On The Roof Again

Well, since our house insurance company notified us back in December that they wouldn't be renewing our policy (because they would no longer be insuring homes in our rural area), we've known that at some point, an inspector with our new insurance company will have to come by and look at our house to make sure everything is hunky-dory so they'll know it's an OK thing for them to insure.  Like, if you had piles of garbage laying around your house and tree limbs laying all over your roof, that would be a bad thing, and they wouldn't insure your house until you got all that crap cleaned up.  Thankfully, they don't look inside your house, so at least you don't have to worry about picking your dirty underwear up off the floor or making sure the massive dump you took didn't leave "writing on the wall" on its way down (whew)!  LOL!

Well, anyway, wouldn't you just know that last year we were lazy in the house maintenance department and never got around to pressure-washing the house, or anything.  So our house got pretty grungy.  And since we live in the edge of the woods, one side of our garage tends to get moss growing on the shingles, which has to be scraped off periodically.

Anyway, Good Ol' Dad to the rescue!  Of course it would have to be in the middle of stupid winter when we're having to bust our butts to clean up the exterior of our house, but that just seems to be our luck.  Last weekend we spent forever pressure-washing, sweeping, raking, and cleaning the exterior of the house.  It was so bad that we didn't have enough time to get it completely done.  So we had to put the project on hold.  Today Dad had me and Jamie climb up on the garage roof and scrub off all that stupid moss.

It was the very first time that I'd ever been up on the roof of my own house.  I wasn't scared to get up on the roof of Dad's store building in town, but that roof is flat.  My house roof is angled.  So it feels like a giant slide that you're just gonna slide off of and crash onto the ground and die.  I managed to climb the ladder and get up there with some coaxing, but once I got up there, I refused to even attempt to stand up.  So I spent the entire time up on the roof, sitting on my rear end, which ended up ripping the entire @$$ out of my jeans, but I wasn't aware of that fact until I finally climbed down.  I ended up getting those little tiny rock-like particles from the shingles all in my underwear!  It was itchy, but still pretty funny.

I took the camera up on the roof with me to document the episode.  I had Jamie take this picture of me after I had just climbed up there:

Well, moments after this picture was taken, Jamie handed the camera back to me, and I somehow dropped it, causing the camera to take off skidding down the roof.  To my absolute horror, Jamie took of running full bore down the steep roof after the damn camera, and I just knew he was gonna fall off the damn roof going so hard after the stupid camera.  So I started screaming "NO!  NO!  NO!"  Dad was on the other side of the roof where he couldn't see us, so it scared the crap out of him.  Jamie finally stopped running, and the camera went *bloop* off of the roof, onto the ground below.  Dad told Jamie not to scare me.  Eventually, Dad picked the camera up off the ground for us, and I got him to take these pictures of me and Jamie up on the roof:

I wasn't much help since I was timid about being up on the steep roof and I'm afraid of heights, but at least I tried, and I did manage to get some of the stupid moss scrubbed off with that wire brush of Dad's that I was holding in the picture.

Dad mixed us up a solution of stuff that really slows down the growth of the stupid moss, so hopefully we won't have to get back up on the roof to do that particular chore again for 2 or 3 more years.  We're also gonna cut down one of the stupid trees next to the garage that is one of the contributing factors causing the moss to grow up there in the first place.  That's a chore for another day, though.  Right now we just need for the house to be able to pass an insurance inspection.  Fingers crossed.  And Good Ol' Dad will come back to the house again tomorrow by himself to finish up the pressure-washing while me and Jamie are at work, and Lilly's in school.  So the awful house chore will be done.  

In other news, while Dad was here at the house helping us with our awful house chore, I decided to take a look at the wound on the inside of our boxer Maddie's leg (near her crotch) that she got 3 days ago.  I hadn't looked at it since it happened.  I took one quick glance at it and knew instantly that something was horribly wrong.  What at first looked like just a little scratch is now, disgustingly, a giant, badly infected, gaping hole that smells like death.  I got Dad to take a look at it before he left my house, and even he said "oh my God"!  So we've decided that when Jamie gets off work tomorrow, he's going to take Maddie to the vet to get doctored up.  Yuck.  I had originally figured that I would take Maddie to the vet by myself, but I've got to work in the lunchroom all this week, and after only working on Monday last week, I know I'll be really tired and probably sore after I get off work.  And Lilly will have to be taken to dance class.  I thought about it and realized that it would probably be better if Jamie took Maddie to the vet.  Jamie's bigger and stronger than me, so he would hopefully be able to handle Maddie better if she happened to get unruly at the vet's office anyway (or if some other dogs at the vet's office caused a skirmish in the waiting room or something).  So Jamie's going to handle taking Maddie.  I just hope it goes OK.  Dad said that Maddie's wound needed stitches or staples, but we'll just have to wait and see.  I'm anxious to see what the outcome is.

Anyway, I'll be working in the lunchroom again all this week from 6:30 AM to 3:00 PM, so it's gonna be a full, busy week.  I sure hope everything goes good.  I'm gonna try to make it my best week yet, and not mess anything up if I can help it (just a personal goal I like to try for so I can feel really extra-good about myself).

I better go for now so I can take my nice, hot bath and get ready for the day tomorrow!

I'll let you know tomorrow what happened at Maddie's vet appointment...!  Let's hope it turns out OK!