Yesterday, Mary and Ben called me at work to inform me that we have a houseguest. An invited one.

Yes. A rat.

One of the cats, Leo, was pacing back and forth around the laundry room door. That's where the main litter box is. He was growling softly, and eyeing a door that covers our unfinshed and unused laundry chute. Mary thought there might be a bug. Or a spider. So, she opened it.

The message from Ben on my cell phone said, "Mom is terrified, Dad."

Mary said that rat was grey, and almost as big as Cosmo. Cosmo is the youngest, and least bright of our felines -- the one who got stuck in the shower. I haven't seen our uninvited guest yet. I expect I will when he traipses across the glue paper the exterminator left. Since rats are nocturnal, this may happen sometime tonight.

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It has been very busy at work lately. We're understaffed. I have a project that has deliverables. But we also have issues and problems and people calling all day. Every day, I only seem to fall farther behind.

Guitar lessons are going well. My F is sounding better, my chord changes are flowing better.

I am not at all prepared for my brown belt test in TWO WEEKS! I may do okay on the forms, but I need to get to class every night to practice the techniques. And I really need to be in better shape.

We won't go into writing. Of course, I ought to be working on the novel rigth now, instead of writing this blog, watching WONDER YEARS reruns, and waiting for my son and his friend to settle down. They're playing his GUITAR HERO II video game.

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Okay, I'm going downstairs to see if we have ice cream, and waiting for that Friday night second wind. If it rains tomorrow, and if I can finish our tax return, I'm going to have some writing time.