Knock-knock... Who's There?

Domestic bliss. As a stay-at-home-mom-turned-stay-at-home-wife, I love having the house to myself during the day. I do some work. I do less-than-sufficient housework. I blop a lot (blog hop). I spend endless hours on Facebook, and I am far too easily distracted by anything having to do with Bill Maher. I love my life.

With my happy lifestyle, I only grudgingly give up any of my time to anything other than what I want to do.

For example, I never answer the door unless I know who it is and am expecting that person. If it is a delivery, such as from UPS or FedEx, I wait until the driver is gone before I collect the package. If it's a door-to-door salesperson, I will not budge. Jordan never has friends come over without calling first, so I'm safe there. Suffice it to say, if I am not expecting you, you will end up standing there forever and ever because I refuse to answer the door.

I also never answer the phone unless I feel that there's something important involved. If someone really wants to reach me, they should chat, as nature intended. If it's a particularly long discussion, feel free to use e-mail. I am online all the time and will generally respond to an e-mail within five minutes. Phone calls are too sudden and I am horrible at speaking. I prefer to spend time gathering my ideas, writing, reading, editing, rewriting, and rereading something before allowing my audience to see it. Phone calls don't allow this convenience. Things can get out of hand so quickly on the phone. Or you end up talking to someone you didn't want to talk to in the first place. I feel that the world would be better off had Alex Bell and his creativity not existed. 

I know, my life is so exotic and important that I choose to ignore people. Nice, huh? But I digress.

Enter my nemesis. Ever since we moved into our house, I have been plagued by a hammering noise. For the first few months, I assumed that we had a neighbor who was involved in construction. Or carpentry. Or just some home repairs. But this hammering noise continued all day long for months. I would look out various windows, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. It was fairly loud, leading me to believe that I should be able to see the culprit easily from at least one window in the house. Alas, it was not to be. Not once in my furtive glances did I spy the evil hammer-wielder.

However, I was able to discern that the hammering noise was louder at the back of the house, so I focused my attention and energy there. I would sit outside on the patio, waiting to hear the hammering noise. It would never happen when I was outside. I thought that maybe we had an overly courteous hammering neighbor, who would simply stop their work while I was outside, as I appeared to be enjoying a lovely day but was in reality circumspectly attempting to track down the evil-doer. When I'd retreat back inside, the hammering would start up again within five minutes. I was coming unglued.

The hammering would sometimes occur when Jeff or Jordan were there, but they never seemed to mind. Maybe it sounded like the slight ticking of a clock to them. To me, it was like Big Ben chiming in my head. I never could understand their dismissal of the sound. Sure, they heard it, which was wonderful news to me, indicating I hadn't completely lost it. But it just didn't phase and haunt them as it did me.

I gave up on trying to find the source of the hammering. I distracted myself by trying to watch TV in the middle of the day, with the sound really loud. The shows were entertaining, but that hammering just continued. I tried listening to music with headphones. Fun music, but my ears easily get tired of wearing headphones and I have to take them off. More hammering. We got aquatic turtles, in a tank, with loud water. The splashing water just added to my frustration rather than eliminated it.

The hammering continued on and on.

I did discover that since the sound stopped when I was outside, the culprit was sensitive to sound or movement. So, I got in the habit of making noise when I'd hear the hammering start up. I'd run to the back door and open it as loud as I could (sliding doors don't make much noise, but I tried). Or I'd just walk outside. Or I'd go to Jordan's bedroom window and attempt to make a loud noise by opening and closing it (again, not as loud as I'd hoped). But usually the noise did the trick and I would have some peace and quiet for about 15 minutes before I had to go make more noise.

