Two Dead Mice and Other Miracles

I haven't been very good about blogging lately.

I'm working on it.

We've had some pretty awesomely miraculous things going.

For example, we had a laboratory bill that occurred in July. We haven't been able to pay it until now, due to our rather tight budget. However, we had spoken to the people there, and they had assured us that there would be no late fees.

Even though we have had enough the last couple of weeks, we were going to save up our money and pay off the debt to the laboratory after our taxes came back. It seemed like a good plan, and we both felt good about it.

However, two weeks ago, I started getting a really strong impression that we needed to pay that bill immediately. I looked into our finances, saw that we would have enough to pay the bill out of our savings. I spoke to Grig, and we decided to use that money to pay off the bill. On December 12, I paid the bill online, and our final debt was closed. That was quite a relief for a number of reasons, but I didn't understand the full repercussions until today.

Tonight, as I collected the mail, I noticed a letter from the laboratory place. Thinking it was a receipt for our payment, I opened it up to be greeted by the following words:

*Your account is past due.

*At this time your account has not been placed with a Third Party Collection Agency. 

*Failure to pay the past due amount will result in referral to a Third Party Collection Agency and potentially affect your credit score. 

I quickly went online to check our balance and was relieved to find that it was now zeroed out. I then looked at the date on the past due invoice. The date on the invoice was December 11. So, the day after they sent out the past due invoice, we paid off the full amount.

That is not a coincidence. That is a miracle. At this time, when we are trying to pay for a new home, any impact on Grig's credit score may have been massive. I am so grateful that I followed the prompting to pay off that debt.

We couldn't have paid it any sooner than we did, but the timing was perfect. If it had been any later, it may have really negatively affected us.

I am a very grateful soul tonight.

Here is another story for you:

We've been seeing signs of mice in our laundry room. I first noticed it when I saw that the corner of the puppy food bag had been nibbled through.

After that we started seeing some droppings on the floor. Luckily, it appeared that they only were living in the laundry room, but then, we saw a baby mouse with his eyes barely opened in the kitchen. As soon as we could, we bought mouse traps.

They were just the old wooden kind, but I took a piece of dog food, surrounded it with peanut butter, and used the peanut butter to place it in the trap. Grig then placed the trap against the wall.

This happened at about 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. We then went about our activities.

At about 2:00 a.m. (yes, we were up late, but Saturday nights are Grig's only night off, so we sometimes don't got to bed at 8:00 p.m. like normal), I decided to go and check the trap.

To my surprise, not only was it sprung, but two mice had been caught and killed by the little wooden trap!

I didn't take a picture, but if you want to see approximately what it looked like, here is a link to a picture. https://retirenicaragua.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/img_0472.jpg

The picture really was almost exactly what happened to our mice. One had been caught by the neck, and the other had been caught on its face. Evidently we're not the only ones it has happened too.

Grig came out and dumped the mice, cleaned up the trap a bit, reset it, and put it back in the same spot.

The next morning, I heard it snap again, and came it to see that it had caught another mouse. It was in its final death throes, so I left it alone until it finished dying. Grig was nice enough to dump that one two.

So, with one trap, we killed three mice in less than 24 hours. The trap has remained in the laundry room ever since, but we haven't caught anything else, or seen any new signs. Hopefully that's all of them.

As far as the home search is going, we have one home that we are looking at pretty seriously, but we're not sure yet. We're going to look at it again on Monday. I really like it. I hope it pans out!

I hope to put up the fourth episode of Dragon and the Wolf soon. The animation has been done for months, but it has been difficult to find time for Grig to voice-act. Hopefully I can have it done before Christmas.