Grad school: 1, Courtney: 0

It's only been 2 weeks, and grad school is kicking my ass. Here is a listing of things going on in my life, dumb stuff I've done, lessons learned, etc.:

1. It's Saturday night and I'm home in my pjs, doing some of the hundreds of pages of reading for next week. Farewell social life, see you in December.

2. Also, I spent all day in a required drug/alcohol/sexual abuse seminar. Informative, but extremely depressing. Also, it's SATURDAY.

3. The topper: I've been with the rugrats for a grand total of 9 hours, and my body is already breaking down. I'm sniffly, exhausted, and achy. This does not bode well for the rest of my semester.

4. Now, I should tell you the good things. Yes, there are good things! Although my school seems fixated on multiculturalism (apparently they think we're all a bunch of homophobic bigots), my classes are generally great. I'm learning a lot and find the readings engaging, despite the fact that I feel overwhelmed by it. And student teaching is a blast. Kids are awesome.

5. In the interest of full disclosure, on my first day of student teaching I almost killed a child. Well, it wasn't quite that dramatic, but she fell off a chair while sitting right next to me, and I only caught her after she slammed her face into the table.

6. The thing I learned about 2 year olds this week: they're really adventurous, but lack motor coordination. So they think they can do stuff, when really they can just flail about.

7. I fell up the steps the other night. I'm talking full on, sprawling across the steps between the 2nd and 3rd floors of my building. It was so loud that when I opened the door to my apartment, Lauren was sitting on the couch cracking up, because she heard the commotion and just knew it was me. The irony is not lost on me: I am not unlike an uncoordinated 2 year old.

8. Update: mums are thriving, as is Osama. I've lost all interest in killing him.

9. I found a small dead bug in my falafel today, and kept eating it until I found another. I'm beginning to question my judgment.

Well, that about sums up my life. The photo doesn't have to do with anything in this post, but a while ago, our can opener broke and we used one of those pointy-poky kinds to pry open cans. This was the result which I found awesome.

Indoor gardening is messy. So is grad school.

So I've officially started grad school. This means a number of major changes, including the fact that I will probably be too busy for hilarious situations to even occur in my life, let alone have the time to blog about them. But I promise to do my very best!

Check out my mum planting experience below. There aren't too many options for where to do activities that are normally done out of doors, so I used the living room. It was quite the project. But check out the finished product! They've bloomed quite nicely since that photo was taken.

Mousegate 2009: An Update

Another week has passed, and still no bloody dead mouse corpse.

For some reason, the exterminator only calls and schedules appointments before 7am, which is an hour and a half before I'm normally awake. But I've been patient because I've come to the conclusion that Osama is a genius and only a professionally trained mouse-hit man can end him. Last week I woke up at 6:45am along with Lauren and our futon-guest, Anna to anxiously await the exterminator's arrival. Right before he arrived, I got up to turn the air conditioner down and felt tiny terrorist claws run over my feet. Needless to say, I screamed like a child.

The exterminator--let's call him Mr. X--arrived and told us that if we wanted, he's 'spray' in the kitchen. From the respiratory mask he wore, we assume whatever it was, the spray was extremely toxic. Mr. X then told us that he'd put packets with poisonous cakes in them around the place, near the traps, in our bedrooms...everywhere.

So now we have traps rigged to snap with the slightest pressure (covered in Skippy peanut butter, because apparently Osama isn't classy enough for organic almond butter), some kind of biohazardous spray in the kitchen, and poisonous treats in baggies sporadically thrown around.

In essense, our apartment is the opposite of baby-proof. We might as well have live frayed wires next to buckets of water and littered the floor with used hypodermic needles from an AIDS clinic.

Funny thing, at one point, Anna and I saw Osama squeeze out the front door through a tiny hole where our door runner doesn't quite reach. Optimistically I thought maybe he'd indulged in one of the deadly bagged treats and left to die. But then I heard him rustling about and spotted him run under the fridge earlier today.

Lauren and I had a crazy moment last night after we heard Osama, when we were perched on the futon meowing at him. If only we weren't allergic to real cats.