year old nephew and his mom, and floated around on a blow up raft with my feet dangling in the water.

It took forever for our plane to pull up to the gate, and forever to get our bags and forever to get to our car. By the time midnight came around, we were almost home, and we listened to the countdown on the radio. Rob pulled over on the deserted side street, and we kissed quickly, said “Happy New Year!”, and continued on.

The dogs jumped all over us and we kissed and patted them all hello. It was a few minutes before either of us realized something was off: the furnace. The thermostat read 49 degrees, although the heat was set to 70. We called the landlord, the super and 311, but no help came until the morning. It was, literally, a “three dog night”, with the five of us huddled together as the temperature in our bedroom dropped even further.

We waited for hours the next day while they tried to fix it before we gave up and packed everyone up to go to Rob’s parent’s house. We eventually got a phone call saying it was all done and the heat was working again. We waited until after dinner to give it a chance to warm up and then drove home again. We we arrived, it was as cold as ever and the furnace still wouldn’t kick on.

“We’ll be back in the morning” we were told. “Something must have gone wrong.”

Yeah, no kidding.

“I can’t spend another night in this cold!” Rob declared, and I agreed. We packed up again and drove the hour back to Rob’s parent’s house, and the next morning, it was finally warm in our apartment.

Now we are so, so sick. Rob spent most of Friday laying in bed, full-on miserable, while I slumped on the couch feeling “not so great”, but ok. Carissa had come over to collect her stuff from house sitting, and we watched movies. Saturday I couldn’t get up until well after the sun had gone down again. I spent the day mostly awake, reading, and, at one point, getting attacked by a giant house fly that had survived January by living in my bedroom. He was HUGE, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. It was horrible. He kept flying into my face, and tried to steal my sandwich.

We have mice, too. I saw them, and not a “glimpse” of a mouse either; I stood by my stove and watched them boldly play on top of the burners and dirty plates and cups: their own mousey jungle gym. They didn’t notice me if I didn’t move, so I stood quite close to the stove, and watched them for a while. If they weren’t infesting my house with their mouseness, I would think that they are pretty cute.

I tried to set traps for them involving complicated series of wooden spoons, boxes, trap doors, cardboard tubes and soda bottle caps, but nothing worked and I kept being outsmarted. The score currently stands Mice: 2, Amber and Rob: 0 (call me a granola hippie douche bag if you want, but I’m not breaking their necks with normal traps). We’ll keep trying. When I catch them, I have plans to insert them exactly where they belong in the Circle of Life: I’m giving them to Bra the cat. Bra is pretty cool. He has gone from running away at the mere sight of me to scurrying out of the way cautiously and watching me from a distance, to not moving at all as I brush by, to letting me stand near and look at him from a few feet, to cautiously sniffing my outstretched hand, to letting me pet him with one finger behind an ear, gently, and just for a second before he gets too scared. We’re growing fond of one another.