Oh So Manly

Like previous falls it seems a few young squirrels have found their way into our attic. And like past falls we’re actively setting traps so we can relocate them two miles down the road to the lake/park.

Today I walked into the garage to get something out of my trunk while Hubbin was at work, and I heard a rattling on one of the shelves and saw a spazzy young squirrel had fallen for the old peanut-butter-in-a-trap trick and found himself locked in a metal cage. I sent Hubbin a photo and a text praising him as Hunter Gatherer Man of the year and my how manly and brave his hunting skills are.

I was upstairs folding laundry at the top of the stairs when Hubbin got home and he came inside and called “Frau!” jumping to the third step landing putting his fists on his hips and puffing out his chest “have you seen my trophy squirrel?!” looking side to side chest out with mock pride.

Not to worry squirrel activists, the little guy will be released in the park two miles away unharmed albeit majorly wigged out.

A Photo Post

 

 

 

For Christmas Hubbin is repainting my study room from Paint-to-Sell Beige to a Cranberry Red. I talked my mom into buying me that potterybarn desk I’ve been lusting over for a full year now and we’re going to go with the white furniture and dark paint.

In other news this is a photo of the Christmas outfit I’ve concocted for the tegu Christmas card this year! A sneak preview just for my online friends!

Uhoh

Well I have definitely got to work on this whole getting-up-early when there’s nothing really to get up for concept. I have today off, technically, but it’s one of only 3 days off work I have before our next test. So even though the next test is not till after Thanksgiving studying today still kind of counts as cramming… this is a weird concept or what?

Anyway I set my alarm to get up and start studying at 8am but it’s a rainy, dreary day and it was awfully hard to drag myself out of bed knowing it was only to sit and read my med-surg book.  So now here we are at nearly 9:30 and I’m still kind of putzing around trying to motivate myself.

The good news is Hubbin called me from work this morning to let me know that he’s set up our furnace they will come and install it before the weekend Because let me tell you, getting up for the day in a house that’s 50 degrees is awfully low on my list of enjoyable activities.

My week-o-orientation starts tomorrow. I’m going to be oriented out the wazoo I think… I envision them giving us compasses and telescopes and sending us off… I expect reality will be a lot less interesting.

No more!

I’m done in the lab! Wahooo!

Emergencies here I come!  ….and no more of the “I need 300 slides cut by Tuesday” emergencies.

I interviewed my replacement on Friday before I left, she seems perfect, my boss had already left for the day so I left her a note saying I thought she was perfect.

In other news, remember my perfect desk?  I think I’m going to buy it for Christmas and talk my mom into giving me $ for it for Christmas. Hubbin and I spent some time tonight discussing how we want to redecorate the study room. (I’m all about white furniture)

Extraction

This is PART 2… go read PART 1 first!

And a big time sensitive reader warning on this one…

Last night was the big night. I promised Hubbin’, who I would say has the constitution of a normal human being, that if he gathered the gear and set everything up that I would get them all out. (He was threatening vomit and I’d rather deal with a dead body than puke.) He maintains that this will have no bearing on whether he will be able to be present in the delivery room someday in the future. Should we believe him?

He cut up a big yard trashbag and laid it out over our gas logs (turning off the pilot light of course) and duck taped around the edges so everything fell into the center. I brought an extra pair of scrubs home from work. I used those big yellow cleaning gloves and we made a special trip to home depot to get a heavy duty face mask. I pushed to spend the extra $3 to get the goggles as well. (I’m very glad for those) In accordance with the bargain he got it all set up, only once making the mistake to look up and seeing the dead legs dangling. Then he went upstairs to use the computer.

I opened the flue and very ungracefully pulled the first two out (read: in bits). I’m glad we waited so long to do it because they were sort of dry and brittle, and the opening was small. Plus my biggest fear was one of them would bite me or I would grab one and it would start to move or chirp (someone’s watched too many horror movies) The third one I couldn’t get so I had to make a trip down to the basement to get some extra tools. After I wiggled it around for a while I finally figured out I did NOT have the flue completely open. The third one just fell out whole.

That’s when it started. I poked around another minute, and found another dead bird. Then another. That’s when I started making some of the traditional expletive comments, causing Hubbin to shout down the stairs and ask if everything was ok. I was only expecting 3, because I’d seen three before I even started.

I clearly needed more tools. I got a gardening claw from the basement.

After about 30 minutes of poking around and bravely reaching my hand up past the flue to feel around, I had removed 10, TEN… That’s right, TEN dead bodies from our chimney.

Darwin’s finest.

Hubbin’ who completely had the willies dubbed me GREATEST WIFE EVER last night for being willing to pull the dead decaying bodies out of the chimney. I previously earned the title of GREATEST FIANCE EVER, for permitting him to buy xbox 360.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but it just didn’t gross me out. I was paranoid one of them would still be alive, but I wasn’t grossed out. Honestly there was only one I pulled out that even had a whiff of death about it. So I packed everything up and took it outside and declared everything clear.

