Home is...

Home is…

I have lived in several places in my time, mostly on the east coast, aside from a brief, insane period in the 70’s, and mostly on Long Island, aside from a brief, insane period in VA.  Of the three homes I’ve lived in on Long Island, two were “home” quickly. The one I was born in, and the one I married into in the 80’s.
I moved back into the house I was born in in 2009. July.  Circumstances demanded it and my mom was getting too old to be wandering around a 5 bedroom house alone.  I think it was after the call I got in VA when she oh so casually mentioned that she hit a boulder, a lawn boulder, with her car. Between that and the third or fourth random fall from tripping over nothing, it was time.  So I went home, to the house I grew up in, the house that my father, quite literally, built.  That house was full again, with me, my girls, and a couple of grandkids.  And Luna.
Living in that house,  I was flooded with memories, both good and bad. It was so different, yet so much the same. The fireplace where we used to run in from the winter cold and stand in front of to warm up, the cold air in the front hall closet from the attic trap door, the cellar stairwell, where we used to write our names in shoe polish, back when shoes were actually polished, the cool of the back hall, due to there being no basement below it, only crawl space. The kitchen window that looked out on the back yard, how I can still see my mother leaning on the sink, watching the birds. Both of my girls spent literally years of their lives there.  Oh if those walls could talk.  I didn’t do a whole lot to the house after my mom passed, minor furniture changes, ripped up some carpet, small things. But it was always home.  Inevitably it became too much for me, too much room, too much taxes, just too much. It was time to put it on the market.   

Suddenly  I became a master procrastinator, I admit it. The thought of going through and packing about 4 generations of….stuff…was beyond daunting. We had three rooms stacked with moving boxes. I had so many mixed feelings about the move. Selling the house I grew up in that my father built, having to get rid of….the past, moving in general, starting somewhere new, at my age. My heart broke just a little bit the day we left that empty house, with its many ghosts of the past. I thought that I would never have a home that would really be “home” again. I didn’t even realize that I felt that way until recently. We found this fabulous little house  by some stroke of luck. It was perfect. 3 bedrooms, two baths, well one and a half. Full basement, the best kitchen ever, a sunroom with skylight, another skylight on the landing upstairs. And the closet. A WALK THRU CLOSET. WITH SHELVES BEHIND THE CLOTHES BAR.  AND A SHOE RACK.  If you know me…you know.  The closet in what would be my office?  THE WIDTH OF THE ROOM WITH SHELVES AT EITHER END.  And the claw foot bathtub!  And then there’s the barn. Katie thought she might get a cow. I strongly discouraged it. It’s not that kind of barn.
However, it does have a loft. But we did fence in the yard for the dogs.  And the deck.  I love this house.  Did I mention that it was built in 1898? And that it’s on the river? Or the fact that…it’s right around the corner from where we used to live?  Which is really odd, but at least we were familiar with the area.

So we moved and found ourselves in a whole new old house. We moved our furniture and our things in. And started living here.  I had my work from home office set up upstairs, Katie had the downstairs bedroom.  And life went on.  It’s funny when you move, especially if it’s into someone else’s house. 

There’s almost sort of a guilt over changing anything.  It takes a minute for it to sink in….this is MY house, MY home.  The moment came for me just recently. We have made a few changes. Le Fiance has his office down stairs, since Josh stole Katie away and the room was empty.

And I say that with the utmost love and affection.  We rearranged the kitchen some and had an empty corner, which Ikea gladly filled with a workspace for le baker (that’s me).  We made some changed in the living room, threw down a rug (which Ikea also provided), and we’re discussing paint colors.  The moment came when Katie said….”I’m glad you’re finally making it your home”

And I realized…yea, I am.  I’m not just living in this house. I’m thriving in this home.  I’m happy. I may never tire of looking out my office window at the river.

