My real goal is for this just to become a blog about mouse updates so here’s another one.

It seemed like the mouse living in our apartment was pretty much gone. We hadn’t seen or heard any signs of her in weeks, and we’re really good about cleaning up food.

But if you believe for a second that the mouse was gone, you’re really not reading into the sense of foreboding I’m trying to convey right now. It seemed like the mouse was gone. We had all but forgotten she had ever even been there. Do you see what I mean?

If you have a mouse, night is mouse time. That’s when they have free reign of your living space. I woke up during mouse time last night because I remembered I left something on the porch, and I walked through the kitchen. I know you’re not supposed to look at your phone when you wake up at night but that’s what I did next, standing at the kitchen counter.

If this were a movie now we’d cut to the mouse who has been interrupted and is standing frozen just a few feet behind me. She’s trying to hide behind a chair leg. Keeping her breath shallow.

We cut back to me. In this movie I’m pretty  much a pile of flesh as tall as a mountain and I move in big clumsy steps, so loud that everyone in the theater covers their ears. It seems like I’m going to go upstairs now, and we can almost relax. Wait. Nevermind now I’m looking at Twitter.

The camera cuts back to the mouse, her tail in plain sight if I turn around. Tiny  beads of sweat are rolling down her face. It’s now or never.

The mouse gathers all the courage she can and runs straight through the middle of the room, to her little mouse hole I told you about. Everyone watching in the theater holds their hands up over their eyes, peeking at the screen through their fingers. She’s going as fast as she can, which is frankly not that fast.

I turn slowly, squinting at what at first just looks like a small brown ball. The mouse they’ve cast in this action movie about a mouse who lives with two American expats is grayish-brown, medium sized, and less shiny than I expected. It’s always weird to see celebrities in person. I blink a few times.

Then she’s off to hair and makeup to get ready for whatever our next interaction is. I’m going to start wearing socks inside, just in case we have a scene where we touch more.