I ... Smell ... Varmint poontang. And minty-fresh gum.

You know, when a girl has a metric ton of thank-you notes to write, the last thing she needs is to discover that her home has been overrun by varmints. Chipmunks, to be precise.

It's driving me crazy.

So in comes the exterminator--whoops, I mean "pest control" man. And he sets traps. Not mean chipmunk-killing ones, no, not at all. We have feelings around here, people. We're sensitive. No, he sets those catch-and-release ones. And? It's $110 for the initial visit, and $55 every time the exterminator takes away a chipmunk. Well, this morning there were two, and tonight there was another one, and by morning, there may be yet another one. You know the old saying: a chipmunk here; a chipmunk there, and pretty soon, it adds up to real money.

You see where this is heading, don't you? It's heading over the hill to the poorhouse, unless I take a detour back through the internet and get a few of those traps I just showed you. And maybe some coyote urine, which apparently, chipmunks find distasteful. (And I'm sure they're not the only ones. Oh, goody. I can hardly wait to post on my shopping blog about buying that.)

In other news, I'm reaching the end of my second-to last audiobook. I'm listening to Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King's Faithful. When I need to switch to something G-rated (because those guys swear a lot, and I don't approve of swearing when my kids are around) (yes, I swear in my blog, but like most people, my kids couldn't be bothered to read it) I'm listening to Three Men on the Bummel, which is, praise be, as funny as Three Men in a Boat. Then I've got In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith, and then--I'm out of audiobooks. And this is really serious, because I can't decide which of the following three is the most addictive:

1. Diet Coke
2. Eclipse Peppermint sugarless chewing gum; Spearmint is also excellent
3. Books on CD

But for a while I was out of the first two and running low on the third. Today I went to the grocery store and stocked up on gum and Coke--I also joined an audiobook club. Which means I won't be sitting on the front stoop drooling all over myself. But it was a close thing, people!