“This house is clean”

I called my parents to issue the report. Dad asked if I had ever seen Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I said “No, but I don’t really feel like I need to now”

The Birds

So part of the reason I’m hesitant to tell this story is because we let it go for so long… and I’m going to have to issue a sensitive reader warning.

A week or so before we left for Germany Hubbin started complaining that he thought we had an animal living under our chimney. When we got our gas logs put in they had problem after problem with our old house so they ended up running the new gas line outside the house, then back up into the fireplace using the old coal chute. I assumed that we had a chipmunk or squirrel that decided the old coal chute might be a nice place to live. We had several conversations about how to block up the coal chute and what we could fill it with.

Then we heard it chirp.

Just a few days before we left for Germany we realized the shuffling noise we were hearing was actually flapping. I was sitting along in the living room watching TV and looked over and saw sunlight was hitting the fireplace *just so* so I went over and peered in. I looked up at the flue and saw legs. Two sets of bird legs, sticking down the edge. Then I looked at little longer and saw the bird that was making the noise poking it’s beak out at me, chirping and flapping. I was horrified. I called my parents and made references to the end of the world and Alfred Hitchcock.

When Hubbin got home that night we talked about how to get them out. And ultimately decided that we should just wait till the last one dies. We don’t want any angry wild animals loose in the house and be trying to hunt them down after they’re released from the chimney. Plus we honestly weren’t sure if they could fit through the flue opening.

We left for our trip and came back to a quiet house. (Although my MIL did comment that one day when it was warm she smelled something) We talked about getting them out that very weekend, but were ultimately too jet lagged and couldn’t get our act together.

To be Continued………….

Weekend Project Update

A few months ago we installed a gas log fireplace in the hopes that it would allow us to keep the living room above freezing and still be able to afford groceries. After we installed the fireplace we realized that the thermodynamics of a 130 year old house with big rooms and 10ft ceiling aren’t really ideal. The dining room seemed to be the biggest heat loss since it’s all windows so we decided to install a door between the living room and the dining room. Here’s a photo. My father and husband installed it, and it literally took them all day because there is not a single right angle to be found in our entire house. I’m quite pleased to report that even when we’re not using the fireplace, shutting that door still keeps our living room several degrees warmer. I love warmth. Mmm

For months, months, months we have been calling electricians begging trying to get someone to come out and install a vent in our upstairs bathroom. Because of our mold problem. No dice. A couple months ago my father and husband took matters into their own hands and installed all the duct work. They did well, and no one fell off the roof in the process. (I was a nervous wreck all day, I decided I prefer having paid people on the roof rather than relatives)

Now that it’s January we were finally able to convince an electrician to come over and wire in the vent. They estimated the project at 2 hours, SWEET! We also pulled the “hey while you’re in there” would you mind installing another electrical outlet as well? I don’t know where my dad found these guys, but we’ll call them Tweedledumb and Tweedledrunk. They came in our house, surveyed the situation and told us they needed to go buy some wire and came back smelling of booze. (I’m very reassured at this point). Three hours into the project they tell my husband that the electrical wiring in our house totally and completely out of date and to do everything it will be a $3,000 to rewire it. We’ve decided for the time being that the electrical uses upstairs (lightbulbs & alarm clocks) don’t warrant the $3,000 upgrade. We’ve made an appointment with them next weekend to redo the wiring to the TV/Computer and the kitchen.

The big hangup was them cutting through our second floor bathroom ceiling. Ceilings these days are made with 1 layer of drywall. This is what they were expecting our ceiling to be made of. Instead, our bathroom ceiling was made of not one, but two layers of drywall, a thin layer of cement, and a layer of tongue and groove wood paneling. (No wonder all the floors in the house are sagging) Tweedledumb literally did chin-ups holding onto our ceiling to demonstrate how strong it was. They just don’t build homes like they used to. They broke three blades trying to saw through it. ….and clearly by the photograph, they did not measure prior to trying. Said homeowners are more than a little miffed by that.

This turned out to be an 8 hour job. The good news is the vent seems to work. The bad news is the patch job that needs to be done on the ceiling and the outlets! Good god, wait till you see these outlets. Somewhere after he told us that we really just need to rewire the whole house I started to tune out the project because it was just too overwhelming. So after they left at 10pm Saturday night, promising they would be back next Saturday to continue we went up and this is what we found: 1 new apricot colored outlet. Classy.

And 1 new white outlet that is three quarters of an inch from the wall? Now that’s really classy. And Safe! I’m sure that’s real safe!

Left & Right

We at the Fresh house are experiencing a rodent onslaught of never before seen proportions.

I’m sure by now you’re starting to think that last year we purchased a total shack of a house. Rodents in the attic. Squirrels in the attic. Man eating insects. No bathroom ventilation. It’s a nice house? In a nice neighborhood? On a main road? Friendly neighbors?

Last fall we had some very noisy field mice that had to be eradicated. We chose rat poison and sticky traps. After removing only one rodent we heard no more noise. We figured if one of them ate the poison, they probably all at the poison. This fall we had more noise and managed to peacefully remove & relocate a baby squirrel.