I may never get used to looking up from my computer and seeing the deer at the edge of the woods across the street.  I’m moving on from all the skeletons,

I’ve learned to dance with them. I’ve learned that life is short and I don’t want to miss any of it.  I know that I’m moving towards something. I’m not sure what it is yet, but whatever it is, it will be worth the journey. I’ve realized that I’m not in this alone. For the original Miss Independence, that’s big.  But it’s nice, really nice, just to lean every now and then.  In this home that we’re making.  I don’t take any of it for granted. I’ve come a long way from the person I used to be years ago. I’ve learned a whole lot. I’ve loved, I’ve lost, I’ve loved again. I’ve survived raising two children of the female persuasion, as a single mother, and God knows that’s an accomplishment.  I’ve had happy times, and dreadfully almost disabling sad times. But I’m still here.  And if THESE walls could talk….let’s just be grateful they can’t, shall we?

Little Bastard

So my office, where I work from home, is upstairs on the east side of the house. It’s quiet up here, just me and La Luna, during the day. I have Pandora on low (most of the time), because phone calls. So here I am sitting at my desk under the front windows when I hear skittering in front of me. I stand up to see out the window and there’s two beady little rodent eyes staring at me. STARING ME DOWN.  It seems I interrupted him…her…whatever, I’m not about to get that close, in the act of….cleaning out my gutters? Well then, that’s not so bad. Except that now it gets spooked and disappears around the corner. WTH. There’s nowhere to go but down, buddy.  Oh, how wrong am I.  Anyway, assuming he found his way down to the deck, back to work it is. 

Little Bastard

Days pass.  I’m in my office working. La Luna is passed out in her beanbag. I hear some random noise, could be La Luna snoring or snuffling or whatever that dream noise is that she does.  I turn. I look. La Luna is passed out, not dreaming, not snuffling,  not snoring. Crap. The noise is coming from OUTSIDE.  Like some paranoid madwoman, I walk around listening to the outside walls. Then I notice flakes of wood falling from the sky. Oh. Wait. They’re falling from….the soffit. What. The hell. Is going. On. This is a very old house. Cedar shakes. Wood soffits. Who knew squirrels like to eat wood?? Wait. IT’S EATING MY SOFFITS?  Oh, hell no. I start banging on the walls. Really loud. He/she gets spooked finally and leaves. And comes back daily. 

Cleaning out the gutters

For days,  I feel Little Bastard stalking me.  Occasionally I look out the window and he/she is staring at me. I’m being friggin stalked by a rodent. This top floor is dormered, there is no actual attic. The side windows are directly under the peak of the roof. If I look upward out the window, I can see his furry tail hanging off the roof. He has actually hung upside down FROM THE ROOF and STARED at me like I’M the one intruding.  And I want badly to hurt him. I’m not a vicious person , unless you mess with my kids, my fiancé, my dog….or my house.  This is slowly going to drive me over the edge (some may say there’s not far to go…don’t believe them) Picture Agnes Moorehead in the Twilight Zone “Invaders” episode.  

