The one where I whine. A lot.

I wonder often how to start a blog post, when I feel like I have so much to say and can't quite throw it all together. This might be one of those days.
The rats are back.
It is such a small sentence isn't it? 4 words that mean my world is shaking in it's boots.
What is it about these creatures that gives them the power to totally bring a person to their knees?
I tell myself over and over again that they are more afraid of me than I am of them....but I don't convince myself. When one, half way down the stairs notices me come out of the front room and then JUMPS so it lands at my feet and the scuttles away and runs under the stairs, that makes me scream. When it happens again the next day it makes me scream and then swear and then stand with my head against the kitchen wall and pray, while I shake.
We are not dirty, I am a crumb Nazi, I pick up and sweep and throw away, we put lids on things, food does not get left uncovered or left out. Everything is packed in plastic drawers and tubs.
We set traps and then, when everyone but Seth and I was out, we heard the trap snap and then we heard the most awful AWFUL screaming, rat screaming, over and over and both Seth and I ran with fingers in our ears and he sobbed and I tried not to sob while I told him I knew it was awful but what could we do?
Sophie came home and she opened the door to the cupboard, then SHE started to cry because it was a baby rat, huge but still fluffy and obviously young. She was horrified that it was taking so long to die but she, like me, was unable to do anything about it...it takes a tough person to put an animal out of it's misery and I just couldn't even look at it, never mind touch it. I don't think I will ever forget what an horrific sound that was.
I have been puzzled by how insane these rats have been, they appear to have lost all fear of being seen, running about in the daytime, being visible, in the front room, just IN MY FACE.
Seth is traumatised, the night the rat screamed ( sounds like a horror movie title and well it may be!) I heard him screaming for me from his room. I ran up to see him and he was just distraught and said that he was so afraid that they would come into his room and he had tried to pray but was too afraid to close his eyes. So I prayed with him and at the same time I prayed that he would learn how prayer helps, how it can comfort and help us.
He did sleep after we prayed and the rats didn't eat him while he slept.
I am a nervous wreck, every sound makes me jump, every creak, tick, rustle makes me hold my breath. I hate it.
The pest control man is coming tomorrow but both H and I are dreading that as much as anything because Oh dear life, the smell.I don't think I can live through that again. The smell has never really left, every now and then this house smells like a sewer on a hot day and what is even sadder is that we all try to pretend we can't smell it, we can't bear to mention it because, well I know for me, it is because I am so sick of being out of control, so tired of this whole housing business, moving from pillar to post in an effort to try and find somewhere that feels like home.
This house is actually a lovely house, it has great potential but it needs a lot of knocking down and putting right. I am convinced that we need to be out of this house and the floors need to be ripped up and these rats killed, properly.
We know they are in the walls because we can hear them, they are under the floor because they run, from one end to the other and they sound like stampeding dogs, I am not exaggerating when I say they are LOUD. H has never heard them, usually it is at night when he is asleep with his earplugs in. This week we were in the front room, no kids, no TV and they ran, above our heads from one end of the room to the other. H's snapped over to stare at me and I am pretty sure he thought "SHIT!" his face looked like it was thinking that, definitely, he said " What was THAT?!" When I said "The rats, that's what they do at night, Sophie and I hear them all the time. That's what they do" he just looked stunned. What can you say?
We sat here a couple of nights ago and I looked at H and said "There is one behind the sofa" so in a jiffy he had set the scene, front door open, everything cordoned off and me sitting with my feet up on the chair. He opened the front room door, got a walking stick and poked under the couch, that thing ran right under MY couch...so he poked and prodded and then it ran right out the front door.
This is not the way I like to spend my evenings!
I have been looking at other houses but my heart isn't in it. What is the point? Wherever we go there will be some problem that we can't solve. I know that in some ways this is the consequence of my actions. In others it is something I can't do anything about.
There are very few things that money can buy, this is really the only thing I long for. A home that is mine, that I can choose, that I can research and plan and make right. I look at dream houses and they are just that, a dream, I know I can't have them. I look at houses that, in different circumstances might have been mine and then my heart cries.
I don't need luxury or grandeur. I don't want marble or sweeping drives. I want safe and I want always. I want walls that will hold memories. I want doors that can shut out those things we choose not to have within them.
I am so bone weary of holding my breath, of being afraid. I am sick to death of pretending it's all OK. This is not OK, I can't even stand to go into nice homes belonging to other people because it makes me so sad I can't bear it.
I am sick of breathing stench.
I am going to stop writing now because I am depressing myself. I know that all around the world there are people worse off than me. I do know that. I count my blessings and I whistle a happy tune as often as I can. Sometimes, I just can't and when I can't, I try and come here and write it out so that no-one has to listen to me or see me with a face like a smacked arse. Onwards and upwards and put on a happy face.
Here's to happy faces.
Also no rats.