"Pink"

I love pink.  Not the plastic pink in the girls' aisle in a store, but pink flowers and pink cheeks, pink awnings, pink lipstick, pink puppy bellies, pink, pink, pretty pink.  It's a living, happy color -- which has very little to do with what I've been up to lately other than the pretty pink scarf I tie on my head before descending into the pits of hell.

You may remember that I mentioned I've been on a dust elimination quest.  This has helped my sinus issues, but it didn't solve them, and I was running out of things to dust.  Then, a ceiling tile fell down in the basement.  I noticed a hint of an odd, indefinable smell and studied the old, crappy ceiling.  I've never liked these acoustical tiles, but I never felt like getting into the mess of tearing it down.  I don't spend any time in the basement other than wash clothes and store things anyway.

The tile on the floor looked disgusting.  I mentioned this to a buddy who reminded me of my plumbing disaster a few years ago.  He suggested that the mold in the basement may have gotten into the ceiling.  Ugh.  I went back to the basement and studied.  On my friend's advice, I put on a face mask before reaching up and pulling down another tile.

Mouse poop!  Eeks!  Disgusting!  My house has been defiled!!!

I knew I had a mouse a few years ago.  It got into the dog food and gnawed on a couple of my sweaters, but I found its corpse before I got around to murdering it.  Mouse problem over, at least that's what I thought.

I decided the ceiling had to go and started pulling down more tiles.  There wasn't a little mouse poop, there was a lot of it.  Eeks, eeks, yuck, ew!  Since it was trash day, I loaded up the bin and stopped for the day.

I woke up the next day obsessed about mouse poop.  Could it really be the thing that has been making feel lousy?  I looked it up online and found out it can actually kill you.  No wonder I feel so icky about the situation.  I pulled the rest of the ceilings down, loaded up the trash bin again, and bagged the rest where they are piled in the driveway awaiting next week's trash truck.  Included in that trash is mammal poop, mouse nest, and a bird skeleton.  I feel like I can't wash my hands enough at this point.  I've bought plastic gloves and disinfectant to wash everything I own.

In an odd way, I'm actually feeling good about all of this.  First and foremost, because I'm getting rid of something disgusting, but also because it feels symbolic.  I sometimes think of my house as a mirror.  The first floor is everyday life.  Upstairs is higher ideals.  The basement is subconscious.  I didn't know I had mouse poop and a dead bird in my subconscious, but I'm glad to discover it and eliminate it.  And in an odd synchronicity, my current art therapy painting recently made me aware of the disgust I feel towards some people in my past.  It feels like cleaning mouse poop is cleaning my brain too.

I have a lot of scrubbing to do.  I think I'll play some P!nk to make the chore go happily.