Dairsh a moush in the housh! Ahhhhhhh!

We live in an old house.  It was built in like, the 40's, I guess.
Apparently, you can tell that sort of thing by looking at the foundation, and calibrating the difference between the square footage and the size of the bathtub.

That's actually a lie.  I made that up.
I don't know how to tell how old a house is.  I guess look at the tax assessment, records, deed, or whatever.  I'm too lazy for that.  I remember the person who comes out to tell you how much your house is worth...... the appraiser.....she said it was built in the 40's.  She would know.  She's been around since then.  
The important thing is not how old the house is, only the fact that it is old.  Because you know what happens when your house is old?
Two things:
1.  You have to renovate shit.
 And it's hard, because people have been covering things up in your house for like (I can't even do math......wait.....) 70 years.  Or at least 50, since it wouldn't have needed anything for awhile.  I counted 6 layers of wallpaper in the kitchen.  SIX LAYERS!  What the hell?  Ughh, what a pain. You know what happens now if you try to take wallpaper down?  The plaster behind it crumbles.
We got rid of all of that crap in the kitchen, and it's freaking awesome.  The kitchen, in addition to having 6 layers of wallpaper on top of crumbling plaster, had a layer of tar paper......yes, tar paper, over a tongue-and-groove wainscoting and the wall above it.  It could have been saved, but the glue or tar from the tar paper ruined it beyond repair.  We tore it all down and put up drywall.

I am SO not looking forward to renovating the rest of the house, but we only have 2 rooms left. And the ceiling in the master bath. That is, until we decide to tackle the laundry room and the other bathroom.
What is known as Tyler's bathroom is the first bathroom which was put in this house.  We can only assume it had to be fit into the limited space that was once a laundry room, or closet, when the owners got indoor plumbing.
The point is, the bathroom is very cramped and small.  The toilet is rightnextto the wall.  You can't even sit on it normally, because it's too close to the wall, and too close to the tub in the front.
Recently, I learned the tub is weird as well.  It is 6 inches shorter than any tub you can buy these days.  When we go to redo that bathroom, it will be a complete renovation, down to the studs, with a lot of hope that we don't run into anything crazy.  I want to completely redesign the room and put a stall shower in, move the toilet, build a more convenient linen closet, and enlarge the doorway.  Unless we can find a way to combine the laundry room and bathroom, which would be awesome.  We can't simply leave it like it is and replace the tub, because the space is too small, and I don't want to custom-order one.  But that renovation is years down the road.  I don't really even want to think about it.

Hopefully, I have sufficiently explained the oldness of my house.  Stone foundation, creepy cellar, crawlspace.    Did I mention the cellar?
 It is uber creepy.  I mean, zombie, vampire, dead and buried, rotten-corpse-stalking-up-the-stairs creepy.
 It is also wet down there.  If it rains enough, the sump pump can't keep up and the whole thing floods.  I've seen it as high as the bottom stair.  Which is probably 6-8 inches.
Once, I took a video of water coming into the basement via the west wall.  It was pouring in.  I haven't seen it do that since, but it was crazy.
Water in the basement leads me to the second thing that happens when you live in an old house.  Stand by for....

2.  Mice.  They come into your house.
Also other pests.  Creepy camel crickets, big beetle looking guys, spiders, and twice, large cockroach-looking bugs.  They freaked me out, and I didn't look very closely, but I can't even deal with that.
The biggest problem is mice.  They eat your stuff, poop on your stove and in your silverware drawer, and make you think you're crazy, because things aren't where you left them and you hear noises in the kitchen.

Schaefer House, The Mouse Chronicles, by Brandye L. Schaefer
We have lived in this house for three years, almost.  The basement has always been wet, and mice have always bothered us.  You see, there are holes where water can get in, therefore, there are holes where mice can get in.  They need 1/4 inch to gain access.  That is all.  Only a tiny space.
To further allow smelly mice access to our house, the basement door has a crack at the bottom, and no rubber piece to block air and varmints from coming in.
They, the mice, pretty much have free reign here.
We have a colorful history of discovering, chasing, and catching mice in this house.

The first time, we had seen mouse poo in the kitchen.  Eww, right?  So, we had to get some traps the next day.  Kory and I were in the living room that night, and we heard something making noise, like clanking dishes, or silverware against glass in the kitchen.  Kory went in, saw a mouse on the counter, got the broom and whacked at it.  The mouse flew up in the air and landed in a drinking glass.  He covered the glass, showed it to me, and wanted to know what he should do with it.  I felt bad for the mouse, so I told him to let it go outside.
Guess who came back?
I think we caught that one in a trap, set with peanut butter, in the junk drawer.  Ohhhh snap!

