Mouse Wrecker!

This afternoon before work, I wanted to go for a walk. The kids had been a handful throughout the day and Sam said that she wanted to stay home. I thought it would be a good idea to take the kids and give her a good half hour of quiet. So I loaded up the kids in the stroller and began my walk.

I got about a block and a half from home and my phone rang. It was Sam.

“Where are you!?”

“I’m walking with the kids. Why?”

“You’ve got to get home NOW!”

“What’s going on? What’s the mat…..”

“There is a mouse in the house! Maizey had it in her mouth! It jumped out and it is still alive!”

“Where is it now?”

“Under the couch! Just get home!”

“Where are you at?”

“I’m ON the couch. I’m not moving until you get here!”

So I turn around and walk the block and a half back to our house. I’m not letting the kids go in the house and I tell Sam to come out. I walk in to see our cat, Maizey, staring at the couch. This is a good sign, as it tells me the mouse has not moved anywhere else in the house. I go to the kitchen and begin to look for something – anything – that I can use to throw on top of the mouse in the event that I can get it out in the open.

I found a large Tupperware bowl and see myself as Tom (above) being able to trap this thing in the bowl. I begin to push the couch from against the wall. I do this is slow movements, as I want the mouse to stay sort of in that area. If he goes into another room, I know I’m in trouble.

Little by little I move the couch. No mouse. Finally, I move it one more time and the mouse goes scurrying across the floor. There is no way for me to get the dumb thing because the couch is in front of me. I see it scurry under the table in the corner of the living room. So I slowly walk over there. I know I have got to keep this little pest over there. I have a flashlight and I am looking all over the place, but don’t see it where I thought I did.

At this point I feel like Mr. Jinks from the cartoon. “Where is this little Meece?!”

As I look under the table, I see the back cracker that Sam has. It is meant to sit on the floor, and you lay on it to crack your back. Your back goes on this little “hill” with massagers on it.

I see the mouse sitting under the hill and begin to think of how to get the Tupperware bowl over the top of it. I laid on the floor with the bowl in one hand and the flashlight in the other. I start to slowly move the back cracker and think I can force him out the back and I can slam the bowl on top of him. I am just about to get him and he shoots out from the front, which I should have expected, but didn’t. I give out the “man scream” and watch it scurry across the room and toward the mesh baby gate.

I start looking around and cannot find that little bugger to save my life. It is entirely possible that the thing is now in the basement or elsewhere in the house. I’m furious. It is then that I notice the small run that sits next to the mesh gate. We put our shoes on it. There is a fabric square container that Ella’s shoes are in that sits on the rug almost up against the wall. The rug has a little “bump” in it against the wall. I got behind it at took the flashlight to see the mouse’s tail and rear end hiding in between the floor and the rug. Now I got it where I want it – Trapped!

It is too close to the wall to use the bowl. So I have to think of the best way to get this thing. The best way was not the most humane way. I begin to look around to see what I can get to hold this mouse. I flashback to another time I was in a similar situation and grabbed the 2 foot level my grandpa gave me.

I know that I can slide this against the wall and down on top of the rug. My intention was to kind of hold him there until I could get him under the bowl. I pushed the level down and now had the little guy by the tail. Sam hollered in through the screen wanting to know if I had caught him. I told her I did, but was not really sure what to do next!

She asked if I needed her. She had loaded the kids up in the car and was about to head off to get ice cream or to her mom’s for the night (if I didn’t catch the thing). She came in the house and I asked her to go het the barbecue tongs. She did and I was able to pick up the mouse with them.

I walked outside with the little thing and was going to toss him into the yard. My wife yelled to not let him loose close to the house. So, I walked out toward the road and let it loose there. Apparently, the road was still too close to the house, even though it was clear that mouse wasn’t coming back to our place.

Tomorrow, I will head to the store to get some of that stuff to place around the house that repels mice and rodents. I will probably also buy a few traps, just in case. One thing is for sure, from now on, the only mouse trapping I want to do will be with a board game!!

Indian Summer Walks

We’ve really had a few nice days this week. The temperatures haven’t been too cold and the sun has been shining. I guess this is what some would call an Indian Summer. According to the great Wikipedia (LOL): An Indian summer is a period of unseasonably warm, dry weather that sometimes occurs in autumn in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. Several references describe a true Indian summer as not occurring until after the first frost, or more specifically the first “killing” frost. My grandma used to say that this was the time of year when everyone got sick. In a way, she’s probably right.

Personally, I am loving the fact that we can still get out and walk the neighborhood. I told Sam that I love the sounds of the leaves crunching under my feet as we walk. Most of the trees in our neighborhood are bare and the leaves cover the lawns and sidewalks. However, there are a few with leaves that continue to hang on.

