26 Things

We're back! Twelve hours in the car (with one 1/2 hour lunch break) and who would have pegged Mallory to be a complete angel. They all did better than I had anticipated but the twins became restless the last few hours. There was plenty of pinching, tattling and tormenting but who could blame them. As we pulled off our exit they were chanting and even Mallory's little fist was pumping the air. Home sweet home!

But it couldn't just be sweet, right?

We pulled into the driveway and began removing everything from a packed minivan. I had all the energy in the world to have everything back in its place in record time...until I walked into the kitchen.

Which leads me to my unofficial 26 Things. I'll cheat for the sake of this post and share letter B with Kelli. Can you guess what I found? Lying on the floor? A bat. A dead bat! Now some may say, "Hmm not that big of a deal." But to me, this is a huge deal. The questions that were running through my mind were endless. How do situations like this seem to find me? How long has the bat been dead? Does it have rabies? Where did it come from? What has it touched? How do you disinfect every little thing in a house?

At this point Jay disposed of the bat, sprayed "the spot" with Lysol and was rolling his eyes at me. So who else do you turn to in an emergency? My mother of course. Her response to me was, "A DEAD BAT!!!" So I called the animal control officer. Two just to be safe. I'm pretty sure they were rolling their eyes over the phone (I assure you, I was very calm.) I mean its not the end of the world. But at that moment, after driving for 12 hours, I didn't know where to begin. So I took straight bleach to every surface of the entire kitchen.

I was feeling a little better until I searched Wikipedia. This is what I read:

"Bats have very small teeth and can bite a sleeping person without being felt."

So I'll be sleeping with one eye open tonight and bleaching every other room of the house tomorrow. Any other suggestions?

On a side note: I will be treating this as an isolated incident, just like the one mouse we had, so please don't comment about never having just one bat. My father already went there. And I may also be seeking therapy tomorrow.