The next time I saw a mouse, I was in the living room, sitting on the couch, reading a book.  Kory was in the shower.
Mice are stupid, and they figure, once it's quiet, it's cool to come out and eat crumbs.  Crumbs which were left on the floor by your children.
As I was reading, I kept seeing movement in my peripheral vision, and I though we had a ghost, or I was crazy.  Eventually, the mouse moved far enough into my field of vision for me to identify it.  I was shocked!  It was in the middle of the living room, munching on a crumb, and it didn't even know I was there!  Soon, it noticed me and fled back underneath the couch.  Kory was in the bedroom, so I crept in there, and told him to watch.  Sure enough, the mouse, who must have been starving to risk being out in the open like that, came out again to nibble crumbs.  Then he saw us watching him and ran back under the couch.  I went for the broom.  I gave it to Kory and kept the dustpan.  He moved the couch and went after the mouse with the broom, then he moved across the room.  The mouse ran at me, and I scooped it with the dustpan----directly at Kory.  It hit the wall and then ran into Tyler's room.  It was under the toy box.  We woke poor Tyler up digging for the mouse.  We found it finally, and it ran behind the piano and disappeared.
Some time later we caught that one in a trap too.
Another time my sister Amy was over, and we got food to go from Funderburk's.  When we were done, we put the styrofoam cartons in the bag, tied it shut, and set it by the trashcan to be taken out in the morning.  Later that night, when things were quiet, Kory heard a rustling in the kitchen, and there was a mouse in the bag trying to eat leftovers.  One again, the broom went to work.  We didn't need a trap for that mouse.  

More recently, we have been accosted by mice on three separate occasions.  We hadn't had any mice for a long time.  Then it started to get rainy.  Mice want to be warm and dry too.  So they came in our house, through the cracks in the basement and underneath the cellar door, into our kitchen where it is warm, dry, and has crumbs for the taking.
The first one got on the counter and befuddled Kory.  He kept asking me if I moved a bread crumb on the counter.  He said, "I know that piece of bread wasn't back there last night.  I think we have a mouse."  The same thing happened two nights in a row, and I found poop on my stove.  Mouse confirmed.  Then, I was going to the bathroom, and that mouse came racing into the bathroom, tore ass around the corner, saw me, skidded into a sharp turn and ran into the furnace closet.  Have you ever had a mouse give you the bum's rush when you're on the toilet?  Damn!  I do not recommend it.
This is also the asshole mouse who stole my York Peppermint Patty.  I was sleeping, and a tiny noise woke me.  It sounded like someone knocked something over on my end table.  It actually sounded like my seam ripper hit the side of the glass dish it was in.  I knew we had a mouse, so I went to investigate.  I picked up a flashlight and went into the living room.  I was expecting to see a furry fiend on my table, but there was no one in sight.  I went upstairs to make sure it wasn't Tyler, and he was sound asleep.
I had left half of a peppermint patty on the table, in the wrapper.  The wrapper was folded over and secured underneath the patty.  I figured Tyler would eat it in the morning.  I touched the wrapper, thinking maybe Tyler had been down there, even though it defied logic.  The wrapper was completely empty.  It hadn't even been moved, and it looked exactly as I had left it.  I just about fell over.  That damn mouse ate it all!

I went back to bed, and I told Kory what had happened.
His reply:  "At least he'll have fresh breath."
My husband, the comedian.

So the next night we got a trap and put some peanut butter on it.  Kory snapped his fingers in the trap.  I snickered.

We were sitting outside after the trap was set, and we heard a noise in the kitchen.  SNAP went the trap and the mouse was caught.  Kory got the broom, because the mouse wasn't dead, and its foot was caught.  It was trying to run away with the trap, while its body parts were stuck in it.  Broom!  The mouse lost a leg too.
Into the trash can he went.  I almost barfed.

We discovered another mouse within two weeks.  Set a trap.  Peanut butter.  They LOVE peanut butter.  This was the mouse who was terrorizing our house.  It was running around in our bedroom.  It was snuggling up with Tyler's stuffed animals in his room.  I found poop underneath them!  He got caught.  It was late, and we hadn't been in bed five minutes when the trap snapped.  The mouse was stone cold dead.  The trap came down on its head diagonally, under on eye, across the top of its nose, and above the other eye.  We only saw it twitch.  Threw him in the trash.  He was a biggun too.

The last one we had wasn't terribly exciting, except that it ran under the bed when my mother-in-law was here and it scared her.  I think Kory saw it run under the bed too.  Caught it in a trap, not two hours after it was set.  Boom right across the head.  Dead as a doornail on contact.

I got nothing today for poop and boogers.  Except mice poop in my house when they get in, and I hate it.  And even they can't resist coming into the bathroom when I'm in there.  Assholes.