chipmunks at my doorstep

The final paper for my online class is due at the end of this week, and our daycare provider nicely offered to take Celia today so I could write it! I'm so proud of myself for getting it done in one day. So, today I have done the following: Wrote 10-page paper; run 3 miles in blistering heat; made muffins (mini sized for Celia, normal sized for me); sent a disgruntled email to my boss (to which I neither expected nor received a reply); did one load of laundry and put away; vaccumed the house; watered the plants and flowers; dealt with dead chipmunk. Wait a minute. Did I say "dead chipmunk"? Why, yes I did and I'm so glad you asked!

This morning I was typing away at my laptop, on page two of my paper.

 Along came my little China cat onto the deck. With a dead chipmunk in his mouth.

Clearly, his intention was to bring the chipmunk inside the house as a present for me. At the thought of this I started jumping around the kitchen exclaiming "Ew! Ew! Ew!" I ran downstairs and out the front door to try luring him off the deck with the chipmunk. He looked at me like I was some kind of crazy, and proceeded to lie down with his tail against the dead chipmunk, and just hang out like it was no big deal. I went back downstairs to find chipmunk-removal tools.

I don't typically talk to myself, but this was an occasion that called for it. So I paced the deck, the kitchen, and the deck again saying "Okay, okay, it's okay. I can do this. I can do this." But every time I approached that chipmunk to try sliding it onto the flowerpot to dispose of, its eye was staring back at me and it was all stiff and dead, and I just couldn't do it.

Meanwhile, our other cat Izzy had joined us on the deck. Izzy always has to join in the fun, so he sat right next to chipmunk and puked up a nice, steamy pile of cat food. Nice... At this point, things were such a mess that I could no longer consider just waiting for Chris to get home and deal with it. With a little more talking to myself I quickly got the chipmunk into the flowerpot and threw it in the woods. I cleaned up the cat food. I will, by the way, spare you the picture I took of the steaming pile of cat vomit next to the dead chipmunk. That was only to send to Chris, so he could see the kind of stuff I deal with when I'm having a "nice day off all to myself".