see ya, suckers!

We are getting the hell outta dodge. In other words, it started raining here in good ol' Washington State, and I'm pretty sure it's not going to stop for the next 7 months, so we're going to spend a week in sunny San Diego. Starting tomorrow. Except all week I was checking the upcoming weather on my weather app and the forecast called for 79-80.

Except that I was looking at the weather for Palm Springs, not San Diego.

Which is about 10 degrees cooler.

Whatever, I'll take it.




I have failed at Nablopomo. Whatever. I had bigger problems this week.

Rage Against the Rodent Day 2

When I last left you I was headed to bed Monday night, somewhat comfortable knowing that our newly weatherstripped door to the garage was going to protect us from any more rodent invasions. At least I could fall asleep!

Well I woke up severely disappointed. Chris had heard something during the night (thankfully I didn't), and when he went downstairs to investigate he thought he heard something coming from behind our built-in cabinets in the family room.

In the morning, there were more droppings in the kitchen and dining room. And get this...the damn rat ATE A FRICKING BANANA. (Or part of it). Chris and I felt so defeated. Where was the damn thing coming from? How was it getting in??!! You know how they say life's biggest stressors include marriage, divorce, birth, death, and moving? Well I'm here to tell you that having rodents IN YOUR HOUSE is at the tippy top of that list. I felt sick to my stomach, and extremely exhausted, only there was no way I was going to take a rest for fear of something attacking me!

I begged Chris to work from home that day so I did not freak the hell out as not to leave me alone with who knew what. And he agreed.

As we combed the house with a fine toothed comb, looking for possible entry points I saw this near the fireplace (which just so happens to be in the built-in cabinet Chris thought he had heard noises coming from):

I was immediately suspicious, because as you know I JUST painted this grate a few weeks ago, and it shouldn't be DIRTY like this! So I opened the grate to see what was behind it:

I don't know about you, but those totally look like some kind of big ass rat prints to me. And then this sealed the deal:

(Just ignore the dust)...That is one great big gaping hole for the gas line to fit through. Plenty of room for a big fat rat to climb through if he happened to be anywhere in the walls. Chris found the place where the gas line came out in the garage and sure enough there was a nice sized gap around that as well. So he shoved some steel wool around the smaller gap (in the garage), but inside we had a bigger hole to deal with.

Chris got all McGyver-y on that hole though and ended up with this:

Just in case you can't tell what THAT is, Chris started with two layers of metal mesh stuff (like what he is going to use to repair the foundation screens). Then he shoved some steel wool in there real tight right around the actual gas line. He tried to glue the screen to the sheet metal, but it was really hard to maneuver inside this small space, so he ended up using expanding foam and spray-foamed the hell out of it. Spray foam by itself doesn't work because rodents can chew right through it. But they can't chew through the metal screen, or the steel wool, so we used the spray foam more as a "glue" to hold it in place. (A note about the spray foam though, we've learned that it can be combustible above temperatures higher than 240 degrees. This is below the fireplace, so it does get warm, although we're not sure HOW warm. Chris doesn't want to take any chances though, so he plans to cut out the spray foam and use some other kind of adhesive this weekend).

Chris went to a punk rock show that night, so I let Camden sleep in my bed AGAIN, and while I felt better that we had hopefully figured out and blocked the entry point, I was not as comfortable as I could have been and had a hard time going to sleep...I kept thinking I heard rodent like sounds. (It didn't help that we had a HUGE wind and rain storm going on at the time).

In the morning, we checked around the house. No droppings! YAY! No half eaten bananas! YAY! But even better? One dead rat caught in a trap in the garage. See ya never, sucker! We still have some areas in the garage and to the crawl space that we need to patch to keep the critters out of those areas, but I think we feel much better about any rodents being able to get INSIDE of our house. Because that is just WRONG.

But in one final "screw you" move before he met his very timely death...our speakers don't work anymore. Chris went to investigate why, and grabbed the speaker wire only to have it fall loosely into his hand. So that rat bastard chewed right through it before he went to eat some peanut butter and get his neck snapped just like that. I don't even feel bad for him.