Then, after living in our house for about a year, I finally managed to uncover my suspect: in the course of making noise one day, a woodpecker flew away from the house. Apparently Woody perches on an exterior vent to the attic, tirelessly breaking into our house. He never submitted an application for rent. He doesn't take the trash out. He doesn't pitch in to help pay for groceries. He's like a friend your child brings home who mooches off of you until you kick him out. His "music" keeps my nerves ragged, but there he was, squatting in my house. And not merely squatting. As far as I know, the typical squatter doesn't want you to know they are there. Woody had no gumption about making a ruckus and telling me to shove it.

Well, I decided that since he was most of the way through the wooden slat to the attic, he would soon make it all the way through, and then he could just move in and be quiet. Silly me. I somehow thought that he had some normal bird purpose in his mind. It turned out that he's an evil woodpecker, set on world domination and sending people to the crazy farm.

He made it through the wood slat, but didn't stop his daily drum practice. He started a lovely new hole, right next to the original one. So my hammering never stopped. I never get a break from trying to make noise to scare him off.

Having done some research, I've learned that woodpeckers are on some weird Colorado endangered list. Not because they are endangered; rather because they are non-migratory birds. I guess if they don't go anywhere else (I've noticed this...), we'll never get a decent selection of them. I don't want them, though. In a cartoon on Saturday morning? Sure thing! But in my house on Saturday morning? Go away! So, with their "listed" status, killing them is illegal and therefore not an option.

So, what's a person to do when they can't just exterminate their home-invading nemesis? Well, it seems that loud noises scare them. Duh. I figured that out. However, do I want to set up some automatic noisemaker in an attempt to replace the head-splitting hammering combined with house destruction with another recurring noise just to deter the original noisemaker? That doesn't seem helpful.

Woodpeckers are also bothered by movement. I noticed this, too. I'm well on my way to becoming an ornithologist. Putting a shiny mobile of some sort near the woodpecker's preferred knocking place is an easy way to startle him. Hm. It's a good idea, but I have no idea where to find said shiny mobile, nor a decent way to mount it to the inside corner where the eave slopes.

Putting something over the perching point is another way to force your unwanted housemate to move on. Stretching some fishing line just near enough to the actual footing location is enough to prevent the woodpecker from alighting and pestering you all day long.

This last one is the one we will try. I hope our ladder is long enough to reach that high. I hope that the fishing line actually works and Woody finds another place to peck. We will also need to fix the entire vent, and possibly clean out the attic.

But maybe, just maybe, I can return to my domestic bliss.

Q: When should soda be a five-finger discount?A: When you don't have five fingers to pick it up...

Envision this, and if you're squeamish, just gloss over the last few pics:

A loving husband makes dinner on a Friday night. Mmmm... porcupine meatballs. Yummy! They tasted great, Jeff!

Smoky, the adorable cat, sits on the 12-year-old's lap while he tries to eat. Smoky, we love you, but it turns out that you're too distracting!

Jordan has to let the food cool down for a fairly long time, and when he checks to see if his food is cool enough to eat (it turns out that it wasn't), instead of getting it in his mouth, he drops it straight onto the cat in his lap.

Smoky, now covered in piping-hot meatballs and tomato-based sauce, does her quantum-kitty thing and goes from being in Jordan's lap to being on the floor near the stairs. There was no flight or motion - one moment she was on Jordan's lap and the next she was at the stairs. This is what typically happens with her when she's scared, which is why we call it the quantum-kitty thing. We should have named her Schrödinger...

When Jeff and I realized the unfortunate situation we were all in, Jeff sprang up to help clean Jordan, while I attempted to grab the cat to prevent her from running across the house flinging sauce all the way. Jeff was much more successful than I was.

I ended up chasing Smoky up the stairs and into our bedroom before I grabbed her and pinned her to the bathroom counter and cleaned her off. The cleanup was good, but it came too late. She had already dripped the sauce all over the carpet at the base of the stairs, then got it on our bedroom wall when she ran through. Yuck. I still need to clean the wall.

Jeff got Jordan new clothes and helped clean up Jordan's seat and get him some new food. Then he proceeded to arrange for a carpet cleaning. Apparently carpet cleaning companies are doing as poorly in this economy as all other businesses, because they were prompt and arranged a cleaning for the weekend. Yay!