Twilight Zone-Invaders
Uh huh, that’s about where I was headed. With better hair and clothes, but still.  Listening to this Little Bastard chewing on my house.  That became his official name. Little Bastard. Isn’t that adorable?  It became a routine, him chewing and gnawing, me yelling out the window and banging on the walls. Then I heard him/her over my head. Oh no, oh hell no.  The fiancé said, no, there’s no way he could get in the attic. I said, oh, there is SOMETHING making noise over my desk.  Finally went around that side of the house (it’s the far side of the house, we rarely go over there unless it’s summer or at least spring) and, oh lookit that! There’s a vent. In the very small attic space. A wood vent. With a screen behind it. A screen with a damn tear in it. Little Bastard.  Calling the critter ridder place asap.
“Yea, hi, I have a squirrel in my attic.”
“A squirrel? Are you sure it’s in the attic?”
“Oh hell yea, I can hear it even as we speak, over my head. Definitely in the attic. I need him gone. Like, yesterday. Can you do that?”
“Are you sure it’s a squirrel? Could be a raccoon”
*what the hell difference does it make?? It’s a four legged creature who is definitely NOT a member of my family, living in my damn house*
“I’m quite sure. I have seen it. It has been stalking me from my front roof. It’s a squirrel.”
“We’ll send someone out….is tomorrow good?”
“Yesterday would have been better, but I’ll take tomorrow.”
So Melissa came to my house. Melissa from Utah. What she’s doing in NY is beyond me, but hey, she does squirrel removal so I’m good with that. She walked through my entire house to verify there is absolutely no attic access. After I told her there’s about maybe a foot of attic space, and absolutely no attic access. She was kind. She did not comment on the shoes when she checked my under the eaves closet.  Or my boots when she checked the office closet. We went outside. We stared for a bit at the ripped screen. She decided that they would bring a “block and tunnel” to put over the vent. It’s a little metal cage tunnel that Little Bastard can get OUT of but he can’t get back in. Excellent. Let’s do it. She writes me up an estimate, explaining  the fees. I tell her I really don’t care what it costs, just do it, thank you, my sanity is at risk and South Oaks is not my preferred vacation destination, straitjacket is not my preferred fashion statement.
Apparently the block and tunnel worked.  JT (apparently from Idaho) came and took the tunnel down, covered the vent with some heavy duty mesh stuff, smeared some Crisco with red pepper (FYI, he said it’s been known to repel rodents, red pepper flakes or cayenne. I gave him both.)  where L.B. likes to chew, we’re good. HOWEVER. Now I have a worse problem. A pissed off L.B.  He is now back and chewing on the soffit, chewing on the frame around the vent, wreaking havoc  and stress and endangering my sanity again. Still.  For what it’s worth, we tried humane traps. One was on the deck. He was SUPPOSED to go in the END to get the PayDay candy. But NO, not our L.B. HE went in through the sides and tripped it without getting snagged. And you wonder why his name is L.B. Psht. TWICE he did this. Once when it was on the roof. We reset it and the wind blew it off the roof. THIS SQUIRREL IS OUT TO GET ME, I SWEAR. Good thing there’s a guarantee on this pest control thing. I called them yesterday. Jessica, I said, I have a problem.  JT  came and put up a block and tunnel. It worked, but now I have a pissed off squirrel eating my house. I need y’all to do something.  Death is an option.” (sorry, PETA, do not judge me until you have a squirrel eating YOUR house.) JT came back. I venture outside to greet him.

“Welcome back. What are we doing this time,” I say, glancing at the weird metal tube that he’s just filled with dead leaves from my driveway.
“I’ll put this trap up, and it should get him.  It’s a ‘kill only’ trap.”
“Oh good!  Perfect! OK, well then I’ll be in my office if you need me."
There follows some drilling, hammering, and good lord what the hell is he doing out there.
I see him put his stuff in his car and head back to the house, go outside again to greet him.
“OK, the trap is up, c’mon, I’ll show you.”
So….there’s this big ol’ metal pipe-tube thing hanging right under the vent. “When he goes for the vent, he’ll smell the bait and go in there to investigate, and that should trip the trap.”
“Ooooooh-kay.  And then I call you and you come take him away, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Awesome…..great…soooo….what happens if he goes in there when I’m downstairs and I don’t hear it…or we’re not home…or whatever, how will we know if we got him?”
*brief pause, sly grin* “oh….you’ll see his tail.”
“……………………………………………………Alrighty then.”
It’s snowing today. Hard. L.B. doesn’t venture on the roof when there’s snow.  We’ll see how this goes. Hopefully once the snow stops I will see a tail hanging out of this thing. I will either call JT to come take it away, or perhaps just for good measure I’ll make squirrel stew. Don’t mock. It’s a thing:
Squirrel Stew
More likely, L.B. will ignore the lure of the bait in the trap, and use the trap itself to sit on as he chews his way into my house. My hate for this rodent is unparalleled. And totally justified.