That about sums up my day.
Oh, and a dead bat.
Don’t get all spiritual on me and think my crown prep was a “Daughter of the King” moment. It was, for real, crown prep. Like the kind of work you have done at the dentist. It’s not that I wasn’t brushing my teeth; in fact, I brush my teeth so hard my gums hate me – I hate that “hairy” teeth feeling about as much as I hate going to the dentist. I suppose, if I hadn’t waited two years to go back, it probably would have been just a small cavity needing a filling, but that’s not nearly as exciting. And why go to the dentist just once, when you can go three times in two weeks? Unless I end up having to get a root canal. Boy, doesn’t that sound fun?
When I got home, I decided to finally take the three large bags of clothes I’d pulled out of my closet two weeks ago, to the donation center. That felt pretty good. When I got home, I realized I’d forgotten one. Lovely.
Mike got home later. I found him in the garage pulling out the ladder. “The mice are back.” We’d both known this for some time. We could hear them gnawing on something metal up in the attic above our room at night; it sounded like metal anyway. It was certainly something hard – probably the joist that is holding the roof in place above our heads as we are asleep at night.
It was time to do something about it, so he was going back up there to set some traps for the little beasts. We’d tried to tackle the mice problem this summer and caught a couple, but then nothing. So we left the traps up there – just in case. But it appeared the little rodents were no longer intimated by the wooden snap traps, and it was now necessary to set some new ones.
I wanted to help, but I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just held the ladder. I’m not sure what good that did, as he was already up through the little hole in the closet ceiling at this point. I heard a lot of banging and a few choice words mumbled through his face mask while he was trying to set the traps. I kept holding the ladder, wanting to be supportive, but still not sure how to best help the situation.
(That’s really all I could see from my perspective holding the ladder…)
“Guess what we caught?” I heard him say through the mask.
“What?”
“A bat. Been dead for awhile.”
Lovely.
Good thing we’d left the traps up there from the summer. Apparently the dead giant “winged mouse” is what kept the other varmints away for awhile. Because nothing says, “Go away mice!” like a dead bat in your attic. (I think there’s an infomercial in the making with that statement.)
Anyway, it was about this time the boys came home. My son had purchased a collectible Godzilla figurine yesterday from a comic book store in town. After dropping a pretty penny on the thing, he decided it was dirty and ugly and he wanted to take it back. I’ll admit, it was pretty dusty – like some other guy had bought it a long time ago and had it on his shelf where he could admire it – just sitting there collecting dust. Then one day he got tired of it, and decided to box it back up and sell it to the comic book guys – he probably needed some spending dough. So the comic book guys bought it from him, and my son bought it from them. But when it made it to our house, it didn’t last long enough to collect any of the dust and pet dander floating through our ducts, because it was “So ugly!” So, we had to take it back. Luckily, my son still had the receipt. Well, his sister had it in her car, but eventually we got all the pieces together and got the Godzilla returned and his money back in his pocket. (To be honest, I think it was the buyer’s remorse that got him, more than the ugliness of the Godzilla.)
And that was my night.
But it really was lovely.
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