No Good Deed.........

There is a philosphophy that you can be one of two kinds of people and there is no in-between.  You can be either an optimist and join groups like Optimist International while listening to songs like "Optimistic" by Radiohead;



or you can be a pessimist and move to Greece while spending your time listening to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 while drowning your sorrows in pints of Guinness Ben and Jerry's.



Now it is well documented that I am fairly mostly Irish in my lineage and some would say demeanor.  As it so happens, I have a magnet on my refrigerator that states, "An Irishman has an abiding sense of tragedy which sustains him through temporary periods of joy" and my wife would pretty much agree.  In the past I have had a great tendency to look at the negative and always think the worse outcome possible is going to happen.  For instance, during much of the Ride Across America I was convinced I would either be hit by a truck/car/RV or be viciously attacked by some rabid (or at least REALLY angry) stray dog.  It would often preoccupy my thoughts so much that I would be physically exhausted and stressed by the end of the day.

I'm glad to say that neither happened.  I actually did have to spray a few dogs (read my previous posts) but I didn't get bitten and all was well.  And I didn't really have any close car/truck/RV calls until twenty miles from the end - when I reached Manhassat!

But while I rode for sometimes 10 and 12 hours a day on the bike this summer I had the chance to do a lot of contemplating of many different things and one of them was my outlook on life. 

I saw a lot of people who were going through hard times.  Coal miners who were out of work and not likely to get any in the near future.  Women in their 50's who had been laid off from their jobs and were now working in convenience stores because that was the only job available.  Farmers who had to make the choice between watering their crops or watering their livestock.  The town of Joplin, MO which is still struggling to recover after the tornadoes of last year.  A young couple in Southern Virginia who are stuggling to work multiple jobs and pay the medical bills to help their 8-year-old battle neuroblastoma.

It made me realize that no matter how things get here in Northport, I can't complain.  I have a good job that I love to do.  I have an amazing wife that loves me and supports me (even in my mad quixotic pursuits).  I have children who are healthy, bright and loving.  And I have a beautiful home that we love.  I have a lot to be grateful for and a lot to be optimistic about.

And herein lies the problem.  My family and I spent the summer trying to do something to make the world a little better for other - the children and their families.  One of the major hurdles we had to cross was to find someone to watch our cat Lily (you can read about her in Amy's Blog entry).  We finally found someone we could trust and we left for our journey secure in the knowledge that our home and cat would be well taken care of.  However, only a few days into her house sitting for us the young lady was bitten by something while sleeping in our bed.  She and her parents were very nervous (I guess with all the horror stories of bed bugs it's understandable) and she said she couldn't sleep over any more but she would be willing to come by during the day and take care of Lily.  Since we really needed someone here at night we starting sending out the word to find someone to replace her.

My mother-in-law had an acquaintance approach her and said her son was recently let go from his job and was going through a divorce and although he was staying with her, he stays up late at night and he's not loud but it keeps her awake and was wondering if maybe he could stay at our place for the summer and look after Lilly.  Joan met with him and said he seemed quiet and nice.  I think she said he might have been a little odd but okay.  We were relieved!  Thanks to Joan and her Mahjong Mafia we were able to get a replacement house sitter from 3,000 miles away.

The fact that we could never get in touch with him (he didn't have a phone or a computer or a job) should have been our first clue.  The only way we seemed to be able to get in touch with him was through Joan.  Since we couldn't get in touch with him we didn't get our mail when we needed it, we didn't really know how Lilly or the house were doing.  Every now and then we'd get an e-mail saying Lilly was doing okay.

So finally with a little more than a week to go we asked Joan to check in on things.  That's when she told us the house was a wreck.  Well, maybe not a wreck but it was filthy.  To make a VERY long story short, the garbage hadn't been taken out in weeks.  Well, it made it to the side of the house but not to the curb.  His children apparently had been staying at the house (children we knew nothing about, if we had we would have said, "Fine, but here are the things we would like them not to touch) and ALL of the beds and bedrooms were a mess.  The rugs were filthy and the kitchen was extremely dirty.  Aaaaaaannnndddd, apparently he had run out of garbage bags for the kitchen trash can but didn't buy any so he was just dumping it in the trash can and then dumping it outside.  When Joan went to throw something away fruit flies went everywhere!

So we were now officially freaked out!  We spent the last week of our journey not sleeping and worrying about what condition our home would be in.  Our house sitter - let's call him Joe A. - had told us that he was going on a week's vacation (a vacation that kept getting put off because his car was in the shop and he didn't have the money to get it out yet) and would be back the Monday before we returned home.  After discussing it with Joan we decided that we would tell him we were having the place cleaned and that others would look after the place when he returned so he didn't have to stay until we got home on Friday. 

Yes, we were getting the placed cleaned - by my in-laws.  They are truly saintly people and if ever we have been more grateful to anyone I can't remember when it possibly could have been.  So Joe A. gathered his things and our friends Carla and Rita took care of Lilly until Joan and Mort could take over.  My in-laws cleaned everything.  My father-in-law fixed the broken fans that he could (there was one beyond repair), scrubbed the kitchen trash can, took all the garbage out to the curb and took all the recycling to his recycling center.

My sainted mother-in-law did something she rarely does at home - cleaned!  Of course I'm kidding (since I know Joan will read this!), but she took care of getting as much of our home back in order as she could, making beds, cleaning floors, scrubbing, etc.  On top of that she slept in our home so Lilly would have company.  All above and beyond the call of duty!!!!

