As if I could ever post regularly
Jul. 21st, 2015 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peridot_linesOf course it's been almost 2 months since my last post. I wish I had more exciting things in my life to write about besides work, but until last weekend that's basically all I've had.
Friday morning was a bit more exciting than I wanted it to be. It started off nicely enough. I woke up extra early and thought I would sit and write some morning pages and have a cup of coffee and it would all be a wonderful peaceful experience. Then I remembered my new favorite coffee mug was in my living room and went to retrieve it. When I turned on the lights I was met with a very confusing scene. Moxie was perched on top of my TV meowing insistently. I looked up and was surprised and confused to see a brown smudge on the sedge over my window. At first I thought it was a blob of paint I had momentarily forgotten about (whoever painted this place either relied on very cheap painters tape or thought they could do without it). Then the blob moved and I realized it was a bat. Because I was still tired and now I was a bit afraid, I wanted to get Moxie away from it. In my effort to do so, I startled it, and it started flying around. Because I had no means to knock it down, I had to flail a blanket at it until it went back to land on the ledge. Then I fled the room and slammed the door shut behind me, momentarily relieved that my living room has a door I can shut.
I went back to check on it later and could not find a sign of the bat anywhere. Cursing my terror, I got ready for work and spent the day wondering what could have happened to it. When I got home, I refused to check the room because I wanted to avoid it at all costs. My dad called and invited me out to see Ant-Man and we went to see that and then I went home, turned every light on that I possibly could and went to bed.
Saturday morning, I had to confront the depressive hoarding that has started to overtake the apartment and I began cleaning up the rubbish that had collected in various corners of the apartment. This included the living room. So, covered in long sleeves and long pants with a cap on my head I went into the living room and began collecting all of the junk I needed to throw out. I could only spend a couple of minutes at a time in the living room because I was so afraid the bat would suddenly appear and at that point I had a broom to attack the bat and that was basically it.
I went in and out over the morning and got things tidied up without a single sighting of the creature so I decided it had figured out how to get out and that was the end of it.
After a shower and preparing a restorative cup of coffee I noticed Moxie looking very intently at something on my wall. I have fans blowing every which way in this apartment, and my calendar happens to be hanging on that wall, so I figured she was watching it move and that was it. Until I realized that she was looking much to intently at some fluttering pieces of paper. When I built up the courage to get closer I noticed a very panicked bat clinging to the very brown wall and I realized it had managed to escape the living room.
Unfortunately, the bat was on the wall between me and the broom or even the extension to the hose on my vacuum and I had no means to knock it down or deal with it. In my efforts to collect a weapon I startled the bat and it started flying around crazily again. Unfortunately, I had no means of dealing with it aside from screaming and backing away in terror. So that happened until the bat hid itself again.
I cowered in my bedroom for a while and finally forced myself to send a text message to my property manager about the bat. An hour later, I was informed that bats are protected and exterminators will not kill them. I was also told I should acquire a tennis racquet and that was basically the end of the discussion.
I sent out a plea on Facebook and someone offered up a racquet in pretty short order. So, I ran off to collect that and then went home and put on normal clothing and went out to see Trainwreck on my own, and then came home and forced myself to fall asleep to the sound of videos playing on Hulu with the lights on. I also packed a bag so that in the morning I could leave early before church and get ready at my parents house and then hopefully take a nap before church.
I was up at the crack of dawn without having seen any bats. I went to the house, got showered, took a 50 minute nap and then got ready and went in to the service. I ended up hanging around the house a bit longer than I had planned after church and then decided to kill some more time out at the farm since I couldn't bear the thought of going back into the apartment and just waiting. After some quality time in the garden I got home and then basically sat on the bed in terror trying to calm myself with comedies until I was tired and capable of falling asleep. I got about an hour and a half of sleep before one of my neighbors came over and knocked on the door until I woke up and the people downstairs answered. Then about an hour later I woke up to Moxie having a fit because... BAT.
This time, I was ready. I armed myself with the racquet and waited for it to make another pass into the bedroom, which it did. Then I hit it and it totally went down. But, Moxie wanted a crack at it and before I could get a cup on top of it, the bat was getting poked by the cat and trying to make an escape from the evil feline. I found it clinging to the bristles of my broom in the hallway and tried to get it off there, but then in my effort to get it away from there it flew down the stairs and disappeared.
In terror, I ran back to my bedroom and started writing a frantic facebook post and convincing myself that I was never going to sleep again. As I sat up, forcing myself to watch something funny to relax, the bat came back. Moxie was all ready, but so was I and as soon as it got near my bed I took a whack with the racquet and down it went. I got it covered with a cup and stuck a piece of cardboard underneath and then cleared a path down the stairs and out the front door. When I turned to go back up the stairs there was ANOTHER bat laying on the stairs right by the door. I assume this was the first one that had gotten whacked around by me earlier. I basically flicked it out into the entry way and then out on to the porch and hoped to never see it again. It still seemed capable of moving around, so I don't think I killed it, but I'm not sure I did it any good either.
