To continue for a bit on my theme from last entry - the joys of living out of home - I would like to recount the saga of the mouse.
When I moved in to Maison d'Erskineville, the guy whose room I was moving in to while he jetted around the world for six months hadn't quite left yet, despite the fact that he was no longer paying rent and I was living in his room. That is, his stuff was in our dining room in boxes and he was sleeping on the floor. He was having trouble with visas and stuff like that so we were cutting him a lot of slack, but despite all of this, it was becoming increasingly annoying having boxes of clothes, food and other things (?) in our eating space, looking ugly.
We couldn't do anything, so we just were patient until he left. Meanwhile, one morning I came downstairs and saw that someone had taken a bite out of an apple and then left it to go brown overnight, which was strange. Then I saw that it was really more of a gnawing than a bite, and that whoever it was who had a taste for apples also had left some little droppings all over the kitchen top. I left a note, shuddered, ate and went along. An SMS later in the day from my housemate saying something along the lines of "ARGH MOUSE ARGH" confirmed suspicions (I have never had a mouse problem before! I wasn't sure!).
Being a good housemate, I bought a series of traps and poisons that afternoon, as did another of the housemates, leaving us with enough mouse-killing devices to wipe out the entire mouse population of our suburb. We set a complicated maze of traps and baits and went to sleep.
The mouse was smart. He left us more little droppings for quite a few days. We despaired. We thought about buying a cat - I was all for this idea, being a cat person and desperately missing my long and fat cat at my parents' house - and then realised that none of us could look after a cat for a cat's lifetime. We thought about stealing a cat and returning it once its job was done. Decided that was immoral. We laid more bait and hoped for the best.
One night, after midnight, we were sitting in the living room, and thought it would be funny to go and look at the kitchen in case we saw the mouse himself. So in I walked, quietly, and flicked on the light switch. In a split second I was up on a chair, holding my skirt and screaming like a Victorian damsel. The mouse jumped off the kitchen top and scurried away. Everyone laughed. I hyperventilated.
Eventually, the droppings stopped. Victory! Also eventually, the boxes and the excess housemate were removed. And funnily enough, the nibbled baits were all in the corner where the boxes were. The lesson learned: don't leave your crap in our dining room, a mouse will come and live in it and our kitchen will become a health hazard. Nevertheless, I still want a cat.
I do find ways to satisfy this urge, though. On my way to uni, I like to leave a little bit earlier so I can walk through Macdonaldtown and say hello to all the cats on the way. There's Biscuit, who is white with spots of different colours, who sleeps in the garden beds, and Felix, who is black with a white patch, who rolls on the concrete, and Rothko, who is a lovely beige colour and rubs legs.
Last night, in fact, I came home at about seven to find my housemates grinning at me with a kitten asleep on the couch. Er, what? "I made a friend," says one of them, innocently, explaining that she had just come home and this little guy was mewling outside our door, and enjoyed cuddles, and then just came inside and made himself at home. And that she had fed it - apparently we had cat food left over from when someone dressed as a 'crazy cat lady' for a party (of course, right?). So I enjoyed some cat company for a few hours until he decided to leave us.
I apologise that this entry is about my affection for all creatures feline. I miss my cat at home. In other news, I have so much work to do in the next month that I am not sure if it is OK to even leave the house for any reason other than to get supplies of food and toilet paper. I am writing the equivalent of an Honours thesis this semester and will probably do the same thing next semester. It may have been smarter to take only three units but that would have meant I would be at uni for much longer, and I do want to finish this year.
The other thing that I am dealing with now is work. I do a few things for money, but mainly tutoring in English. If you can get in to this, then do, because the money is good and the work is not too stressful. Sometimes your school will help and recommend you to students who ask, and sometimes it's about who you know.
I do something like seven hours a week of tutoring, which can get a bit much, factoring in travel and all. The only thing about tutoring is that it's quite a mental effort, as opposed to mindless cafe or retail work. I'm feeling quite overwhelmed at the moment and really have to divorce myself from the HSC stress of all my students. But you know, I live.
So here are some things you can take from this:
- Don't let mice live in boxes and poop on your tables
- Get cat loving where you can
- Plan your uni degree properly and be aware that the further you get, the bigger the workload
- Realise that work and uni must be balanced.
Peace out.