Sarah Nigbor

There’s nothing like a looming graduation party to be held at your home to light the fire for the “honey-do” list. Except I’m not nagging Hubby to do anything on the list; I’m challenging myself to give a fresh coat of paint to almost every room in our house.

So far, I’ve done the main bathroom, the kitchen, the dining room and this weekend I completed the sunroom. Since being put on Humira (an injection that blocks inflammation) for my autoimmune disease three months ago, I can’t believe how my energy and motivation has bounded back. While the pain is still noticeable, it’s not nearly what it was. Which means I get to drive my family nuts again with home projects. With Shane and Lincoln at a baseball tournament, Ethan recovering from wisdom teeth surgery, Dawson at an open gym and Carolina pretending we all don’t exist, I happily painted Friday night until the stroke of midnight. I was up and down the ladder to get to the peak of the vaulted ceiling with no mishaps. I was in my glory, painting uninterrupted, listening to my Dateline podcast, and swigging iced tea on my breaks. Before I knew it seven hours flew by and I finished the first coat.

The next day I woke up and started painting the minute I had coffee brewed. The second coat was done in a mere two hours and then came vacuuming the corners of the room and putting all the furniture back in place. For this I needed the help of the strapping teens in my household.

So tonight, I settled at my desk in my beautiful, fresh pomegranate red sunroom, ready to watch the Ellsworth Plan Commission meeting. It was an important meeting, talking about the site plan for Ellsworth’s proposed Kwik Trip. As the meeting progressed, I looked around at my beautiful handiwork, basking in the peace and contentment of hard work done. Until an ear-splitting shriek pierced my reverie. Luckily the meeting was almost done and thank God, my microphone was muted.

I turned around and saw Carolina standing on a footstool, prancing and shrieking as she pointed toward the patio door. The dog was going nuts, frantically pawing at the door’s track, trying to get at something. I stood up, grabbed the dog’s collar to move him aside and was met face-to-face with a terrified mouse. It looked like a cartoon mouse with buggy eyes, whiskers and a shocked expression. I seriously thought it was a cat toy. Until it moved.

I bellered for Ethan to bring me a set of tongs as Carolina screamed louder. The mouse ran back and forth in the track, the dog baroo-ing and chaos ensuing. Ethan took his sweet time getting the tongs as I kept moving the patio door back and forth in the track to trap the mouse. Finally, the tongs were in my hand (so much for chivalry) and I plucked the little mouse from the door track as he wiggled helplessly in the air, the dog acting like I was a climbing tree. I carried the wriggling mouse out the back door and flung it into the yard, where it scampered toward the woods in fear. And the cat slept through the whole thing. Looks like I need to have a chat with our Chief of Mouse in the House Control.