and it continues!

The WEEKEND O' FUN continues.

Last night, after I got home (early, because I had work today) from my cousin's bachelorette party, I settled in my (admittedly not the cleanest lately) room to check some mail, read some stuff, and go to bed.

A shadow passed through my vision on my right. Very quickly. Skitteringly, I thought.

Nah. We haven't had any bugs. I'm nuts. I go back to reading.

Something skitters the other way. I jump. My feet curl onto my bed. I convince myself I'm imagining things. Whatever it was doesn't seem to be corporeal, it flits like dark air instead of a real bug. I'm in that defensive, don't-move-a-twitch mode, staring at my bookshelf, where the skittering appears to have come from. It takes five whole minutes, but there's no more noise, and my muscles limber up a bit. I type again.

This time it's DEFINITELY there. Something moved. A paper, a something. It MOVED SOMETHING. The sumbitch MOVED something, it HAS a body - the black shadow goes back into my closet.

I jump onto my bed but I'm silent. I watch the closet, waiting, trying to convince myself out of it again but I can't. Going downstairs means I have to cross in front of the Closet of Doom so I just stay put.

Mike was downstairs. He was watching the very end of the movie, and I think that if I just stay like this for twenty minutes, then I won't feel guilty about being a total wussorific piece of womanly limp spaghetti and calling my roommate, who is the same size as me and afraid of the most microscopic of spiders ("IT'S SATAAAN!" he yells whenever he sees one), to help.

Except, staying like this poses problems. The tiniest of movements in this old, settling house, freaks me the hell out. There are piano concertos coming out of the television downstairs but I can't hold another beat.

"Miii-iiiiike," I called like a whiney, whimpery sheep.

"Yes?" he answers, having heard this tone before.

"There's sooomething uuuuuuuuup heeeeeere!" I bleated.

He's there in footsteps. He sees me standing on the bed and I can see the muscles working in his face as he tries not to laugh, and as he investigates. The pair of us usually upturn the regular sexist myths; he has track lighting in the bathroom while I'm usually the one who remembers to take out the trash. He loves to cook and clean and I love to read my newspaper and do my crossword. I'm work-obsessed and he's usually on the couch watching a movie when I come home, late and dogged. He has two dates and there are all-night talk-and-cocoa sessions - I have two dates and just shrug as I walk out of the room, leaving him shouting questions about the guy in my wake. He bakes, I fry. He has the scented candles, I leave coffee rings on the tables.

Not last night. No. Last night I was on the bed, immobilized, looking for all the world like I was in the middle of a kung fu move, while he got a flashlight and started creeping around in my closet.

"You're afraid of SPIDERS," I reminded him, because his bravado was making me look quite bad. "And you're fine with this creepy crawly cockroach thing?"

"Creepy crawlies don't bother me," he said as he started throwing shoes out of my closet and slithering around on his stomach. "Just spiders."

"They ARE creepy crawlies!"

He didn't answer. He silently got up, and walked out of the room. He returned with a tupperware and quietly put it aside, so I didn't even notice it. Then he started taking all my shoes, and anything not hanging, out of the closet. The debris pile is starting to look like half-off sale at Macy's.

"What are you doing?" I asked as he got into my closet and started peering at the wall.

"Looking for the mouse."

"MOUSE!"

Mike chuckled. I danced on my bed. "Amouseamouseamouse WHY A MOUSE?!"

Mike spoke very evenly, and slowly, and calmly. "He's about an inch long. I saw him on your shoes."

"MY SHOES!"

"So we're just going to take - everything - out - and we'll find him."

"FIND HIM! He's in my CLOSET and you can't FIND HIM!"

Mike takes out one shoe rack. Then another. There's nothing on the floor. He gets on his hand and knees and utters his first frustrated word of the night.

"F--er, where did you go?"

I'm still on the same spot on the bed. I will not move. No, nosirree, it will not happen. That effing mouse is either in my closet or in the shoe sale outside it, and if I move he will ATTACK ME.

We had some mice in my mom's house once, and I made fun of my mother to no end. She acted just like this - screaming, whining, shuddering itchy crawlies and psychological crackheadedness, praying for divine intervention - all over a mouse. A tiny baby mouse, I jeered. What will he do to you, ma, I asked her. It's a MOUSE! Come on, you're a strong woman and he lives on cheese, come ooon. She shook her head. "I don't want him crawling on me in my sleep!" And she shuddered again, like something had just run up her spine.

