Well, heck. It’s been a rather tumultuous week. I’ve been trying to think of a way to tie it altogether, but I can’t. Hence, two posts. Also, it was getting really long. So, here goes.
On Monday, we got a pre-inspection on our house. We’re moving, by the way. Five days before we left for Kauai, we bought another house. Super fun, right? Yeah, I was a basket case. Lots of hand-wringing and how-will-we-do-this and stress dreams about confronting The Storage Room, aka the place where our possessions go to die.
Anyway, one of the things that was making me the most crazy was that I didn’t know how much it was going to cost to get our 40-year-old house in shape to sell. We’ve done a lot to it — put in new windows, a new kitchen, a new deck, a new master bath, on and on. But what if there were little, insidious things that were going to bankrupt us? Huh? What if?
We had an inspector come and check things out. Our realtors, Karen and Aaron, who are also friends, came over too. They brought their daughters, who amused Bini while the inspector did his thing. At about 5:00, the kids were on the living room couch on the iPad and Karen, Aaron and I were outside discussing how to fix up the backyard. Then the door from the garage opened, and there stood the kids, covered with grayish-colored dust.
“What happened?” I think one of us said.
“There’s a hole,” said one of the kids.
Our inspector — Nick, good guy — had been in our attic, doing his thing. He shone his flashlight at a dark corner and out flew two bats, right at him. Nick was so startled he stepped back and put his foot through the floor. Which was the ceiling. Down came insulation and, presumably, bat shit, all over the kids and my living room.
“I’ve been face-to-face with dead cats, rats, you name it,” Nick said, all sweaty and rattled, “but I’ve never seen bats.”
Everyone mobilized. Karen grabbed a shop vac and I donned yellow kitchen gloves to scoop insulation-slash-bat-shit into a garbage bag. Aaron held the garbage bag and helped me scoop. He and Nick put the kitchen bag over the hole. The girls went downstairs to watch TV, and Bini went into a bath, where I scrubbed the insulation-slash-bat-shit out of his hair. Afterward, I dressed him in shorts and Batman t-shirt (get it?).
For some reason, I found this all very funny. Which is interesting. I’m pretty tightly wrapped, and I stress out about minor things all the time, much less a hole in my ceiling and pests that require a wildlife expert to remove. I spend an inordinate amount of time anguishing about What I’m Going To Do Next With My Life, and other problems of the privileged. But now I’m up to my neck with stuff to do, and I figure all I can do is laugh.
I do have a hole in my ceiling, covered by a white kitchen bag, but Nick is going to pay for that, so it’s not like I’m out any money. And apparently, bats are way better than rats, which burrow through insulation and leave terrible messes throughout the entire attic. Our bats were polite, limiting their guano (which I totally didn’t know was a word!) to one area. Thanks, bats!
Hey, did I mention we rescued two dogs from Kauai? More on that later.
the swift kick 