Of mice and broken things

I cried about mouse poison this morning.  Well, more exactly, about the need to purchase mouse poison.

I heard it in the ceiling last night - that horrible skittering sound - and I talked myself out of believing it. I convinced myself it was grandma's dog upstairs.  I popped in earplugs to block out ambient noise, and turned up the Grey's Anatomy re-run I was watching on Netflix, and I convinced myself it was okay to sleep, and there wasn't something skittering around in the ceiling above my head, and that it wouldn't come through the pop-out ceiling tiles that my grandpa shoddily put in place decades ago, and land on me while I was sleeping.

It worked, too, until this morning when I heard it again, just before heading upstairs and discovering that the dog was outside.

And then I called my mom and I cried.  Because I needed to go out and buy mouse poison.

More exactly, I cried because this seemed like the last straw in a week that had been filled with hard stuff.

Two different good friends are facing major illnesses in parents right now.

Others are facing major illnesses of their own.

My nursing semester hasn't started off anything like what I was hoping, and I'm playing a waiting game, getting more and more stressed about getting in the hours that I need before the deadline in early December.

It just seems like the last week has been full of hard things in my life, and in the lives of people I love.

And now there's a mouse in my ceiling, making my already ridiculous living situation just that much crazier.

The mouse was the last straw.  I ended up leaving the house, walking to a local bookstore, and browsing until I'd managed to calm myself out of an anxiety attack.

Then I walked home and put mouse poison in my ceiling, and convinced myself that earplugs are a great invention.

I'm drained - so drained that I couldn't even make a decision about what to make for dinner.  I let a friend on facebook do it for me. (I'm going to make a turkey burger and some steamed veggies).

I'm drained, and I'm sad, but I did manage to fight off an anxiety attack today.  And I'm going to have a healthy meal, and then maybe go for another quick walk in the sun, just to gear up for bed.

So I cried over mouse poison, but really, I cried over broken things - a broken world, broken bodies, broken organizations, and a broken house.  And then I got up and did something about the one of those things I could tangibly manage.  And that made me feel just a little bit better as I walked home from the bookstore, and from buying mouse poison and tried to pray.