So... fast-forward to the day the carpet cleaner is supposed to come. Being overly tired for no good reason, I slept in quite a bit. Jeff got up at a fairly reasonable time and was all ready, but needed help moving the furniture from the living room into the kitchen. I got up and helped him, and we even got Jordan's help! Hooray for kids (well, kid).

The carpet cleaner called about 20 minutes before he was scheduled to arrive, saying that he would be early. Nice, fast service, but we still needed to vacuum! So Jeff ran upstairs, got the vacuum, and started vacuuming while Jordan and I finished moving the furniture. Jeff got about half the floor done before the guy arrived.

So, the guy came in and started his preliminary work of finding various stains and determining how bad they are (using a really weird stain-o-meter thing). Leaving Jeff to discuss the strategy of cleaning carpets, I snuck to the refrigerator to get a drink. After grabbing a Mountain Dew (yummy breakfast...), I realized that we didn't really have a decent selection there and refilled the cream soda stash from above the fridge. 

So, now the fridge was fully stocked with cream soda. However, the other column for cans was still completely empty. What do you do when you are out of drinks? Look on top of the fridge, of course!

Hm. Only water and cream soda. This required a garage run. Since you can see the top of the garage door in the picture (it's white, just above the right side of the fridge), I didn't have far to go. Jeff was having an excellent conversation with the carpet cleaner about 10 feet behind me.

Yay! I moved toward the door, opened it, and looked into the garage.

So far, so good. However, upon reaching the first wooden step (we now have a massive ongoing debate over how many steps there are here - I say 3; Jeff and Jordan both say 2), I stepped funny and twisted my ankle, calling for an imminent fall onto concrete.

A split-second decision made me realize that hitting cold, hard concrete would not be the proper way to start the day. I flailed, probably looking a lot like a newborn bird trying to take flight. Luckily there was no one watching. Or maybe it was not so lucky - they may have reached out to catch me.

I reached for anything I could find to prevent me from experiencing a short drop and a sudden stop, knowing I would probably be knocked unconscious if I actually hit ground.

Luck be with me! I found something to hold on to! The previous owners had a dog, and they installed a pet door in the door to the garage, which we have the insert in to prevent Smoky from using it. Wonderful for the dog. Not so wonderful for me...

Somehow, in all my ridiculous flailing, I managed to snag the edge of the sharp metal. It helped me regain my balance just enough to prevent me from experiencing an unsatisfying splat. However, that good luck was also bad luck, in that the metal sliced me open. While standing there at the bottom of the stairs (which I mysteriously traversed in the normal fashion, not as gravity wanted me to), I glanced at my hand. I shouldn't have looked. I had blood running down several fingers and a bunch of now-unused skin all over my middle finger. I was feeling fine before checking my hand. Now it was a good thing I hadn't eaten anything yet...

I stood there for a moment, debating whether I should still grab any drinks, as was my intention when I set out on this little adventure. I opted not to, as I could feel the blood draining from my head to my feet and I didn't want to have to clean up a bunch of soda from the floor when I dropped it on my way inside. Trust me, if you know my luck, all 12 cans would have burst open and we would have had sticky soda all over everything. 

I managed to get back inside without passing out, grabbed my unopened Mountain Dew from the counter and walked over to where Jeff was still talking with the carpet cleaner. They were deep in discussion about the cause of a particular stain. By this time I was really going into shock (I'm such a wuss) and I was beginning to sweat like I was the star athlete in the 4th quarter of some major game trying to make the final score to move the team past a tie. Or maybe a dinosaur was chasing me. Whatever the case, I held the can to the back of my neck and it felt marvelous. I longed for a giant can to climb into. But I had to make do with the one can.

