for sure. It started last Thursday night when I was going to start the dishwasher up. I went to the kitchen and opened the drawer to reach in to get the tablets for the dishwasher. Right there, shocked by the light was a rat measuring about 6 inches long without the tail. I slammed the drawer shut and screamed. In that order, no less. There was no way this was allowed to continue… so off to the utility room to grab mops and my bamboo gardening stakes, door to the garden open and GG positioned on one side of the kitchen to keep it from coming further into the house.

With a highly elevated blood pressure, I pulled the first drawer open. No rat. Then the drawer underneath that one, no RAT. Ugh. So then we had to go all around the kitchen island, cupboard by cupboard. Coming back to the original drawer, I could see there was a hole in the back of the cupboard where the pipes go down from the sink. Aha, that must be where it disappeared to. In the meantime, I saw what attracted the rat… my recycle bag of Nespresso capsules. So now I have an overly caffienated rodent to consider as well.

Only thing to do is bar the access. So, I delegated GG to writing messages in Dutch to exterminators so that someone would come Friday. No way was I spending the weekend with this kind of access. You might wonder what were all my pets doing during this? Sleeping under their various blankets, COMPLETELY undisturbed by the idea that this might be considered failure to perform their job responsibilities…

Friday morning, a really nice technician  came and took apart the base of the kitchen island and spent some quality time blocking the access point and taking other precautions. It was quite handy, GG called City Hall and they transferred her directly through to a line that translates to “Lose Your Beasts”and this is how 30 minutes later, we had him in house and taking things apart. He did tell me that he thinks rats are disgusting and never quite gets used to them, even in his line of work.

After that excitement on Friday, I needed a weekend of non rodent related experiences so Friday night we went to the Escape Haarlem with GG’s friends. It’s based on the WWII history of the building and Haarlem. It was very clever and hard to solve – we did though. Saturday afternoon, I went by to visit Little C since she was due to be discharged Sunday. She was up and about, looking good. I didn’t expect it to be otherwise but it is nice to be able to hug someone and not worry that you might accidentally disconnect them from something 😉

Sunday afternoon was time for brunch and we might have agreed to set up a jam session/brunch for next month. Details to be figured out…

Oh, and really what I was trying to do all weekend was distract myself because late Friday I got a message that HR wanted to talk to me on Monday. That’s not really ever a good message if you have ever worked in the US 😉 So, we met Monday afternoon at the end of the day. I have been offered the job to run the National Empowerment Plan 🙂 We still have to agree to terms and then I will need to sign a new contract but the job itself is mine, if I want it. Do I ever!!! It will start 1 April so as not to leave my current manager completely in the shit.

So, that’s kind of where things are today 🙂

P.S. Cedric and Dylan, Happy Birthday (Monday). Here’s hoping that 41 is a year to remember – after all, it started out with you being here with us all so it can only reach total awesomeness, it is going to be YUGE. 😉  love you!