Today I noticed… that there were leaves in our attic. In an effort to get our house ready to sell we are tackling those little nagging chores that don’t really seem important enough to get to, but weigh on your mind anyway. Things like redoing the upstairs bath faucet – not a huge priority since we haven’t used that bath in at least ten years – but what a visual difference! All of a sudden our claw foot tub has turned from useless eyesore, to beautiful-full of possibilities-soaking tub. It’s all in perception when you are trying to get your house ready. So, the last of our very nagging chores is our boys’ closet. Our boys share a room. Their room, which is a very nice 14×14 space has a small room attached to it. This small room is big enough for a bed and a dresser, which when my oldest son demanded his own room is what he got. Attached to this very small room is a closet. The closet has a very sharply sloping ceiling. A light fixture that hasn’t worked in at least 8 years, because the electricity has not been connected, and a water damaged ceiling. There was no work around taking down the ceiling. At some point, long before we moved in, they had a major flood in that ceiling. It was sagging and cracking. But, taking down a ceiling, especially a ceiling topped by an attic is no joke and so we let it sit. For years and years. My boys refuse to use the closet. Perhaps because it is so dark, but probably mostly because it’s been a very neglected spot in our house. Also, maybe because they are not interested in putting clothes away and hanging them up. I am under no illusions that fixing this ceiling will cause their closet to get used appropriately, which is probably why no one has really felt the urge to work on this ceiling in over a decade. But, here we were yesterday. We got out our “hazmat” suits, work suits from the local hardware store that had hoods and booties. We wore dust masks. We sealed ourselves into the four by eight space with a trash can and several trash bags and we began pulling the ceiling down. The drywall mixed with the wool insulation and a bunch of sand, which is really bizarre. But, also up there? Leaves. Acorns. Mixed in with the wool were little bits of remnants of the lives of the, most likely, squirrels, that chose to inhabit our attic at some point in the long ago past.