Seriously Sucky Monday

So last night around 2:30 in the morning, Chris and I wore woken (awoken?) by a "bump in the night". We both listened and then heard the plink of the piano. Just one solitary note. If we hadn't BOTH heard it, I'm pretty sure we would've thought we'd imagined it. I said, "Camden must be sleepwalking again, go check" (because you know women have to birth the babies, men have to investigate noises in the dark). Chris headed out to our hallway and peered over to Camden's room, but his door was still shut. He looked over the railing, downstairs, concerned that he didn't have some kind of weapon to take with him. (Note to self: we should get some kind of weapon up here). He stood at the top of the stairs for a while, listening...said then he thought he heard something in the garage. He finally went downstairs to go investigate, grabbed a candlestick holder off the piano (made of plastic, but he didn't know that at the time), looked in closets, in each room downstairs, and finally in the garage. But nothing out of the ordinary. The entire time I was sitting anxiously in my bed, hand on the phone, ready to call 911. He came back to bed, and we chalked it up to ghosts (yes, we watched too much American Horror Story). Or, you know maybe the wind somehow caused one of the piano books to fall on the piano keys.

If only we were so lucky. No, we had houseguests. And not the kind that we invited, and looked forward to serving brunch to the next morning. The big fat hairy black kind.

So this morning Chris comes upstairs after working out,  and says, "Rachel, I need to talk to you about something, away from the kids", He looked pretty serious, I'm imagining the worst, so I left Camden snoring sleeping in my bed and followed Chris into our bathroom and he says, "So I just saw a huge black rat in our garage, it jumped from the shelving up to the ductwork and into a hole in the ceiling. Oh, and there are rat turds all over downstairs" (I used those quotes loosely, I don't think he actually said turds).

Apparently I was NOT imagining the worst.

You should have seen my mouth. Hit the floor.

Seriously. I am NOT a terrible housekeeper. I should NOT have rats IN MY FRICKING HOUSE.

I called the exterminator first thing in the morning, and they came out within a couple hours. They said it would cost $300 for the initial inspection and 3 follow up visits to empty the traps. (They could have told me it would cost $1,000...I would have paid it). I understand how rodents can get in the garage, or in the crawlspace...I just wanted to know how they were getting INSIDE MY HOUSE! So the pest guy said that ours was getting in (and out) under the door between the garage and the mudroom. You couldn't really SEE a hole there, but the weatherstripping was worn down so that you could shove a pen through the corner. The guy told me that they only have to be able to fit their jaw through and the rest just follows. Excuse me while I go vomit.

Speaking of vomit, I spent all day not knowing whether I should cry, or vomit, or both. I am emotionally exhausted. And I have a horrible headache. I blame it all on that damn rat. In other news, I swept and vacuumed the hell out of these floors today, so that if there's even a speck of shit anything on them I am going to see it.

So anyway, in addition to cleaning the floors today, I replaced the weather stripping on the mudroom door and it is so snug that we can barely even close the door all the way, so ain't nothin' gettin' through that. We've got traps all over the place...3 IN the house which sure as hell better not catch anything now that I've got my new and improved weather stripping up, 3 or 4 in the garage...those are the ones I'm gonna be Chris is going to be checking, and some in our crawl space (underneath the house). There are some issues in our foundation vents where we need to replace the screens, and some gaps in the garage door that we need to patch...but seriously at this point (as in today), I am concerned with keeping them OUT of my house.

So that was my day. It sucked. I guess if I have to be thankful for something it would be that I'm thankful there wasn't a human breaking into our house to kill us after he played a little minuet. But I think I totally would have preferred the ghosts over the rodent.

there is something nasty in my backyard

So I'm thinking that either a mole, or a gopher has taken up residence in my backyard. Not that I know the difference. Now what I should I do? I mean, besides call somebody to come and "take care of it?"