Mouse traps, in a house with this many cats?

Part of our weekend plans will involve setting mouse traps in the house. We have four cats, yet we still have mice in the house. I find this disappointing. I have accepted that they will never do the dishes, vacuum, get a job or even pick up after themselves, but to not fulfill a role that is so clearly theirs seems like a violation of our social contract.

Two of our cats are outdoor kitties - Fingers and Friendly. Fingers is a Hemingway cat and has massive thumbs on his front paws and Friendly is, well, really friendly. One of these two regularly kills mice outside, eats the head and top half of the torso, and leaves the bottom half as a gift for us on the edge of the driveway. As G's mom says, it's nice that they leave the part with a handle. It is nice.
G and I guess that the outdoor hunter is Fingers. We may be wrong - if we were guessing between the indoor kitties, Stripe and Morgana, we'd guess Stripe and we'd be wrong. I've seen Stripe help in the hunt, but to my knowledge, only Morgana caught the three or four bats that came in at one house, and Morgana's brought me a mouse before. But not Stripe.
Of course, having seen the mouse in the laundry room the other day and then seeing Morgana stalking in there, I assumed I'd soon be dealing with indoor kitty gifts any time now.
No. Yesterday afternoon I stepped into the kitchen and had clear site into the laundry room, where Morgana lay comfortably in the doorway, watching the mouse scurry around on the laundry floor. She watched, but made no effort to attack it. Only once it had disappeared into it's hiding spot did she get up and look around, appearing somewhat dejected that the toy was gone.
If that had happened in the basement, where the outdoor kitties have access, I'm betting I'd have a dead mouse or two.
And Stripe? Stripe still hasn't shown any signs of even noticing a mouse in the laundry room. She's too busy lounging in front of the fire these days.

And hence, the need for mouse traps in a house with four cats.

English (pirate)

I switched my language preference on Facebook to English (pirate) some time ago, and am finally beginning to get the translations so that I can navigate again. For a while, that really slowed me down.

Now I've begun to look for English (pirate) in other places. G was setting up his new computer last night. When he got to the language section and was selecting English, I was asking for English (pirate) and was genuinely disappointed that the new Windows 7 doesn't have it.

Which makes me think that Apple should make it an option in the next OS. And they're actually cool enough to do it, IMHO.

I watched G fight with that PC and Windows 7 (he's still fighting with them, actually), and all I could think was "thank goodness I have a Mac." It's not perfect, but it's a good beast. Mostly.

But it's gonna be pretty cool when I can switch the OS language preference to English (pirate). Apple is possibly working on it already. If not, someone mention the idea to them. I want English (pirate).

Money

I am talking with G about what I'd like to spend some of the soon-to-be unemployment money on. He is listening and nodding, but interrupts me to say, "You don't have to justify any purchases with me, you know." I pause and say "Well, I'm maybe not justifying, per se - they're reasonable expenditures - but letting you know that I plan to spend money on these items. Like you let me know about buying the computer stuff." "Well, yeah," he says, protesting slightly, "But that's our money - Oooh. Right." "Right," I say with a smile, "It's our money."

Creme Brulée

I am covering the custard layer of creme brulée with sugar as he watches in anticipation.
"How long does creme brulée take?" he asks.
"Just long enough to make the sugar melt together to form a hard crust on top." I answer as I place the ramekin under the broiler.
"Ahh," he says knowingly, nodding his head. After a brief pause he asks, "How long does creme brulée take?"

New Posts Coming - Really.

I've taken a few posts down - ones that dealt with that sociopath, mainly - as so much has changed in my life in such a short time, that I keep forgetting that the sociopath was part of my life, and I'm not interested in remembering.
So, those posts are gone.
I've got a few posts that I'm working on, mainly about the roofing expedition of mine and G's, and I'll be putting those up in the coming week. You might be thinking that the roofing posts will bore you. Pshaw. You think the roofing posts are really going to be about the roof? No, of course not. They're about the relationship. We may have replaced the roof, but we built something way bigger in the process, and I don't think he or I had a clue we were going to do that. Let me just say this - if G and I weren't good for each other, if we didn't have a great relationship happening, we would not have survived the roof job as a couple. No way. *That* was intense. And probably the best investment of my time, energy and effort so far in my life. Good stuff.
I talked with G and we decided it works for us if I take up the November novel writing challenge, so hopefully I'll get through the first draft of the novel I've had knocking around in my head for years now. I anticipate blogging a bit more during that phase, too, since, if I have trouble working on the novel, I plan on blogging instead or at least progressing a few potential posts.
As you can read, it's my hope to provide a bit more content here by the coming year. It was my intent last year, too, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. I said that not so long ago to G and he said "No, but it did come down pretty fast." I'm just glad we weren't talking about the roof or our relationship at that time. I'd have had to wonder about that.

Ginger

From the bottom drawer of the refrigerator, I remove several fingers of ginger root.
“What’s that?” asks G, looking at the beige segmented cluster inquisitively.
“Ginger.” I reply, holding it out for his closer inspection.
“How long has she been dead?” he asks with incredulity.

Two Months

“Yeah, you don’t seem to be thinking ‘I wish she’d go home’ about me,” I say to G as we talk over dinner on the two month anniversary of my moving in with him.
“Oh, I think that a lot, actually,” he says casually, “but only when I’m at home and you’re not.”