The opportunity to start my blog has finally arrived...I have a story to share!

I came into work on Monday. It started out as a normal Monday. I attended the regular Monday morning meeting, made a glass of instant Nestea, and returned to my desk to read emails and develop a plan of attack for my ever present "to do list." Then everything changed and it's been different ever since.

I work in a cubicle farm. The marketing group is located in a little pod and we have walls that you could knock over with an electric Barbie car. You can always hear everyone around you if they're making noise, even when they're on the phone making a gyno appointment. I have one cabinet with three drawers that is stuck to the somewhat solid countertop that I slave over.

So on this Monday morning I hear my boss scream and slam one of her three drawers shut! I walk around the wall to find a breakfast bar in a plastic bag that has been ripped, and the only thing left of the breakfast bar is the wrapper. Strange - since my boss has been out of the office for two weeks and the breakfast bar was there when she left. YEP - it's official - a mouse has been in her drawer and ate her breakfast!!

After a three minute pause for the shock to wear off, I open my drawer. Sure enough - two half-eaten Powerbars, and little mice foot prints with peanut butter on the bottom trail across the CD cases in my drawer. AUGH!! Thanks to my wonderful Mom and her fear of mice crawling up her pant legs - I have the same fear!

I remember when we were little, if Mom found or heard a mouse, she would demand that we join her on the kitchen table until Dad could come home from work and kill it. Or when we would visit Grandpa & Grandma on the farm and she would jump and squeal when we threw stuff at her feet. (We were so mean.)

So here I sit. With my legs crossed and under my butt. Or up on the countertop if no one is looking. I'm too afraid to put them down because I think a mouse is going to run right up my pantlegs. And I've spent at least three hours trying to figure out how the little devil crawled up the back of the cabinet and into the drawer. And I threw out at least $10 worth of food. Granted, the Fruit Loops had to go because I couldn't open the box for fear of finding one of the little creatures.

Tomorrow I will publish the office newsletter with a reminder to all employees that they need to keep edible objects in tubberware at all times. We don't want to feed the little demons. If they starve, they can't come back.

If you have any good remedies for ridding my office of mice, please post! After I told this story twice at work I got the same response, "Yeah, they warned me about the mice when I started. Leslie sees them once a week." Evidentally I'm the only one that wants to kill the little devils...