We rode in and finished our journey, had dinner and then we tried tackling some of the mess before we went to bed.  We didn't really get far and we decided to put it off until Saturday. 

And that's when the FUN began.

We knew we had a mess to clean up but we started discovering things.  Ground up candy in the floor, candy between the floorboards, crunched up potato chips in the seat and couch cushions, spilled jello shots in the freezer (yes, that's right - using our children's medecine cups)!  "Okay," we thought, "maybe he had a party and forgot about them".  And then we started noticing the odd things.

8 bags of frozen corn.  I love corn as much as the next person but 8 bags?????

ALLLLLLL of our food was gone.  Okay, not ALL but ALMOST every scrap of food we had left in the refrigerator, the freezer, and the pantry was gone.

Our neighbor Kathleen told us about the rats.  Apparently a problem that we have never had in the nine years we have lived here has surfaced - rats in the yard.  Our neighbor loves her bird feeder and told us Saturday morning that she hadn't been able to feed them because rats showed up about two weeks ago.  Her landlord put a rat trap out back but she wasn't sure it was working.

And then Amy saw a rat!  While she was in the kitchen she saw a rat run into the drainage pipe built into our retaining wall.  It came out and then ran into another pipe further down the wall.  Now we are used to the chipmunks doing that but rats are another thing.  So I immediately went down into the basement to look for signs of rats down there.  If they were in the house that would be VERY bad!

And I found the plastic bag.

Since the cedar closet was right next to where all the piles of trash had been I started my search there.  Right in the middle of the floor was a plastic bag.  "What the hell is this?????"  So I looked inside and I found and empty gallon container from a cheap brand of vodka.  Hmmmmmmm.  So I went upstairs and I asked Amy, "Were you saving this for some sort of project for the kids?"  Since she replied in the negative we could only assume one thing - Joe had been hiding empty alchohol bottles in the basement.  Back down I went to see if I could find any more.  No such luck.

Now when we had gotten home on Friday we had noticed an empty wine bottle in the recycling.  Apparently it had been on the counter so Joan or Mort put it in the recycling after Mort had already taken everything away.  But now we began to be curious so we looked in the area of the pantry where we kept our alchoholic beverages.  As far as we could tell the wine was all there but there we noticed the tequila bottle (which had been about half full, left over from the chili party last December) had only about an eighth of an inch left.  And then we noticed that two pint bottles of gin which were extra bottles I had left over after giving show gifts for Thoroughly Modern Millie were still on the shelf but empty!  And as we perused more of the shelf space we made a chilling discovery and we had to ask ourselves;



And then by simple deduction we started to put it all together from all the behavior and we thought we had the answer, perhaps Joe A. drinks a little - at least all of OUR stuff.  Its not that we are big consumers of hard alchohol but when we see five bottles of it gone plus an empty bottle in the basement and all the leftover jello shots (yes, we finally tasted a bit of one and it was VERY potent) we began to think that maybe he drinks A LOT.  It is sort of the only answer we can think of for all of the behaviorisms that were being reported to us.

And we cursed the spider that bit Claire!

So this week has been one of trying to clean up the mess that Joe has left us.  I spent all of Saturday cleaning the refrigerator (which was disgusting but made easier by the fact that it and the freezer were EMPTY) and the microwave (in which something was cooked and apparently exploded in a Mythbusters type experiment).  Amy, the kids and I spent the next two days cleaning floors (Sarah even got down on her hands and knees with a straightened out paper clip to clean non pariels out of the floor boards).  I spent an entire day on the bathrooms while Amy scoured the pantry and repapered (which once again was easy since there was no food).  I went to Home Depot and got plugs to block up the entrances of all the weep holes (the drains in our retaining wall).  Sadly, it would mean that the boys' sleepover would have to be indoors instead of in a tent as they so badly wanted.

We also had estimates from three exterminators who confirmed our suspicions that the rats were MOST likely drawn to our yard by the accumulation of garbage - a veritable smorgasborg right next to our house. We found out it would be about $750 to get rid of them by using bait traps for a year.  At least they confirmed my observation that there were no rats in the basement or the shed.

And we started tallying up the costs of our house sitter from hell.  Between food eaten, alchohol consumed, fans broken, trash cans needing to be replaced, light pulls needing to be replaced, various other broken items and the cost of the exterminating - a bit over $1500! 

And we began thinking, NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED, AND we cursed the spider that bit Claire!

But we had to count our blessings.  We were home and it was still standing and after some diligent extermination our rat issue will be gone!  Our fridge and freezer are cleaner than they have been in years and we've been able to do the spring cleaning that we forgot to do (in the spring).  Our family is healthy, we made it back in one piece, the van is still running and our cat is thriving and happy to see us.  Life is good.

One of the wonderful things about the summer was watching the summer Olympics on television (when we weren't watching Chopped, Cupcake Wars, or Food Star) and the closing ceremony allowed me to introduce my children to one of my favorite songs from a Monty Python movie.  However, instead of the version we all saw at the Olympic closing, I choose to share with you dear readers the original and remind us all to look at the glass half full and "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life";



And so we clean, I get to do some more riding this week and we get to spend a little more time bonding as a family before school begins again - and that is the glass being half full!

Stay well and I'll see you on the road!