While my father and my husband have been trying to install a bathroom vent themselves they decided to try and take care of our ongoing attic rodent problem. This time using the old-fashioned method. Traps and peanut butter. There were two positive catches.

Now it’s getting out of control. Last week, we were arriving home one night and as we pulled into the garage, husband’s headlights hit the back wall of the garage, I saw a small flash of brown dart across the floor. “uhoh, we’ve got something in here” I told him I guessed it was either a mouse or a chipmunk. He assured me it was no problem since he had two more traps left from the attic. As we were walking up the three stairs in the garage to the house I noticed mouse-poo off to the right of the stairs. I said to Husband “You should put the traps RIGHT there”. He did. That night he came to bed after I was asleep and woke me up to joyously describe his kill. A black mouse. I said “I’m quite sure the one I saw was brown, so there’s still more” another 24 hours later we had caught a brown one and then had the following bizarre conversation:
Hubbin: “Thanks for cleaning up the mouse”
SSFB: “I didn’t?”
Hubbin: “It’s gone… trap and all?”
SSFB: “It wasn’t me” -a glance was exchanged-

Now. I’ve previously described the cannibalistic tendencies of mice. It was probably the next day that I found the evidence.

Our garage stairs are hollow underneath (space then gravel floor) I was walking down the stairs to our car the other night on our way out and I glanced down to the side opposite of where we put the traps and that’s when I saw the evidence… Wait for it. Wait for it…. Something or pleural, Somethings, Have dragged the black mouse AND TRAP about 3 feet, underneath the garage stairs to the opposite side of the stairs where a thick spiderweb obscures a hole in the gravel! Are you kidding me?! There are enough mice in our garage that they are carting off their dead?!!?! Husband is joking that they are religious mice trying to give the dead a proper burial.

We’ve bought more traps. Too bad Miss Thang is hibernating (and it’s 24 degrees out) or I’d let her loose in our garage to earn her keep.

Home Improvement?

We bought an old house. It was built around the time of the civil war. We favored it over all the other houses for sale that year because A. it was in the school district employing my husband, B. it was not one of the total prefab housing plan houses, C. we could afford it. There are a few problems we’ve learned with buying really old charming houses. Everything has to be custom because as the saying goes “they don’t make things like they used to”.

For instance, they didn’t use to put vents in bathrooms.

All that heat and steam with no where to go. It only took a few months after we moved in for us to start our ceiling-petri dish project. This summer we solved the problem by buying a window fan. That worked quite well, drastically slowing the growth…. but now it’s getting to be winter. Who likes taking a shower with the window open and a fan blowing when it’s 34 degrees? Go ahead… raise your hand…

*crickets*

No one? Me either.

We’ve scrubbed the walls a few times but it always grows back. I’m sure it will continue to do so until we get the vent installed. We’ve had three people come out to give us estimates, we agree to all of them. But when it comes time for them to come do the project… no one calls back. My husband finally put his foot down last weekend and said that’s it, we’re cleaning up the mold and he’s repainting. While we were at large-home-improvement-store, I picked up a book about mold, flipping to the chapter about cleaning up bathroom mold. We were directed to the paint section because that guy was supposedly like the wizard of oz and would have all the information. We explained our problem. He said before repainting we should clean with tilex. We had the following conversation:

Employee: “Yeah you gotta clean that up with tilex, it will keep growing back, but you can slow it down if you spray it every couple months”
SSFB: “That doesn’t stain the paint?”
Employee: *gives confident shake of the head* “Nooo, just give it a couple sprays, you might have to do it twice if it’s tough.”
SSFB: “But it doesn’t bleach the paint?”
Employee: “Naw, won’t hurt it”

Ladies and Gentlemen… Tilex DOES in fact bleach paint. We ended up buying two cleaners. Tilex and some other brand I never heard of that assures us it’s so gentle you needent wear gloves while using it. I’m not confident about that now since that cleaner ALSO bleaches paint. (This is a picture of our newly tie-dyed bathroom)

Fortunately, we already have the new paint waiting in the garage.

I said “Well I’m glad we tried this now before we repainted the bathroom”

Attic Jihad

Well, we were right. We had at least 1 squirrel that was planning to winter in our attic. The rat poison hadn’t been working too well so I persuaded my husband to quit trying to rid our yard of squirrels and to try his luck in the attic. Last night I was laying in bed and heard something in the attic. I thought my husband may have gone to check his squirrel trap… then I realized he had already taken his evening shower (our attic is *very* unfinished)so there was no way he would be going up there. Tonight he went up to check the trap and we got one! (they apparently like peanut butter way better than rat poison, go figure. We put peanut butter on a plate made of foil for bait)I feel a little guilty because it is a baby squirrel who has clearly spent a lot of time collecting buckeyes in our attic for the winter and now has to start over from scratch in the park down the road. But, it’s not my fault they chose our house.

Overheard during rodent extraction:
H “He is definitely not in his happy place right now”

H “We got one, and boy did he have fun with this foil”
SSFB “Fun as in he ate it or fun as in origami?”