Jeff and the carpet guy were going on and on. I held my hand behind my back (hopefully not dripping blood on myself and the kitchen floor), hoping the carpet guy would move out of my way. I really didn't want either of them to see my hand; I was sure they would both overreact if they did. I tried to encourage the end of the conversation by stating that the original stain came from the cat, but the larger stain was from us trying to clean up. No one seemed to wonder why I had my soda on my neck... or why my hand was behind my back. But the guy wouldn't move, and I wasn't about to push past him, as he was spread out on the floor, taking up the entire space in front of me. It isn't a big area, as you can see here. With a wall on each side of the camera, he was firmly planted like the horizontal bar of the letter H:

I made some comments about how we tried so hard to clean the carpet ourselves, but it made things worse than they were, and finally the carpet guy was satisfied with that stain and he stood up. He got his laser measurer out and began measuring the room. This allowed me some space to move from the kitchen to the stairs. I turned to Jeff and said, "I have to go upstairs." He seemed surprised and asked why? Later he told me that he thought I had to hurry to the bathroom (I was fairly pale) and that was what my rush was about. I wish. I showed him my hand and he just gulped and nodded. He didn't even have the presence of mind to ask what happened. (Note: Jeff has informed me that he didn't lack the presence of mind to ask what happened. Instead, he saw the severity of the wound, combined with my ashen palor, and decided that any attempt at conversation would just end badly for all participants, and simply ushered me upstairs.) He also later told me that he thinks I am a great actress, to be able to pull off the hiding-of-the-bloody-hand stunt and not have either of them notice.

I calmly walked up the stairs, went to the linen closet (which is also where we store our first aid stuff), and was in the process of getting the Neosporin and an entire box of Band-Aids when Jordan stepped out of his room to talk to me. I don't know why he chose to do that. He never does it any other time when I'm standing there, and this was one time I didn't want him to! Knowing that he inherited my squeamishness in emergency situations, I was fairly certain that he would pass out. Or throw up. Or both. But, he looked at my hand, asked what happened, said some sympathetic things, and returned to his room, none the worse. In the midst of losing blood, seeing black spots, hearing the blood rush in my ears, and being incredibly light-headed, I stood there amazed at his new-found resiliency.

I then took my precious first aid supplies to my bathroom, turned on the cold water, plunged my hand in, and laid my head on my other arm. It felt like an hour that I stayed in that position, but it was probably no more than 10 minutes. Jeff came in and checked on me, asking all the right questions about what had happened. Telling him that I did this while falling down the stairs seemed silly, but I wasn't creative enough to change the story to make me seem more heroic...

"There was a minor earthquake and your grandmother's fine china fell out of the cupboard and I managed to save it, but I broke a regular drinking glass in the process and it sliced me open. But I saved the china!"

No?

"While I was in the garage getting some drinks, a child was riding her bike in the street and would have been hit by a car had I not intervened and injured myself for her safety."

Probably not something I would do...

"My wedding ring fell into the sink while the disposal was running and I was so intent on saving the beautiful token of our marriage that I didn't think of the risk to myself."

This is one of the reasons I rarely wear my wedding ring - too many bad images of garbage disposals, toilets, poopy diapers, etc.

So, having a severe lack of creativity, and knowing that Jeff would never believe a silly heroic story anyway, I told the truth. 

"I was trying to get more drinks for the fridge from the garage, stepped wrong going down the stairs, twisted my ankle, and sliced my hand open on the pet door."

I'm not sure he believed this, either. But by this time, I didn't really care. I was rather pleased to have my hand fairly numb (no stinging anymore, just throbbing). I just wanted to keep my hand under the water and have my head on my other arm.

Jeff kept asking me if I hit my head when I fell. I kept responding that I didn't actually fall. For some reason, neither of us could move past this issue. We repeated this line of question and answer over and over. He finally pointed to my head and said, "is that what happened to your head when you fell?" I looked, and sure enough, I had a giant red mark across my forehead. Fortunately, it was from laying on my arm on the bathroom counter for 10+ minutes, not from a kiss from the concrete in the garage.

