Evicting Templeton

I’ve been a bit remiss here, not updating on the rest of our productive weekend. Last night we took a break from the Einsel House and for the first time in a month we enjoyed a nice home-cooked dinner. Tonight will be back to the frozen pizza/canned soup routine.

But back to last weekend. Charles spent most of the weekend scraping paint from the east wall of the addition. I realized too late that I missed an excellent photo opportunity, so you’ll have to use your imaginations here readers. Picture classic MacGyver-style sunglasses (the sun was bright last weekend). Then picture those sunglasses under huge safety goggles (scraping paint above your head is a nasty job). Add an MP3 player and earphones. Finally, add a liberal dusting of white paint chips throughout hair, clothes and all skin not protected by the above-mentioned goggles. Thanks to the good weather and the good music he got the entire wall scraped, and by the end of the weekend it was completely primed as well.

We had several visitors to the house on Sunday, including my mother-in-law, two aunts, two uncles and all four of my grandparents. Grandma W even came with a pot of vegetable soup and two homemade pies (apple and cherry)! Grandma stuck around and helped with priming the east side of the addition, and even came back Monday to help for a couple more hours! My uncle J was back as well. He made one last round with the chopper, clearing weeds along the property line. He put up two exterior light fixtures on the kitchen addition. And he brought a huge spotlight that we can borrow. It is currently on the barn roof where it shines on the front of the house. Since it gets dark shortly after 5pm now this spotlight is a huge help. Thanks to it, I was able to keep working 2 hours past sunset on Monday.

Finally, I have the following update to my "Who You Gonna’ Call" post from a couple of weeks ago. Our "ghost" came back a few nights ago and gnawed through the lid of some hot cocoa mix. Given the size of the teeth marks, we had to admit whatever we were dealing with was larger than a mouse. (Somehow, I found this reality to be even more disturbing then any other-worldly explanation.) We narrowed the possibilities down to rat or raccoon, but in the end decided it was probably a rat. Based on encounters while camping, we figure a raccoon would have figured out how to pry open the plastic lid to the hot cocoa instead of chewing a hole through it. So Charles put some rat poison out, and since the poison disappeared overnight we’re hoping our guest(s) will not return. An animal was our first thought back when the muffins disappeared, but everything was so neat and undisturbed we decided against the obvious possibility. I’m still amazed that whatever it was was able to get up on the counter and take all four muffins without leaving any crumbs behind and without knocking anything over. Because believe me, those counters were piled high with a collection of plates, empty cups, screwdrivers, boxes, receipts, drills, batteries, painting supplies, scrapers, etc… So it was apparently a very careful and graceful rat, but still….getting new basement windows installed has jumped toward the top of the priority list.