The kids love just being outside. If it is just me and the kids, they usually will both stay in the stroller. This allows me to walk at a faster pace than if Ella is just walking along next to me.

The past couple days, we’ve been able to go out and walk the neighborhood as a family. We try to time it so that there is enough time to do a full walk and I can still get showered and ready for work after. Ella has wanted to just walk/run in front of us. We have to be very clear that she stay close when we get near an intersection. She has to hold our hand when we cross the street. We also make he stop if we see a car getting ready to back out of a driveway or coming down the street.

This afternoon, she was full of energy. Sam was pushing the stroller with Andrew in it and Ella was running in front of me. “Look at me go, Daddy!” “Come catch me, Daddy!”

I’m far from being in shape to do any kind of running, but I did do a quick sprint and pass her up on the sidewalk at one point. After I was ahead of her a house or two, I slowed, turned around, saw her laughing and running toward me and I attempted to catch my breath! LOL. “Run some more, Daddy!”

I told her I had given her my one “run” of the day!

I love seeing the joy on her face as we go on our walks. Of course, halfway through, she’s run so much, she wants me to carry her! The only hope I have of her letting me put her down is if one of the neighborhood dogs is out, or one of our friends is outside with their kids.

One good thing about carrying her on my shoulders – the heart rate goes up a bit and my Fitbit likes that!

Here is hoping that the weather allows for more walks before it gets too cold to do them!

Stereotyped?

We have a gal at work who talks about the funny stuff she watched on this TikTok App. Another friend will occasionally send me text messages with a link to some TikTok video. When this happens, I will watch it on the web and not in the app.

Well, recently, someone sent me a link to something and it said, “Would you like to open this in the App?” Well, usually this makes things easier. The app was already on my phone, I just never used it. So I created an account and it suggested friends from Instagram or my contacts who had accounts. Once I finished setting up the App and following a few friends, I watched the video that was sent to me and I closed the app and that was that.

The next time I opened up the app, I was bombarded with videos of big breasted women in revealing outfits, videos suggesting some sort of sexual act, or scantily dressed women lip synching to movie lines. It was ridiculous.

The next time I saw my co-worker I asked her, “Just what the heck kind of videos do you watch on that TikTok!?” She told me she gets animal videos, silly videos, and stuff like that. I told her, “I swear, all I get are boobs!” She laughed and thought I was joking. I opened up the app and literally kept swiping from video to video and she couldn’t believe it.

She asked if I had liked any videos yet. I told her I hadn’t, because all that had popped up were ones like the ones I showed her. Occasionally, a friend I follow would pop up with a video, but the majority of the stuff coming up was that trash. She told me that once she started liking videos the app’s algorithm started showing her more of the stuff she wanted to see. She said, “It probably sees that you are a 50+ year old male, so boob videos come up!”

So … I have been stereotyped? The algorithm is set specifically to show all 50+ year old males these types of videos? Yeah, no thanks. This app is one that will be deleted. I don’t need to see this stuff.

What bothers me the most is wondering what kind of things the algorithm is picking to show kids! I don’t even want to think about that …..

Halloween Recap

Halloween 2022 is now behind us. The day started with me and the kids getting our flu shots. I, of course, waited until the last possible minute to get mine for work.

As we drove home, one of the neighbors had put up a HUGE inflatable pumpkin. Ella saw it from the window, and despite the fact that it was raining, insisted that we go down to look at it. Thankfully, it was only a couple houses away. When she got up close to it, she couldn’t believe how big it was!

Sam took last night off from work and we were all able to walk the neighborhood to trick or treat last night. Trick or Treating in our city started at 5pm. We had napped late in the afternoon and by the time we had dinner, we didn’t get out in the neighborhood until around 5:30.

Despite it being a bit misty, the temperatures weren’t too bad. Last year, it was SO cold I brought Ella home early. This year, she was gung ho to do the whole neighborhood – and she had a BLAST!

This was the busiest Halloween I’ve seen in our neighborhood. There were kids of all ages, too! I loved seeing the families who dressed up together. One of our neighborhood families dressed as characters from the Wizard of Oz. It was awesome.

Ella wanted to go to every house! She loved seeing the pumpkins lit up and all of the costumes. What was really sweet was that there were neighbors who recognized us from our daily walks and they would give her extra candy.

We did let Andrew venture out on foot once or twice, but he was running all over the place, so we wound up having to put in back in the stroller. He didn’t seem to mind, however, as that is where much of the candy was …

I was impressed that the kids did the entire neighborhood! When we got home, we took Andrew’s costume off because it had chocolate all over it!! We got in the car and drove to Sam’s mom and dad’s. They had special treats for them when we arrived.

