Dear George,
It started with the big storm. Our son J was here at the time, and, when he went up to the attic, he discovered water dripping through the ceiling. We called the roofers the next morning, and they came and gave us a sizeable estimate (about the price of a new compact car) to fix all our roof problems. Slate tiles, new downspouts, repair the box gutters, new roofing on the porch. Such a shock. Then, at the roofer’s request, we had a tree service guy come and remove an oak tree branch that had collapsed on the roof. The tree service guy said he used to be a roofer himself, and he gave us an estimate of about half of the roofer’s to do the work that he thought needed to be done. I showed him the roofer’s estimate, and he said “Wow!” He added that our house would be good for another hundred years if all that were done. We struggled over what to do and finally decided to go with the roofer and his anxiety-producing estimate (even though we don’t expect to be here for a hundred years).
Meanwhile Katja had purchased a fancy new refrigerator. I didn’t know why we needed one, but she said our refrigerator was old and she wanted to replace it before it started having problems. (I learned long ago not to disagree with this line of reasoning.) In preparation for the delivery, we took all the food out of our current refrigerator and its freezer compartment. The refrigerator was filled to capacity, and it was a lot of food. The freezer stuff by itself filled a large Coleman cooler, two styrofoam coolers, and half of a large cardboard box. The refrigerator guys came with our new refrigerator and moved our empty old refrigerator out to the driveway. However, our new refrigerator was too tall to fit in the space in our kitchen. (Gasp.) The refrigerator guy said we should have a construction guy come and sand down the wooden bar which was blocking the refrigerator. We put as much food as we could into the new refrigerator, but its freezer compartment was considerably smaller, and so we had boxes full of frozen food left over.
The next morning the construction guy came, and it took him less than thirty seconds to pull off a wooden bar that was blocking the refrigerator’s access. His minimum charge for the visit was fifty bucks (i.e., at an hourly rate of $6,000 per hour). In the meantime the animal exterminator guy also arrived. The roofers had said raccoons had been up on our front porch roof and had been trying to tunnel their way into our house. The exterminator guy went up to our attic to check it all out. While he was up there, the mattress delivery guys arrived, bringing our newly purchased king-sized mattress. I didn’t know about this purchase either, but Katja said she was worried that we were going to fall out of bed because of our old mattress. She had gotten confused looking at about 50 new mattresses and wound up buying the one endorsed by Tom Brady. In preparation for the movers, I rolled up the rug in the foyer to make access easier, and the mattress guys carried down our old mattress. In doing so, they knocked down the valuable multi-level paper lampshade that hung from our foyer ceiling. Fortunately Katja was standing there and caught it, and I was able to reattach it.
The animal exterminator finished his inspection and was telling me about it when Katja tripped over the rug I’d rolled up and fell flat on her hip. The exterminator and I helped her up, and, while shaken up, she was able to stand. The exterminator said that he saw only slight evidence of raccoons, but there were dead bats in our attic and holes where they were getting in. He explained that bats can spread a disease that causes blindness in humans. He gave us an estimate of many thousand dollars to get rid of the bats and clean up the mess in our attic. We said we needed to think about it.
The refrigerator people came and moved the new refrigerator into its space. We have an old freezer in the basement, and, because the new freezer couldn’t hold all our frozen goods, I went down to check it out. Our basement freezer is like Siberia for frozen goods. The basement is dark and dungy, and Katja never goes down there. Consequently food we store there stays for years, some of it seemingly forever. The freezer was jam-packed to capacity and its shelves were covered in ice an inch thick. When I checked, many items were dated between 2018 and 2020, pre-pandemic purchases. My AI Chatbot told me that frozen meat could be kept indefinitely, but the taste begins to deteriorate after 4 to 12 months. We started throwing out frozen food — turkeys, briskets of beef, lamb chops, steaks, hundreds of dollars worth. Our 64-gallon City of Cincinnati trash receptacle became so full of frozen food that I barely could roll it out to the curb.
The roofers finished up their work several days later, and the refrigerator people finally came and removed our old refrigerator from our driveway. We are sleeping well on our new mattress, eating tasty delicacies from our new refrigerator, looking forward to another hundred years under our excellent roof, and pretending we don’t share our house with bats. The current downside is that Katja is still experiencing severe pain from her fall. An X-ray and a Catscan ruled out fractures and muscle tears, so it’s likely she has a bad bruise. 1% improvement each day. She’s toughing it out.
Love,
Dave
