Bats in the Attic?

Pray the answer is no, because if there are, Evo-man just created an opening for them right into his room.

Curiosity Killed the Cat, does that sound familiar? Well in my case curiosity is bringing down walls, or ceilings, and who knows what else. Yesterday was my boy’s last day of school before a whole week of Mid-Winter Break. So the magic question has to be… Will Fawndear think of a bunch of fun, non-destructive, get your brain in gear activities; while still staying cheap so she can keep her kids from getting too curious? Or, will the home need to be leveled because it was deemed a hazard?

Last Night was not a good start. Evo-man had one of his best friends JD over and since they couldn’t plug in to Rock Band they decided to do a little light-saber fighting, then they took the fun upstairs to Evo-man’s room and darn-it if that dreaded silence didn’t happen. Then I heard a couple of little thumps...

‘Hey, no banging things around up there. Okay you guys?’ I hollered from the kitchen, which happens to be right under the boy’s room.

‘Okay, mom,’

Then a loud Crash shook my already vibrated too much walls.

‘Mom’

‘What happened?’

‘You might want to come upstairs.’

‘I don’t want to.’ (Now you know where my kids learned that phrase)

‘But, there’s this big mess, mom.’

‘What’d ya break?’

‘I think you need to see it, Mom.’

‘Just tell me what happened.’

‘Well we were juggling some tennis rackets and they hit the ceiling and knocked it down.’

I know it sounds dramatic, but from the kitchen I’d already worked out what was damaged and somehow, I already knew that this was their cover story. Juggling Tennis Racket's my eye. Am I good or what. I knew that there was probably, most likely drywall all over the boys floor, but not from the ceiling itself, but from the crawlspace opening to the attic. Evo-man has been messing with it for years. And this time he had a friend who wanted to discover what was up there too.

‘Don’t buy the juggling part dear,’

‘Are you coming up?’

‘Nope, I’ll wait until dad get’s back, and let him look at it.’ This is not a threat by the way; I was cleaning up after dinner and didn’t feel like interrupting one clean-up to go take care of yet another mess.

‘How bout you just close the door, turn off the lights and leave the room for now.’ By this time all the other kids were upstairs looking at the damage. They slowly tromped back downstairs and moodily sat in the back boy’s room.

Dad didn’t handle the mess as well as I did, but to his credit he didn’t lose it either.

Yet, another picture for my future See-What-You-Did Album.

He knows it could have been worse and that the repair will be added to his already way to long honey-do list; which by the way, has to be at least one or two years long.

Good thing the inspection is over because I think I’ll just duct tape the hole for now. My, won’t that look grand.

If you have any, send me your ideas for keeping teenage boys productively (not destructively)engaged, without sending them outside in the rain for a week. Cross your fingers for me.