ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

RAT IS BACK

My roommate’s mom spent the night on our couch this weekend, and this morning my roommate told me that her mom had mentioned hearing ratty scrabblings during the night from inside the couch. So today we got the idea to remove the fabric covering the underpinnings of the couch in an effort to retrieve the rat. “Stop,” said my boyfriend. “It’s been several days since he was able to come out at night, so try the trap one more time, then if it doesn’t work we will cut open the bottom of the couch tomorrow night.” It seemed hopeless, since I’d left the trap out every night for days on end and with no results. But dutifully I pulled the cushions off the couch again and baited the trap with a piece of freshly baked chocolate cookie and a half teaspoon of mashed potato (+ a dot of gravy). Then I turned out the lights and went in my room to read time value tables and listen to music. He must have been very, very hungry and thirsty because only about an hour later I heard a loud SNAP as the doors of the trap fell down. FACT: rats heart gravy.

I wasn’t going to let myself hope very much, because he’d set off the trap once before from the outside, but when I went out to check I found a terrified and very skinny and miserable looking Pippin huddled inside against the bait tray. I put him in an aquarium by himself for the night before I reintroduce him to the regular rat cage, because he had gone all tharn and seemed so small and tiny that I felt it would be unfair to make him meet a new rat tonight. So I left him plenty of fresh fruit, pellets and water, and turned over a shoebox for him to hide under, and flipped off the light again. What a load off my mind.

In less pleasant news, I got a court summons for the 22nd regarding us not mowing our lot enough (I think) that said I’d ignored a summons sent via certified mail for the 1st, and if I didn’t show up to this one I’d be arrested on bail of $500. I am pissed off. I never got any notice to begin with. And we got that taken care of eons ago. And my roommate, who is a joint tenant owner of this property, received no summons and is not mentioned anywhere. It said I’d been charged with a misdemeanor. I’m just annoyed as hell about this, because if I’d actually received their summons I would have honored it, because however it may sound at times, I do actually have respect for the law and its ability to put me behind bars for any old reason. So I’m going to phone up tomorrow and try to find out what the hell is going on. I was unspeakably upset about this earlier, but I think I’m going to drop the subject for now. Just thinking about it again is making me upset all over again.

The new girl did a no-call-no-show yesterday. I’ll explain later. By the way, she told me a while back that she makes more money than me and I think this is very unfair because I have seniority and would never do something like no-call-no-show, ever. It’s a fireable offense to for employees to tell someone else what they are making, but it happens anyway. And my decreased morale is the reason we’re not supposed to talk about how much we make.  I’m not going to tell on her, anyway.