It was almost 8 when we got there and on the drive we talked about how foggy it was! It was truly spooky. It wasn’t that foggy by our house, but it was crazy foggy on the way to her folks. Perfect for Halloween. The fog lasted well into the morning, as a friend posted this picture of downtown Detroit:

When we finally left Sam’s folks to head home, we both decided we were hungry. I veered off the diet as the only thing open was McDonalds. The kids had chicken nuggets, Sam had a Big Mac, and I grabbed a Filet of Fish Sandwich. It was probably not the best thing to eat that late, and probably explains the weird dreams I had, but overall, the day was a great one with the family!

Blogging Milestones

Can you believe that this is my 800th Blog Post?! I know I can’t! I can only hope that the blogs I have written are of interest to you in some way or another. Thank you for following!

800 Blogs. That is one of two milestones that the title eludes to. What is the second? Read on.

Towards the end of September I started to see some of the bloggers I follow mention “Blogtober.” It was a topic that spawned a lot of conversation. It also seemed to bring on a lot of anxiety.

From what I was able to piece together from the various posts, the premise is to write something every day for the entire month of October. Some people were hosting their own versions of Blogtober and had posted a list of what to write about each day. Others had themes. One blogger had a book related topic every day of the month, while another focused on Halloween topics.

The idea intrigued me and I looked at the various lists of topics and debated jumping on the bandwagon. I then noticed how many people mentioned that there was a lot of stress in having to post every day for the entire month. Others stated that they tried to do it last year and dropped out because it was just too much.

It was then that I realized that I had yet to EVER write a blog every day for a month. It’s never happened. I never had that much to write about. So I decided to see if it could be done. Would I truly have something to write about every day? I didn’t want to say anything about this personal challenge, just in case I did not do it. Life certainly provided me plenty to write about last month – both happy and sad.

I can’t promise that I will continue to write something every day, but I was glad to know that I actually did it! It can be done. It took a bit of planning, but I did it. That is good enough for me.

Dressin’ Up For Treats – Halloween Memories With My Kids

This week, as I looked for a few Halloween photos, I stumbled on some that I had totally forgotten about. My oldest son is now 20 and my middle son is 15. That’s a lot of costumes to try to remember.

Sadly, I don’t have many pictures of their past costumes, but the ones that I do have are worth sharing, even if the quality isn’t so great.

One of Dante’s first costumes was Superman! I am almost positive that he is wearing one of my DJ hats here. Of course, he is appropriately eating chocolate!

Dimitri wound up wearing the costume, too. Even when it wasn’t Halloween. Here he is at the mall whooping it up!

Keeping with the Superhero theme – Dante’ loved being Mr. Incredible one year. He never seemed to want to keep the mask on. However ….

When the costume was recycled for Dimitri – he loved the mask!

Dimitri’s first costume was this Lion. I took this picture with my Blackberry in 2007. Boy, did the camera phones suck back then!

That same year, Dante’ chose to be a Pirate. I’m sure there was a hat that went with this costume, but he didn’t want to wear it.

The boys the following year – Dr. Dante’ and golfer Dimitri. Who knew that Dimitri would actually be interested in golf years later?!

I really thought that was such a cute costume.

One of my favorite “team” costumes! Scooby Doo and Shaggy.

Dressed up in 2012 for Boo Bash – Officer Dimitri and Graduate Dante’

From there, most of the pictures are lost until a recent picture of the two of them at a Halloween party.

Pretty nice job as Marty and Doc from Back to the Future. I think this was like 4-5 years ago.

Ella’s first Halloween – 2020. She was our cute little unicorn.

Last year, Dimitri was here and helped our little ladybug around.

Andrew was less than a month old, so he stayed nice and warm inside on Halloween 2021. This year, however, it is a different story!

Sam did a fantastic job picking the “team” costume for them this year! Ella is perfect as Beauty (Princess Belle) and Andrew is awesome as The Beast! This picture was taken a couple days ago before they did a Trunk or Treat down the block from us. That was a dress rehearsal and tonight, they will be collecting candy from the neighbors.

Happy Halloween to you!!

The Power of Radio

84 years ago tonight: On the evening of 30th October 1938, Orson Welles broadcast his famous dramatised production of the H G Wells novel The War of The Worlds on CBS American radio.


The play started conventionally enough with Welles reading the first part of the novel more or less verbatim. The play then reverted to what appeared to be a typical evening of dance band music which was suddenly interrupted by a newsflash of a mysterious object falling to ground in New Jersey.

More newsflashes followed in increasingly dramatic and hysterical fashion and eventually, as legend has it, an entire nation panicked thinking that they were being invaded by Martians. The following morning the newspapers were full of condemnation of Welles for misleading the nation (read that line again, such irony!).


The size of the panic has since been hugely disputed, but the newspapers did their job and Orson Welles became famous overnight.

He Scared My Pants Off!

