My mom and my pest guy were standing in front of my yard talking when I pulled up in front my house. She had agreed to meet him at 2:30, and they were still there, an hour and a half later. I took that to mean one of three things: (1) this pest guy is extremely thorough, (2) this guy was late, or (3) my house is infested and I'll have to move out and let the rats take over.
Well, luckily, it was door number one. The pest guy stayed for an extra half hour with me to repeat everything he'd already said to my mom, including showing me pictures and video from my attic. It turns out that one or more rats have burrowed their way through my insulation foam in a few places, and the holes that I thought the roofing company had fixed in the spring (after all the shenanigans I went through with them) are still there. Thankfully, he didn't see any signs of nesting, so I'm not battling a rat family, at least. Just some come-and-go visitors. So now, I'm on the lookout for a good handyman to do some patching to keep out the rats, and my AC guy is coming over tomorrow to fix an issue that's been giving the rats water to drink (gross). Not the best situation ever, but fixable.
It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since I bought the house. Last October, I was trudging through financing paperwork and negotiations and finding contractors to bring my beautiful house up to code and up from the deep lean that I found it in. I was a wreck back then. Nothing's worse than giving up tens of thousands of dollars at once, and then having to pay someone else even more money to fix the broken thing you just bought.
The work is never done. But boy, I'll take this rat issue any day over the mess that was buying this house. At least I'm not getting dozens of emails and calls a week (sometimes a day) from people about insurance, mortgage, renovations, and money. Always needing something new. Usually sharing bad news.
Sometimes I think I'll buy another house and start building a real estate empire. And then I remember how much money I still owe, and I quickly avert my eyes from all "For Sale" signs.
After the rat man left (and he did kind of resemble a rat in the face...I wonder if you start to look like your work after a while, and if so, what does a teacher begin to resemble then? The sagging fabric on her bulletin boards?)... Anyway, after he left, I checked my email and found a French evaluation test for the program that I'm going to be attending next summer in Quebec City. It'll be three weeks of French immersion in Canada--one week spent in the classroom, and two split between the classroom and volunteering. I'm really excited for it. I had to decide between a long computer programming boot camp and three weeks in a beautiful place speaking my favorite language, and as you might imagine, Canada won out a hundredfold. (I still can't decide if I'd even like computer programming...I mean, I'd be good at it, but my eyes were bloodshot after playing Tetris for an hour yesterday on my phone. I can't imagine staring at a screen all day.)
There were a few places in the test where I wasn't quite sure of the answer--usually when it got into the more difficult tenses (they would have been, he will have had, etc)--but I was pleasantly surprised by how well I did. You weren't allowed to use any reference materials to take the test, so I did shape my answers around things I knew how to say. And I did spend twenty minutes racking my brain trying to remember how to say flood in French (I eventually got it: inondation). I've definitely got some rust to knock off. But just imagine...if I can write a fake letter to a friend recommending that she visit Charleston with proper conjugations and good word choice/sentence variation, just imagine what I'll be able to do after speaking and writing in French for three weeks straight! I'm so excited!
While I was writing my final essay for the evaluation (what you think life will be like on Earth in 100 years: warmer, more racially mixed, still no world peace), my phone began to ring. Caller: unknown. Against my better judgment, I picked up the phone, and a muffled voice on the other end began to read to me from a script. Something about a political poll. And I thought, Hey, now I know who these polls are based on: the people who answer calls from unknown numbers despite the small twinge of concern in the pit of their stomach that it might be the beginning of their life as a horror movie. "Would you be willing to participate?" he asked. "Sure, why not," I replied.
The man on the phone asked me a number of questions, most of which seemed to center around the election for governor happening in two weeks. Which I didn't know was in two weeks until after he hung up, and I looked it up on the internet. Now I feel stupid for saying that I don't know a lot about the race because I've been waiting until it gets closer to election day to read up on all the candidates. Of course, I've always been last-minute about my voting research, so I'll probably still wait until the night before to look everybody up and make a decision. I like to think that I wait so that all the information has already come out by the time I pay attention, but mostly I'm a lazy citizen and will do anything to avoid being bombarded by election information until I absolutely have to be. Politics are the worst. Maybe in 100 years we'll finally have figured out how to elect people without spending ridiculous amounts of money and slandering one another. Probably not.
Despite the weirdly eventful afternoon/evening, or perhaps in conjunction with it, I had pretty good day. I finally emailed my boss about thoughts for my job next year (maybe I can work on STEM and math/science extension?), and both fifth grade classes showed up with all of their homework. Peace of mind and student responsibility? It doesn't get much better.
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| This is what Wikipedia says I have to look forward to next summer. Voila: my future. |
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