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Mouse Wars
Jan. 18th, 2006 09:27 amYou know sometimes in life you just make a really, REALLY bad decision? A few months ago, when we last went to Ikea, Ellie made one of those.
She loves soft toys. I mean *adores* them. Calls them her "family" and kind of makes a nest of them to go to sleep in at night because there are so many of them.
So when we went to Ikea, she and Jared were so good and patient with a very angry-making shop experience that we offered to get them something. Ellie found a large, very loosely stuffed mouse. It was a couple of quid. Jared thought it looked neat, so got one too - mostly in order to call it "Scabbers" during Harry Potter games, I think. We walked around the rest of Ikea, and then Ellie made the BAD DECISION. She didn't want the mouse anymore - she wanted a matched pair of pink and white bunnies.
So we went home with the usual inexplicable Ikea tat (why, o why do I buy it???) a loosely stuffed mouse and a matched pair of bunnies. Ellie was happy. Jared was happy.
The next morning, Ellie decided that the bunnies weren't as much fun as the loosely stuffed mouse. She wanted the mouse back. We live a very long way from Ikea. It wasn't happening. So, she fixated on Jared's mouse. She started telling us that *her* mouse was still in the shop and VERY LONELY!!! She snuck into Jared's bedroom and stole the mouse on every possible occasion. When Jared tried to repossess it, she clung onto it with a desperate air-raid-siren wail, occasionally punctuated with shrieks of "MY MOUSEY!!!" She basically reinvented history so that the loosely stuffed mouse was *hers* dammit. Jared could have those crap bunnies, she wanted the light of all creation - the loosely stuffed mouse.
We had a couple of months of peace and quiet, in which I hoped the whole shebang had been forgotten - the mouse got lost in the no-man's land of "under Jared's bed" (which is also where underpants, odd socks and lego models go to die, I've decided). But yesterday she found it again, and her mouse-passion has only been fueled by its absence. Of course, this illicit passion makes Jared more convinced that it is the coolest mouse on the face of the planet, and that his future happiness rests on his rightful possession of it. Let's face it, folks, it is HIS mouse, so I can see the point. But it is a real insight into the whole "have an affair and seem more attractive to your boyfriend" theory - nothing is quite so attractive as when someone else desperately wants it...
So the Mouse Wars wage on. The cries of "MY MOUSEY!!!!" continue unabated, and a new battle was inaugurated this morning when she insisted on demonstrating her love for it by (a) sticking it's tail in her chocolate milk and (b) sucking the tail. Mouse now smells a bit odd.
Parenthood, eh?
She loves soft toys. I mean *adores* them. Calls them her "family" and kind of makes a nest of them to go to sleep in at night because there are so many of them.
So when we went to Ikea, she and Jared were so good and patient with a very angry-making shop experience that we offered to get them something. Ellie found a large, very loosely stuffed mouse. It was a couple of quid. Jared thought it looked neat, so got one too - mostly in order to call it "Scabbers" during Harry Potter games, I think. We walked around the rest of Ikea, and then Ellie made the BAD DECISION. She didn't want the mouse anymore - she wanted a matched pair of pink and white bunnies.
So we went home with the usual inexplicable Ikea tat (why, o why do I buy it???) a loosely stuffed mouse and a matched pair of bunnies. Ellie was happy. Jared was happy.
The next morning, Ellie decided that the bunnies weren't as much fun as the loosely stuffed mouse. She wanted the mouse back. We live a very long way from Ikea. It wasn't happening. So, she fixated on Jared's mouse. She started telling us that *her* mouse was still in the shop and VERY LONELY!!! She snuck into Jared's bedroom and stole the mouse on every possible occasion. When Jared tried to repossess it, she clung onto it with a desperate air-raid-siren wail, occasionally punctuated with shrieks of "MY MOUSEY!!!" She basically reinvented history so that the loosely stuffed mouse was *hers* dammit. Jared could have those crap bunnies, she wanted the light of all creation - the loosely stuffed mouse.
We had a couple of months of peace and quiet, in which I hoped the whole shebang had been forgotten - the mouse got lost in the no-man's land of "under Jared's bed" (which is also where underpants, odd socks and lego models go to die, I've decided). But yesterday she found it again, and her mouse-passion has only been fueled by its absence. Of course, this illicit passion makes Jared more convinced that it is the coolest mouse on the face of the planet, and that his future happiness rests on his rightful possession of it. Let's face it, folks, it is HIS mouse, so I can see the point. But it is a real insight into the whole "have an affair and seem more attractive to your boyfriend" theory - nothing is quite so attractive as when someone else desperately wants it...
So the Mouse Wars wage on. The cries of "MY MOUSEY!!!!" continue unabated, and a new battle was inaugurated this morning when she insisted on demonstrating her love for it by (a) sticking it's tail in her chocolate milk and (b) sucking the tail. Mouse now smells a bit odd.
Parenthood, eh?
