Don’t Rush Me: Bats, Target, and Putting Everything Away

Don’t Rush Me: Bats, Target, and Putting Everything Away August 16, 2018

All the pictures of the first day of school are making me think I should put my school room together….nah, man. Some other day.

Instead, I think it would be more fun to rejoice over the fact that it’s not raining for a few minutes, and that—and I think perhaps I should whisper so that I don’t accidentally tilt the cosmic forces of sabotage too far in my own direction—bat exclusion can therefore begin its first true phase.

I mean, Matt has done valiant levels of work on the inside of the house already. Every possible space in the attic larger than a speck of dust has been closed off. Wire mesh has been arranged in such a way that the wretched little creatures can only go out of their now one exit.

And finally, the hour when every single baby should have grown up and moved on with his life has arrived, which means that special devices can be affixed to that one exit, so that once they leave, they won’t ever be able to come back again. Too much information? I know how you feel. Every time Matt describes to me what the process is, the order of events, the technical wonder that is about to unfold, my eyes glaze over. I just want them to out, and to not come back again ever.

And there is hope, truly. Because, from my careful listening at the wall night after night, it sounds as though they might have already flown away on silent swooping leathery wings.

As a present to myself, then, I’m going to clean the house from top to bottom, and then bask in that once a decade moment where, for fifteen minutes, everything has a place and is put in it. Kon Mari, look at me now. You didn’t think I could do it, but I showed you. I went through and chucked everything.

Well, I mean, if you came in here and looked around you would not be able to tell that I threw anything away. You would wander around and think, “This person has a lot of knickknacks. What a jumble her house is.” And I’d avert my eyes and explain how minimalism is out and bohemian chic is in, how macrame pots or whatever are now all the rage, and how I’m allowed to keep my basket of broken china because I have a place to put it.

Everybody just wants to a place to be, bats included. If you can have the stuff you like, and the piles of junk you also hate but can’t throw away because they are useful and you’re not rich enough to wander around Target like a, like a, like a, what’s that called? Oh I remember, a rich person, then you should be pretty happy with yourself and your life. Unless you don’t like being happy, in which case, be miserable, see if I care.

Do I sound bitter? I’m reacting to a book I’m reading that is all about giving permission to people to be who they are, and who they feel like being. But, as far as I can tell, the main reader of the book is supposed to be someone who wanders around Target picking things off the shelf she doesn’t really need, feeling depressed about them, being overwhelmed with stuff, and then going on a stuff diet, or worse yet, paying for a program to deal with all the stuff. Why don’t you just not go to Target? I keep mumbling, turning the pages and wishing I was reading really any other book at all. Why all the frantic not that funny whining about not being able to get through Target without buying too much stuff?

Sorry, I’m rambling. It’s the disorientation that comes from having a house on the cusp of being bat free, a habitation where everything has a place to be, a day dawning where I can sit down for a few minutes because the task I thought I would never see the end of came to, dare I say it…completion.

So, oh my word, stop shoving school pictures at me. I need to breathe for a few minutes before all the insanity begins once more.


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