In a recent blog, I mentioned local horror host Sir Graves Ghastly. While I liked watching his show, there was another host who I connected with on a more “childish” level – Count Scary.

The Count (and his cool twin brother, Val Scary) was portrayed by Tom Ryan. Tom was a radio guy who worked at the Big 8 (CKLW) and at WOMC in Detroit. I listened to Tom on the radio growing up.

Count Scary hosted a few B-movies on WDIV, one of which (maybe the first) was in 3-D. You could pick up 3-D glasses for watching at the local Wendy’s restaurant if I remember correctly.

I remember our family went camping one weekend and the Count was hosting a movie. I made sure that we brought a TV and while my family was out at the bonfire, I was in the tent watching Count Scary.

His specials would feature music from local artists like the Bus Boys, Bob Seger, and Nolan Strong. There were always clips of him doing things locally and mingling with local celebrities. I remember a clip of him with Detroit Tiger manager Sparky Anderson. In the clip, the Count get’s bonked on the head by a baseball.

He always seemed to be fighting with the people producing his special. His “fine boys” he’d call them. The one thing I loved was this little “stinger” sound effect that would play whenever he’d say something. He’d say “This movie will scare your pants off!” followed by the spooky stinger.

The movies he showed were usually far from scary. However, one time he showed Dracula starring Jack Palance. During the showing of this movie, they cut to Count Scary after a scary scene and he has lost his pants. To me, this always makes me laugh. Listen for the stinger in the clip. Man, I wish I had that clip when I was on the radio – I loved that thing!

I want to say I was about 12 when Count Scary first started hosting movies on TV. When he was still at CKLW, he put out a 45 record for Christmas. Naturally, right from the get-go, the “fine boys” louse it up.

The flip side featured Tom Ryan as Val Scary. I don’t have the physical 45 anymore, but it’s good to know I can still listen to this silly thing on YouTube.

It’s been over 20 years since the Count has been on TV. I think his last appearance was in 1996. All these years later, there are still times I will say, “Ooooo, that’s scary!” and hear that stinger in my head!

I’m Just Going to Leaf This Here …

Just a few days ago I posted pictures of the colorful trees in the neighborhood. All it took was a windy rainy day this week and many of those leaves have now fallen. As you walk through the neighborhood now, the ground is covered in yellow, red and orange while the trees are more and more bare.

More leaves on the ground meant more leaves to play in for the kids … and me! We certainly have had our share of fun jumping in the piles in the yard. It’s funny how different the kids are in regards to the leaves. Ella wants to be surrounded or buried in them.

Andrew, on the other hand, really doesn’t like to be in the pile much. I tried to get him to sit in the pile a few times, but once he is in there, he wants out! He’d rather pick them up and throw them.

It was just as fun for me to get down and play in the leaves with them.

Of course, it didn’t take long for the two of them to start throwing leaves on me!

The wonderful thing about these moments – they don’t cost a thing. I hope that when my kids look back at these blogs, they will remember with joy the fun that we had just being silly together.

The simplest things can bring about a smile and happiness – and this picture is proof of that:

Never be so busy that you don’t jump in the leaves!

Friday Photo Flashback

It’s time for another Friday Photo Flashback. While I was looking for Halloween costume pictures, I came across a photo I have never seen before of my brother.

From what I can tell, this was taken at my parents house and has to be fairly soon after we moved in. I am almost positive that it is our house because I recognize the yellow curtains on the basement windows.

I don’t know what event was being hosted in the basement, but it seems to be some sort of gathering. Maybe it was my communion party or something. My brother is holding flowers, so maybe it is a birthday party, I really don’t know.

Most of the paneling is still up in the basement at my folks house, though the basement is quite darker now as people rarely go down there. The man standing on the far left looks like my mom’s dad. He is standing in front of what used to be the “bar.” My dad had bottles of alcohol on there and those white mugs, which can be seen in the pitcure.

On the floor, to the right of my grandpa is a case of Towne Club! You used to go there with the crate and pick the flavors you wanted. It was a staple at all gatherings growing up. It’s awesome to see that in this picture.

I do not recognize the desk next to my brother at all. I don’t know where it came from or even how long we had it. It probably wasn’t long, as I don’t recall it being down there at all!

The craziest thing in this picture (beside the pants my brother is wearing) is the stereo on the desk. WOW! It is obviously a turntable with a tuner and the 8-Track player!! Whether or not this is the 8-Track recorder my dad made tapes on I cannot be sure. It is probably just a player. I wish I could zoom in closer on this picture because I’d love to see it in more detail!

What a find this picture was! The one thing I have to wonder is how much detergent my mom had to use to clean the stains on my brother’s pants!! It looks like he was playing in the dirt somewhere!

Ah, the 70’s!!!!