This Is From Last Year, But I Don't Think I Posted It Here

On Saturday, shopping local, I rented a chain saw to cut down invasive Mayday trees. It didn't work, nor  did the replacement. They wouldn't front me a chainsaw for the next day, even though I said, "I've spent all day driving back forth, I'm not going to start this project at three o'clock."
Today, I went to the gym, ran some errands and then went to Home Depot where I rented a chainsaw and realized, it was THREE O'CLOCK. It turns out, though, things go much faster when the chainsaw actually works. As the trees came down, my testosterone went up. I felt so manly.
Such a nice feeling (if the manly even have feelings).
A shame, then, that it didn't last very long. This next is a bit of a Public Service Announcement.
Leah reported a noise that might have been running water, if any water was running, which it wasn't. It really was more of a rustling noise coming from behind the dryer. We were worried it might be a mouse since we'd had them this winter before running a trap line throughout the house. We really don't have the staff to deal with mice right now because May is the beginning of our annual ant infestation and that has to be our focus. We shifted the dryer and cautiously looked behind it. No mice, although it's amazing how much stuff accumulates back there. I wonder if the FBI ever looked behind the Hoffa's dryer. Nothing, and then another rustling noise, maybe from the dryer vent hose? Ambre is taller than I am so, she undid the clamp and I took the hose and looked down it. Nothing. So, then feeling a little more confident that nothing was going to burst out at me, I undid the bottom clamp and looked in the hose from the other end, and nothing there either. As an aside, I think I'm as brave as the next person, especially if the next person is a hysterical eight year old girl standing on a chair screaming . And it isn't that I find mice terrifying, it's the jack in the box nature of looking for them that builds so much tension. Cheerfully, now that I was sure that the rustling was just a natural phenomenon probably the settling of the hose, I suggested turning on the dryer with the hose off of it. Which is when a cloud of lint, a dime and the mouse blew out the back and crashed into the wall. We were both stunned, but I quickly recovered and the mouse quickly  died of his injuries. So the lesson, and the PSA, is, if you have a dryer vent, make sure there is a flap on the outside to keep stray animals from wandering in.