Then I went back upstairs, retrieved the other bat and took it outside and let it go. I have no idea if it dropped to the ground or if it flew off when I pulled away the cardboard, but I was too shaken to do anything nice for it like take it to a tree or set it down nicely somewhere.
After all this excitement, I went back upstairs, edited my frantic facebook post to let everyone know I had gotten rid of 2 bats, and then climbed into bed too full of adrenaline to even consider sleep.
I wrote a brief email to the rental agency letting them know the current developments and then sat through a bunch of episodes of the IT Crowd until around 4:30 when I started feeling tired. I was too afraid to sleep in the apartment though, so I grabbed an old pillow and went down to my car and took a 2 hour nap in the drivers seat. It was probably the best sleep I had gotten since my nap on Sunday morning.
Then I spent the better part of the day sitting around waiting for someone from the agency to come because I was too freaked out and exhausted to go to work. Someone eventually came by and we stuffed steel wool into a bunch of holes where they could potentially have gotten in. However, the owner still needs to come by the house and look around outside, but last I had heard they were having trouble getting a response from him.
Last night, I still slept with the lights on, but I was never disturbed by a bat. Around 5am, I finally felt comfortable enough to pull a blanket over my face and allow myself a modicum of darkness.
I'm pretty sure I was a terrible sight to see when I came in to work this morning though. I ordered a large mocha with an extra shot of espresso and that seemed to get me through for about 5 hours of work. Over my lunch break I went out and got a small non-fat mocha in an effort to ride the caffeine high through the rest of the day.
Now I am home, watching and waiting, and wondering if I'm going to encounter another one of these hellish creatures or if this will be the last that I see of them.
Tomorrow is laundry day and I am also going to make it nap day because lord knows I need to recover more than a few hours of sleep.
Bats are... they're so tiny and pathetic, it seems kind of cruel to have treated them in this manner. I didn't actively try to kill them though. I just know from experience that if you can get them down on the ground they are easier to subdue and I needed to use whatever means necessary to make that happen. When they're flying around crazily I basically lose my shit so having a tennis racquet basically made all of this much easier to handle. I'm hoping it's all over, but considering the ramshackle agedness of this building, I'm not going to hold my breath. At least not for the next few days anyway.
Friday morning was a bit more exciting than I wanted it to be. It started off nicely enough. I woke up extra early and thought I would sit and write some morning pages and have a cup of coffee and it would all be a wonderful peaceful experience. Then I remembered my new favorite coffee mug was in my living room and went to retrieve it. When I turned on the lights I was met with a very confusing scene. Moxie was perched on top of my TV meowing insistently. I looked up and was surprised and confused to see a brown smudge on the sedge over my window. At first I thought it was a blob of paint I had momentarily forgotten about (whoever painted this place either relied on very cheap painters tape or thought they could do without it). Then the blob moved and I realized it was a bat. Because I was still tired and now I was a bit afraid, I wanted to get Moxie away from it. In my effort to do so, I startled it, and it started flying around. Because I had no means to knock it down, I had to flail a blanket at it until it went back to land on the ledge. Then I fled the room and slammed the door shut behind me, momentarily relieved that my living room has a door I can shut.
I went back to check on it later and could not find a sign of the bat anywhere. Cursing my terror, I got ready for work and spent the day wondering what could have happened to it. When I got home, I refused to check the room because I wanted to avoid it at all costs. My dad called and invited me out to see Ant-Man and we went to see that and then I went home, turned every light on that I possibly could and went to bed.
Saturday morning, I had to confront the depressive hoarding that has started to overtake the apartment and I began cleaning up the rubbish that had collected in various corners of the apartment. This included the living room. So, covered in long sleeves and long pants with a cap on my head I went into the living room and began collecting all of the junk I needed to throw out. I could only spend a couple of minutes at a time in the living room because I was so afraid the bat would suddenly appear and at that point I had a broom to attack the bat and that was basically it.
I went in and out over the morning and got things tidied up without a single sighting of the creature so I decided it had figured out how to get out and that was the end of it.
After a shower and preparing a restorative cup of coffee I noticed Moxie looking very intently at something on my wall. I have fans blowing every which way in this apartment, and my calendar happens to be hanging on that wall, so I figured she was watching it move and that was it. Until I realized that she was looking much to intently at some fluttering pieces of paper. When I built up the courage to get closer I noticed a very panicked bat clinging to the very brown wall and I realized it had managed to escape the living room.
