Mice, Breasts and the Eighties

Spent yesterday morning on the phone chatting to Sister N, among other things trying to explain facebook, trying to stop her laughing at something pretty stupid that I’d done during the week and unfortunately working out that I will not be visiting NY in November. On the upside I will not have to deal with any mice! She claims during all her years in NY and now Jersey (my sis lives in Hoboken, just across the river from Manhattan- this makes her and hubby B and T’s, aka Bridge and Tunneler’s because they have to take a bridge or tunnel to get into Manhattan, a status looked down upon by true Manhantanites, or so I’m told) she has never had to deal with a rodent problem.

Recently however mice have started turning up in their apartment after a nearby building was gutted in order to be renovated, disturbing some happily ensconsced mice nests. Sis spent almost a half hour relating hilarious mice stories, mainly along the lines of six-foot two hubby screaming like a girl a lot at the merest hint of mouse activity. Their last encounter with a mouse was a few weeks ago, when hubby was convinced that the poison the exterminator had been laying out was not working well enough, and bought a couple of glue traps. For those of you who don’t know, glue traps catch the mice, you know, with glue, but don’t actually kill them. I’m also told that glue traps are rather cruel, but sis and hubby were at that stage fed up with having to disinfect everything every time they’ve found a little mice poop (they’ve just a had a baby, so they’re rather paranoid about cleanliness).

Cue sis and hubby on couch later that night after laying the traps (too afraid to sleep in their own bed, apparently convinced that a stray mouse likes to crawl across their bed when they’re asleep) hearing the forlorn cries of one lone mouse obviously caught in the trap.

Sister: Go get it
Hubby: No. It’s too dark
Sister: What do you mean? Go get it
Hubby: It’s too dark! In the dark it’s kind of scary, when there’s sunlight, I’ll be able to handle it

Unable to argue with this irrational logic, my sister lets it go, and the two of them proceed to spend the next 7 hours listening to this mouse squealing “Eeee ee eee eee!”. Morning eventually comes around and hubby claps his hands together and goes “Right, ok, I’m ready.” He goes and suits up with rubber gloves, and as he’s preparing to grab the thing, my 3 year old niece who is watching this mouse catching ritual rather intently exclaims “Daddy! I want to see the mouse!” I am waiting impatiently for my sister to send me a pic of my brother in law and my niece lying on the kitchen floor staring at the poor, rather cute looking mouse stuck under the stove.

Anyhow, my brother in law eventually picks up the mouse and shoves the thing in a plastic bag. They are then not quite sure what to do. People have suggested that they to drown it, hammer it to death- or in the case of the exterminator, to simply put the bag into the rubbish bin where it would eventually die a slow painful death. Unable to do any of these things, hubby takes the little bag down to the garage, places it behind one of the wheels of their car, and backs over it. End of little mouse. I pray I will never have to deal with rodents.

In other family related news, a couple of weeks ago I walked into the lounge room to find my brother with his books strewn everywhere, ostensibly doing uni work while watching ‘The Sopranos’.

A scene in Bada Bing (the strip club) occurs

Brother (exuberantly): Titties!
I laugh. My brother looks at me like “what’s so funny?”
Me: Imagine if you said that every time you happened to see breasts
Brother (quite seriously): But I do
Naturally, I shake my head.

Contrary to his statement, my brother who unbelievably recently turned 21, does not actually yell out ‘titties’ every time he sees some naked boob action, but for whatever reason, because I was there, he thought it would be funny to say something stupid. Around the same time, a friend sent me an email saying “Darling Jen, I love you. Thank you of thinking of my breasts. I’ll call you Tuesday. Love and more love, X”.

What am I getting at? That reality dating programs suck. Stay with me here. Dating programs make me want hurt the television, which is really pretty unfair considering that it has done nothing wrong. They are just plain wrong, and that’s before you throw in the dubious versions with stunt casting of gay men, pre-op trannies, false millionaires and hack tennis players referred to as “the Poo”.

As I have said to many people, reality dating contenstants should be banned from having “deep and meaningful’s”, and claiming that they “have a connection”, and instead have to speak to each other only about random, banal topics thrown out by a bingo-cage-thingy. There is in fact a logic to this pronouncement. My theory is that the potential for intimacy and levels of friendship and love can be judged in the main by:

1) tolerance for the other person’s telling of boring stories- i.e. who they saw on the bus, how many times they brushed their teeth that day and why parking inspectors make them angry.
2) level of comfort to say stupid/salacious things, or alternatively comfort to fart/burp in front of the other person, coupled of course with the other person’s tolerance for such behaviour.

Get the right mix of comfort and tolerance, and you’ve got a “connection”. Which is kind of why I’m about to relate a completely not interesting factoid about my life. As I driving home late Friday night, I spent almost the entire trip listening over and over again to Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’. I am in fact humming it right now. I was even reminiscing about that time on Young Talent Time when Danii Minogue was a cast member, and Kylie came on as a guest, singing, you guessed it, Material Girl. Yes I remember it, in detail. Yes, I thought it was the best thing ever.

This made me realise that in some ways I went through the eighties as a faux eighties teenager, so determined was I to be like my sisters who were actually teens at the time. Instead of whatever was the equivalent of The Wiggles I had Madonna, Bros and Rick Astley (thanks to Sister S who still has the worst taste in music of anyone I know) and thankfully Prince.

I also have astonishingly vivid memories and strange emotional responses to eighties teen films that come from my initial childish encounters with them. I bring this up, because I have decided I’m going to spend the rest of the week posting on some of these movies that you’re probably not acquainted with, Teen Witch anyone? Can’t Buy Me Love? John Hughes’ Some Kind of Wonderful? and perhaps a few you have heard of.