the sky is falling!

See that? Know what that is? It’s visible evidence that being a good homeowner is often a kick in the ass.

It’s a cracked ceiling. A crack that now runs halfway through my kitchen and into my living room. It’s a crack whose very existence will cause me no end of THE SKY IS FALLING!! Chicken Little anxiety every time there’s a storm or I happen to glance up and remember that THERE IS A LARGE CRACK IN MY CEILING. Oh, just ignore the smudge to the left of the crack. It's the remains of a spider.

So, Ace and I hauled our reluctant selves into the attic last Sunday to finish replacing insulation that we started in the July heat wave. We only had about half the attic space left to remove the old insulation and lay down the new. Our attic is not a full attic and not a fun place to hang out. It’s more like a small dark tomb with the possibility of spiders lurking in corners just waiting to leap out at the unwary arachnophobe. There are low beams to smack ones head on – which I did, more than once. There are 20-year-old roof nails protruding into the attic, just waiting for the forgetful to lift their head just a little higher and lodge one of those suckers into the skull. Thankfully my son and I have excellent survivor skills and avoid things like rusty nails in the head. These are good skills to have.

On the other hand the crack in the ceiling that appeared as we were working above the kitchen caused my husband to come yelling into the attic entrance for us to move away from that spot after he heard an ominous popping sound emanate from the ceiling. I think he feared we were about to plummet through.

I was glad to see the new insulation package boldly proclaim itself FORMALDEHYDE FREE on the package! Am I to assume the old stuff I was rolling into piles and stuffing into contractor bags was loaded with formaldehyde along with the user friendly fiberglass?

See this? This blue and grey thing on my arm? This is a wrist brace. A brace I have to wear to heal the raging case of De Quervain’s tenosynovitis that I blame on attic insulation. I did not know that tendonitis hurt so damn much but it paralyzed my wrist, thumb and first two fingers.

See, had we been normal homeowners we’d have called someone to do this nasty job for us, thereby helping the economy, and I could have blamed the ceiling crack on them and made them fix it! Now the only ones to blame are us and that sucks balls. Tendonitis would not be an issue either.

At least not for me it wouldn’t.