And now Topo Gigio - the automatic name of any unwelcome house mouse - is skitting around in my room and I'm on my bed shouting "I AM MY MOTHER I AM MY MOTHER I AM MY MOTHERRRRR!"

Mike is dying of laughter about now. He has taken everything out of the bottom of my closet and he still can't find Topo. What he DOES find is a moth larva.

Yes. Moth larva. Make the night even better, why don't you?

So now I must find everything I own that is made of nonsynthetic fiber - which thankfully is only about three things but try and FIND those three things - and check for tiny little stupid non-whole moths who are eating through my clothing.

It's a fantastic night in Melissaland.

First things first, and the first thing is to smoke out this little cheeseeater like some mozzarella. It's been a half hour. I'm still on my bed. Mike is still staring listelessly at the wall, looking at the lack of holes in my closet and wondering where the hell Topo went. I'm now doing the foot-to-foot dance while simultaneously trying to scratch every part of my back, where surely little spiders and cockroaches and things are crawling, because there must be SOME reason I'm so itchy all of a sudden.

Mike throws his hands out, then puts one finger to his lips very suddenly. "Shh," he says.

I stop mid-hop. I look like Ralph Macchio in the Karate Kid, one foot in the air and the other halfway into a scratch.

Something makes noise. Imperceptible, tiny, little-claw noise. I whimper.

Mike, on the other hand, goes back to his calm, methodical, move-slowly-so-Melissa-isn't-alerted-that-something-is-very-wrong-here stance.

He starts taking the things hanging in my closet out of my closet. One by one. Shaking them. Laying them on my bed.

"IT'S ON MY CLOTHES?!?!?!?"

"...it was."

"It WAS?! Where is it NOW?"

"...I don't know."

"OH YOU DON'T KNOW, GREAT!"

He sees movement. He stops what he's doing and reaches for the tupperware, but now this tupperware is long forgotten in the all-you-can-fit shoe department store that is now next to my bed, and by the time he finds it, Topo has absconded again, no doubt with some lovely piece of clothing to make a house with. Damn smart mouse.

When half the clothes are out on the bed, Mike starts looking from the bed to the closet. I can tell what he's thinking by now. He's thinking that maybe Topo is in the half of the clothes that is ON my bed, near my feet. And he doesn't want to tell me this because he knows exactly what will happen: I will do a half-flip over my wrought-iron footboard, crash into the new wooden floors, and kill myself, therefore scaring off Topo, which would be the real tragedy, because now Mike's on the hunt. He will get the little rodent. HE WILL.

So I decide it's time for me to not say I know all this. I stay in wax-on-wax-off mode.

All of a sudden Mike springs into action, doing the little "Where's the tupperware, where's the tupperware!" dance where he gets a wild look in his eye and runs in a frantic circle only to find the tupperware is exactly where he left it, grabs it and FLINGS himself to the floor.

"GOT IT! GOT YOU SUCKER!"

He gets up. The upside down tupperware skids across my closet floor. I see the shadow of Topo. I squeal like a little girl while at the same time DANCING on my bed.

"Now what?"

Oh. Good point. We're going to need to get this sucker out of the house.

"I need you to do something for me," says Mike.

"Something that involves getting off this bed?" I ask.

"You can do it."

"*whine*"

I follow instructions downstairs...de-bedding and skirting around the closet like it had an infection...and got a piece of cardboard. Mike carefully inserted it under Topo, clamped his hand underneath and the two of us were happily running out the door.

When he took the cover off Topo, outside, Topo BOUNCED away, like he was a little jumping bean. I stood on the porch doing the kind of dance where your head goes back and forth, side to side, while your hips do the same, and you keep shifting feet - like a schizophrenic twist - singing "Mike's my HEEERO he's my HEEERO he's a HEEEERO!"

The neighbors really like us here. Really.

It was 2:30 a.m., and going back inside only entailed continuing the slow comb through my clothing, the reorganization of my closet, the vaccumming and Lysol-ing of my room and the slow, tired crawl into bed at 4am. Not a bad night.

The weekend of fun. Weekend-of-fun.

Thank god it's over. I can't stand this many good times.

(PS, it's been brought to my attention it's really hard to comment here, because my spamblocker has to be intense and a lot of natural conversation strings get lost - you can comment here if you're really itching. ITCHING! ACK! No more of that!)