Unfortunately, the bat was on the wall between me and the broom or even the extension to the hose on my vacuum and I had no means to knock it down or deal with it. In my efforts to collect a weapon I startled the bat and it started flying around crazily again. Unfortunately, I had no means of dealing with it aside from screaming and backing away in terror. So that happened until the bat hid itself again.
I cowered in my bedroom for a while and finally forced myself to send a text message to my property manager about the bat. An hour later, I was informed that bats are protected and exterminators will not kill them. I was also told I should acquire a tennis racquet and that was basically the end of the discussion.
I sent out a plea on Facebook and someone offered up a racquet in pretty short order. So, I ran off to collect that and then went home and put on normal clothing and went out to see Trainwreck on my own, and then came home and forced myself to fall asleep to the sound of videos playing on Hulu with the lights on. I also packed a bag so that in the morning I could leave early before church and get ready at my parents house and then hopefully take a nap before church.
I was up at the crack of dawn without having seen any bats. I went to the house, got showered, took a 50 minute nap and then got ready and went in to the service. I ended up hanging around the house a bit longer than I had planned after church and then decided to kill some more time out at the farm since I couldn't bear the thought of going back into the apartment and just waiting. After some quality time in the garden I got home and then basically sat on the bed in terror trying to calm myself with comedies until I was tired and capable of falling asleep. I got about an hour and a half of sleep before one of my neighbors came over and knocked on the door until I woke up and the people downstairs answered. Then about an hour later I woke up to Moxie having a fit because... BAT.
This time, I was ready. I armed myself with the racquet and waited for it to make another pass into the bedroom, which it did. Then I hit it and it totally went down. But, Moxie wanted a crack at it and before I could get a cup on top of it, the bat was getting poked by the cat and trying to make an escape from the evil feline. I found it clinging to the bristles of my broom in the hallway and tried to get it off there, but then in my effort to get it away from there it flew down the stairs and disappeared.
In terror, I ran back to my bedroom and started writing a frantic facebook post and convincing myself that I was never going to sleep again. As I sat up, forcing myself to watch something funny to relax, the bat came back. Moxie was all ready, but so was I and as soon as it got near my bed I took a whack with the racquet and down it went. I got it covered with a cup and stuck a piece of cardboard underneath and then cleared a path down the stairs and out the front door. When I turned to go back up the stairs there was ANOTHER bat laying on the stairs right by the door. I assume this was the first one that had gotten whacked around by me earlier. I basically flicked it out into the entry way and then out on to the porch and hoped to never see it again. It still seemed capable of moving around, so I don't think I killed it, but I'm not sure I did it any good either.
Then I went back upstairs, retrieved the other bat and took it outside and let it go. I have no idea if it dropped to the ground or if it flew off when I pulled away the cardboard, but I was too shaken to do anything nice for it like take it to a tree or set it down nicely somewhere.
After all this excitement, I went back upstairs, edited my frantic facebook post to let everyone know I had gotten rid of 2 bats, and then climbed into bed too full of adrenaline to even consider sleep.
I wrote a brief email to the rental agency letting them know the current developments and then sat through a bunch of episodes of the IT Crowd until around 4:30 when I started feeling tired. I was too afraid to sleep in the apartment though, so I grabbed an old pillow and went down to my car and took a 2 hour nap in the drivers seat. It was probably the best sleep I had gotten since my nap on Sunday morning.
Then I spent the better part of the day sitting around waiting for someone from the agency to come because I was too freaked out and exhausted to go to work. Someone eventually came by and we stuffed steel wool into a bunch of holes where they could potentially have gotten in. However, the owner still needs to come by the house and look around outside, but last I had heard they were having trouble getting a response from him.
Last night, I still slept with the lights on, but I was never disturbed by a bat. Around 5am, I finally felt comfortable enough to pull a blanket over my face and allow myself a modicum of darkness.
I'm pretty sure I was a terrible sight to see when I came in to work this morning though. I ordered a large mocha with an extra shot of espresso and that seemed to get me through for about 5 hours of work. Over my lunch break I went out and got a small non-fat mocha in an effort to ride the caffeine high through the rest of the day.
Now I am home, watching and waiting, and wondering if I'm going to encounter another one of these hellish creatures or if this will be the last that I see of them.
Tomorrow is laundry day and I am also going to make it nap day because lord knows I need to recover more than a few hours of sleep.
Bats are... they're so tiny and pathetic, it seems kind of cruel to have treated them in this manner. I didn't actively try to kill them though. I just know from experience that if you can get them down on the ground they are easier to subdue and I needed to use whatever means necessary to make that happen. When they're flying around crazily I basically lose my shit so having a tennis racquet basically made all of this much easier to handle. I'm hoping it's all over, but considering the ramshackle agedness of this building, I'm not going to hold my breath. At least not for the next few days anyway.
