Home, sweet home

Proving that karma gets ya every time ...
My sister and I consulted the day before I was to drive home for the weekend and she came up with the perfect plan: Wait until mom leaves the house and then we will put up the Christmas tree for her. At first I was really irritated. How dare Col so blatantly go after mom brownie points? Why didn't I come up with the idea first? Then my sister shared her pure evil, twisted genius logic: Umm, Kathleen, would you rather put the tree up while mom is home or while mom is NOT home? Duh. We had evil intentions, but we'd win the brownie points anyway.
First sign that our plan would not go well: My mom, supposed to be leaving the house to go see a play, had gotten the date wrong. OK, fine. We'd still put the tree up, but we'd lock my mom in her walk-in closet for the duration. (OK, not really, but you get the point.)
And then I had to open my big, dumb mouth. (Surely I was attempting to win *extra* brownie points.) I suggested to Col that we go into the crawlspace and try to solve the mystery of the missing d-CON. My mom had put some of the mouse poison in the garage closet above the crawlspace. Lo and behold, she checked it sometime last week and discovered the box was completely empty. And when we opened the closet door Sunday, there were tufts of insulation everywhere. Not a good sign.
So, fully equipped with a broom, dustpan, garbage bags and flashlights, we made our way down into the crawlspace. It smelled like death down there. Mouse death. I shined the flashlight across to the other side and saw two corpses. Don't come complaining to me that this picture is out of focus. Give me a break. I was in the depths of hell with dead mice, people ...

And if that wasn't enough, there was poop everywhere. I mean everywhere. On the floor, in the insulation, on the ledges ...

Oh, and there was a third dead mouse. The only good thing about the experience was that I somehow persuaded Col to pick up all three of the dead bodies. I figured she has kids and a dog so she's used to this kind of thing. (Not so much the dead bodies part, mind you. I was thinking more of the poop cleaning.)

The fun didn't end in the crawlspace. (Oh, did I mention that we were down there exposing ourselves to the hantavirus for an hour and a half???)

Of course, my mom would not let us step foot in the house with our infected clothes and shoes. She made us strip in the garage and gave us some really fashionable digs ...

The pants were about four inches too short on me and Col got stuck with the pink and white sweatshirt and grandma's pants. And we both got some really lovely sandals to wear.
All of this put us in the perfect mood to put up the Christmas tree. We weren't able to lock mom in her closet, so she was there to instruct us *how* to put up a tree -- you know, because we've never done it before ...

And what happened to the poor angel on top of the tree pretty much summed up the day ...

I love my family. (And I love that my mom is so computer illiterate that she will never find this blog post.)