It’s been raining for what feels like years. This past weekend’s nice weather seems like it was a lifetime ago or some imaginary tale that someone cooked up to entertain us. Could it possibly be true that there are days when water doesn’t fall from the sky? Does the sky change to any other color other than dismal gray? It’s funny how the moment the sun comes out the memory of the dismal bleakness that are rainy days drifts away and the moment that we experience long stretches of rain it feels like there is no end in sight.

I’m not sure if I’ve previously mentioned it here, but we used to have a wood burning stove in our basement. We have since relocated it to the garage and Jason stuffed the hole with some insulation to block it up. Which was fine until the center started to be pulled in. At that point in time he put one of the pipes back into the wall, stuffed it with some more insulation and put some foam around it to hold it in place. Which worked.

That was until the pipe started to move on it’s own accord. There were scratching sounds and shuffling about at random times within the pipe. We really didn’t think much of it other than a squirrel got down the chimney until the sounds go dramatically louder.. and the newest layer of insulation started to sink inward from the grip of some unseen force.

Last night when the sounds started Jason decided (with it raining) that it was time to take action. One of us was going to beat on the pipe and create noise to scare the squirrel out. The other was going to take a flashlight and go outside to see what came out the other end. I opted for the beating of the pipe on the dry indoors side of things. I’d rather be the one who pissed the thing off than the one who the pissed off thing first saw.

So I beat on the pipe and Jason finally came back inside and stood in the doorway (a bit wet I might add).  When I inquired about what the squirrel looked like he told me it wasn’t a squirrel at all. What could it possibly be? I asked. And that’s when the news smacked me full in the face. It wasn’t a squirrel, it was a momma raccoon and her three little babies. They perched on the roof until I stopped beating the on the pipe and then they’d scurried back down the chimney like a masked and furry Santa.

I will say that at first I didn’t believe him but I went through the motions of believing him. We went to lowes to buy some chicken wire to make a small cage to screw over the end of the pipe just in case momma decided to dig a little bit further inward.

When we arrived back Jason got the flashlight and Momma was again perched at the top of the chimney. I took the flashlight at this point and tried in vein to see through the trees and rain and came up empty. It wasn’t until I ventured to the side of the house that the chimney is on and stood next to it, shining my flashlight at the very top that I saw her. And she saw me. There, sticking out of the chimney from the nose up, was the one in question. We stared at each other for a few minutes and then, without so much as a word uttered between us, she slowly lowered herself elevator style back down into the cosy confines of my chimney.

I think its worth noting that it was at this point that panic set in. Not that I was scared of her, but she was protecting her babies and I didn’t want her anywhere near my own. After a fun call to the Pennsylvania Game Commission (Ghostbuster’s number was busy) I set up an appointment with a pest control agency that handles wildlife to come Friday afternoon (The young gentleman on the other end of the phone obviously didn’t feel that a raccoon and her young that were LIVING IN MY CHIMNEY and only a few tugs of insulation away from being all up in my basement was a life threatening wildlife sitauation like I did) and set up traps and remove them to some remote location that is not my chimney.

I can’t really say that I blame her for wanting to live there.. I do after all.

As I was walking past Old Main on my way through the freezing tundra known as campus on Tuesday I saw this and had to stop to take a picture (and also get hypothermia in my fingers):

Friday was relatively quiet compared to Thursday. I, being quite embarassed that I was now wearing different clothing than I came to work in on Thursday after the coffee incident, assured everyone that I would keep my freaking out to a minimum. And I held up my end of the bargin. I didn’t cry. I didn’t invent new swear words. All in all, it was business as usual.

Saturday however, all bets were off. My partner in crime, Gladys, came to visit and we spent much of the afternoon seeing what kind of trouble we could get into. As it turns out, we must be slacking a little bit because neither of us were arrested.

By Saturday night I thought that I was in the clear and that I had avoided the third bad thing that was lurking around every corner waiting to pounce me. I figured that short of being shot, what could be worse than what I’d already put myself through?

That’s when this happened:

Enough said.

I have to say that it was a very productive weekend at the Little White Box. My bestest friend in the entire world Gladys and her husband came over to visit and we had margaritas and it was a grand old time that commenced in dinner out with  some of their friends that we’ve hung out with before and I don’t think I’ve talked that much or laughed that hard in a while.

Rewind though, to Saturday morning. Jason had finally had “enough” and decided it was time to mulch. And mulch he did. Amid the bee-like creatures that decided to take up residence in the ground (who knew?!) to the spiders, ants and other assorted insect like creatures, Jason successfully dug up 95% of the lily of the valley that took over the patch of land in front of the house, behind the trees and bushes and were threatening to eat the front steps. He’s since put down landscaping cloth and mulch and it looks a million times better. I contributed to his efforts by cleaning the house and doing dishes.

The following day I still had about 3/4 of a pitcher of margaritas in the freezer that Gladys and I hadn’t consumed so naturally after waking up and deciding that scrubbing the basement was the best idea in the universe (as I decided we were Going.To.Be.Productive.ALL.WEEKEND.LONG!) it was time to load the washer and dryer and kick back with a margarita.. or 6.

In my defense, it was after 12, it was happy hour somewhere, and they HAD to be drunk or they’d go to waste and a wasted frozen margarita is a horrible horrible thing. There are probably starving children in some country somewhere who’d kill for a frozen margarita right about now. I was simply doing my duty as an able bodied American to cut down on waste while attempting to control my consumerism by not purchasing anything new until I had consumed/used what I already had available to me. 

See? Doesn’t that sound so much better than saying that after I mopped the floor and scrubbed the shower that laziness set in so I decided I could do laundry drunk as well as I could sober?