I then attempted to turn off the water so I could dry up and put my bandages on. Jeff wouldn't let me. He grabbed my wrist and said, "you have to remove the dead skin or it won't heal properly." I told him it wasn't dead skin, but he persisted. He finally found some tweezers in the drawer and came at me. I screamed and flailed some more (apparently I'm more of a flailer than I knew...).

Well, dancing around the bathroom, losing blood, and still in shock, I was unable to keep my distance from Jeff and his evil tweezers. I resigned myself to putting my hand back under water and my head back on my arm. He was extremely gentle, but it wasn't completely painless... I felt the sting as he ripped off the flesh from my body. Okay, as he gently tugged the small amount of dead skin from my finger. But it felt more like I was being quartered... I'm surprised that Jordan, the carpet guy, and the neighbors didn't all call 911, as I was carrying on like I was being fed into a wood chopper! Or like a child getting a bandage ripped off.

Jeff finally finished his evil torture, I got my hand dried off, Jeff got the Neosporin and various Band-Aids on it (on my thumb and middle finger), and I promptly began to black out. I made it to the bed and Jeff turned the fan on and opened the window. This helped a lot. He got me my book (I still love my Kindle), turned the light on, and left to check on the carpet guy, who was doing an amazing job that I really didn't care about at that point in time.

When Jeff checked on me, I requested some pain medicine. Not wanting to go downstairs and step on the carpet while the guy was working, Jeff got me some Ecotrin from his side of the bed to soothe the pain. I took the pills, joking that it's a good thing I'm not a hemophiliac, as Ecotrin is a blood thinner. Little did I know that this would still prevent decent clotting, and ended up having to change Band-Aids a few hours later as I had begun to bleed through my originals...

By this time my hand was feeling a bit better in the actual cut areas. However, my ring finger was sore and stiff. My right shoulder, elbow, and wrist were sore and stiff. My right hip, knee, and ankle were sore and stiff. This was turning into a full-fledged war wound! I guess the body really fully reacts during self-preservation. I was exhausted, recuperating, and still had no food in me. Jeff brought me some crackers and a plate so I could have something. I ate some, trying to keep my ring finger moving, and then fell asleep. This was good for me. Bad for my ring finger.

When I awoke, Jeff and I discussed dinner options, and we were reminded of a movie promise we made each other a few weeks ago. So I found out where and when Monsters vs. Aliens (the IMAX one) was playing, and we set out to go see it. It was great fun. However, my hand still hurt. My hip and knee were feeling much better, but my ankle, shoulder, elbow, and wrist were still easily aggravated (but none of the pain was constant, as it was in my hand).

Fast-forward again to the next day. My hip, knee, and ankle are all feeling just fine. My right shoulder is stiff, but no longer sore. My elbow only hurts when I twist my arm. My wrist is fine, but the palm of my hand feels bruised (but looks fine). My ring finger is all swollen (making it tough to type), my thumb seems to be on its way to a decent healing job, but my poor middle finger is just gross. The lower, smaller cut will heal okay. But the larger wound is just yucky. Not only is it still open and raw, but it's somewhat swollen and has a deep bruise developing beneath the actual cut. But hopefully, with some care and time, it will heal just fine.

Apparently it's not easy to take a picture of one's dominent thumb. I probably took over 12 shots and this is the best I could get! The wound is actually longer than what it appears to be in the picture, but it healed a lot overnight. There's still a faint red streak extending to the edge of my thumb.

This one is just gross, and you can even see the blood still under my fingernail. I hope it heals okay. You can see how swollen my ring finger is getting. It still hurts a lot!

I later found this picture I took where my thumb is easier to see than my finger, although I was trying to get my finger... As you can see, it's healing quite well. 

Thanks to Jeff for taking care of me during my cowardly incident. And thanks to the carpet guy for doing such a great job on our carpet. Next time, I'll let someone else stock the fridge. Oh, and Happy Easter.