Dead mouse or sewer?

First, Halloween 🎃 

Maren had been saying for months that she wanted to be an eggplant for Halloween. We thought she might change her mind, but she didn’t. She was a “scary eggplant, because I don’t like eating eggplant, so some people might think it’s scary.” 

On Tuesday she trick-or-treated in the building where her preschool is (which is a huge university building housing many offices/programs/departments), then on Wednesday morning she trick-or-treated with daycare in several buildings on the main university campus, and Wednesday night Jeff took her trick-or-treating around our neighbourhood. Her total haul was way more than a 3-year-old can handle. A large quantity disappeared before the next morning, without her noticing at all. 

We had plans to allow two treats per day, but realized that at that rate it was going to drag on forever. So yesterday we said she could just go for it, and eat as much as she wanted. I think she got overwhelmed pretty quickly, and started sharing her candy with me and Jeff. Yesterday was challenging behaviourally, but the candy was gone by bedtime, and we are all better off because of it. 

While Jeff and Maren were off trick-or-treating, I was holding down the fort handing out candy. There was an initial rush, then things slowed down a little, and then it got totally crazy. We had prepared with 280 pieces of candy, and about 250 temporary tattoos. At the start I was giving one candy and one temporary tattoo, and then when things slowed down a bit I was giving two candies and a temporary tattoo (and eating some of the candy myself). Then it got insane all of a sudden, and even going back to one candy per kid, we were totally out of everything by 7:45. I didn’t count, but we figure that we gave candy to between 230 and 250 kids, and there were a ton more who would have come after we ran out. Last year we had around 150 kids, so we thought we were prepared, but last year it was super cold and eventually snowed, and this year the weather was comparatively mild. Lesson learned. 

All through the past week, we were dealing with a horrible smell in our house. I immediately thought sewer, and called the plumber on Friday the 26th. He came that day, armed with the knowledge of our previous sewer problem, and after carefully looking (and smelling) around, concluded that we probably had a dead mouse. So we did all kinds of stuff to try to figure out the problem, including having our heating ducts cleaned and disinfected, thinking we could have a dead mouse somewhere in that system. It seemed at first like the duct cleaning had worked, because the smell temporarily went away, but within 10 hours or so, it was back. 

Finally, Jeff and I did some thorough, smelly, systematic investigation, and discovered that the smell seemed to be emanating from the floor below our downstairs bathroom, and then on closer inspection, specifically seemed to be coming out of a 100-year-old piece of broken pipe sticking out of the basement ceiling. Further calls to the plumber, and the problem appears to be fixed, as of yesterday. It seems that when plumbing was updated, some section of original sewer pipe was left connected to the sewer system, and not sealed off. We don’t know why we suddenly started to have problems, but it could be due to an animal plugging up the part of the pipe that comes out of the roof. I am cautiously optimistic that the problem is solved, but I will remain vigilant. We love our house, but hate the haphazard approach to renovations that various owners have taken over the years. We have had the kinds of problems that no one expects. But at least this one seems to be solved!

Mice

First, happy birthday to Jeff! We had a super low-key celebration involving going out for breakfast, and cupcakes in the afternoon. Maren wanted to help blow out the candles. 

Maren very sweetly spent $2.75 of her own money to buy a present - sidewalk chalk, which is definitely out of season, but Jeff and Maren went out and used it on our sidewalk anyway, with the effect of producing very cold hands. 

The not fun news of the weekend is that we have a mouse problem. And by problem, I mean a dead mouse somewhere in the walls or insulation or vents or some other hiding place in our basement furnace room. Which means that every time the heat comes on, it blows the smell of dead mouse throughout the house. Nowhere is safe. 

We know (or are at least pretty sure) it is a mouse because we have an infestation. We have caught 9 mice as of last time Jeff checked the traps. I can’t really do much because the diseases spread by mice are dangerous for developing fetuses, and not worth the risk. At least the mice are now confined to certain areas of the basement - they were elsewhere in the house, and we found and blocked the access points we could figure out. We thought maybe they had moved out, but then the smell started and we inspected the basement more carefully. 

We called one mouse control company and they were kind of useless, so I will be calling someone else tomorrow. But we don’t know what to do about the smell. It is terrible. We might have to have someone come in and basically tear apart the walls. At least it’s just in a mostly unfinished area. 

But here is something funny I discovered just before Maren’s bedtime:

It might just be me, but I think it looks like the doll is viciously attacking the skeleton, maybe sucking blood from its neck. Not totally sure how this scene came to be, but I do know that earlier the skeleton was the doll’s big sister, and they were travelling by train together.

Very October

This last week we have had some very nice fall weather, and I feel like we have been doing very fall things. Jeff has been putting up Halloween decorations outside, raking leaves, and we have been going for fall walks.

Yesterday was an especially October day with a trip to the pumpkin patch and stopping for cookies and hot chocolate at a little café on the way home.

Trip to the pumpkin patch:

Playing trick-or-treating (blurry hand is knocking on the door):

Maren is super excited for Halloween, and this morning was trying to negotiate how many days away it is. I told her it is 10 days away and she was trying to get me down to two days. I don’t think she ever quite understood that I can’t change the flow of time. 

Dress up

Maren likes playing dress-up these days. Fairly frequently, she wants to put on her “tutu dragon” outfit and dance to music.

The wings were an early birthday present from my sister and brother-in-law, and she calls them her dragon wings. We got her the tutu at a children’s resale clothing store. The mask came from a birthday party she went to, and she has drawn on it with markers. It makes for a pretty good outfit :-)

We are all pretty excited for Halloween coming up. We were pleasantly surprised last year by how busy our neighbourhood is with kids on Halloween, and while I have fun handing out candy at home, Jeff and Maren will be out trick-or-treating.

But Maren has not yet decided what she wants to be for Halloween. For months she was saying she wanted to be an eggplant, and I actually ordered an eggplant hat off of Etsy to help with her costume. But now she says she wants to be a witch or a bat or a skeleton or a vampire or a banana split. So we aren’t really sure yet.

Jeff’s friend Scott is in town for a conference, and yesterday Jeff and Maren and Scott went to two Halloween stores. Maren tried on a few different costumes:


I don’t think she will wear a mask, but the pictures are pretty hilarious. Apparently they put her in a hockey mask and had her run around the store saying “I’m scary, I’m scary!” I can only imagine.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is Thanksgiving here in Canada. We have had a lovely three day weekend, though all of us are sick. I got a second cold on top of my first cold, and Jeff and Maren both have the second cold. Maren was least hard-hit, but she hasn’t napped two days in a row, and that has caused a bit of lability. Possibly the cold is part of it as well.

We tried something new for our vegetarian Thanksgiving main dish - mushroom pot pie. It was absolutely a success. Maren didn’t eat it, but she didn’t actually eat any of the food we had prepared. This is normal for her lately, and I hear quite normal for her age. So we had mushroom pot pie, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, baby red potatoes from our garden, and roasted carrots from our garden. It seemed like a relatively simple Thanksgiving dinner, but everything was incredibly satisfying and delicious.

And here is an extra gratuitous Maren picture:

Happy Thanksgiving!