rodent war update

i forgot to mention in the last post that it rained both in and outside of our house. our roof needs some work. the house has an old cedar shake roof, and then somewhere along the way someone covered it with composite shingles. (and did kind of a crappy job). so we had a couple of buckets filling in the attic and around the house. which brings me to an update on the rodent war. because yes, with rain comes rats.

humans: killed a few more rats. and sean sealed up a lot of the spots where he thought rats were coming in (we could see pathways through the new insulation - which i will also get to later).

rodents: i went into the attic at one point to help sean with something. this area is off limits for me, but for some reason i was feeling adventurous. the first thing i see - just guess. wait, you'll never guess because it's so disgusting. a huge blood stain on the attic floor. i asked sean what it was and he just chuckled and said 'nothing' (im telling you, really discreet). ugh... the second half of this is not for those of you with a sensitive stomach. sean started cleaning up some of the old insulation in the attic. this was a job that we paid some workers to do, and instead of removing the old insulation, they just sprayed new stuff on top of it. when i saw this i went berzerk. (this i will also get to later). so, sean was sweeping some of it up and was planning on bagging it up. but ... and here's where i get to the gross stuff. (im having a hard time even typing it). the old insulation has so much old rat poop and pee in it that when sean stirred it up, it made our house smell like piss.  ugh. there i said it.

tonight i turned into get-things-done-and-stop-taking-shit doodie. one of the carpenters called me and was asking about getting paid. and then he was making jokes about one of the other guys. i went nuts on him - i had had enough. i think part of it was my adrenaline coming off of yoga, and part of it was me being so grossed out by the rat piss smell in our house. i told him that he isn't getting paid until he does all of the work that we're paying him to do - which includes fixing some of his dumb ass mistakes, and removing all of the insulation in the attic and replacing it with new stuff. at first sean thought i was being a bitch. but then as i kept talking, i won him over. im pretty sure if we went to court over this, we would win. not only did they not do all of the work, but they also installed these huge beams in our living room and didn't even ask first. and then took like a month to finish work that they said would take 2-3 days. and they weren't even here very much.

watch out everyone! here comes pissed-off doot!

the good news is that im slowly getting over my fear of these rat assholes. i can now walk in the laundry room without banging the door first. this is an accomplishment.