adventures in insulation

When we bought this house, we knew we would have to add insulation to the attic. But some inner perversity made Dave and I wait, just to "see how bad it really is." The winters are so mild here, and last summer wasn't that bad, but it has already been in the 90's for over two weeks, and it's only April, so we figured we might be in for a rough summer ahead. The area above our laundry room/pantry had pretty much no insulation above it, so we definitely wanted to add some there as well. Monday was Dave's first real day off in a long time, so instead of enjoying ourselves, we decided to insulate!

I have to say, as far as home-improvement projects, this was one of the easiest. We bought the insulation from Home Depot, and since we bought so much, we got 24 hours with the blower for free. Dave got the attic prepped while I got Jed settled in the house with a snack and some Blue's Clues, and then we started.

Dave manned the hose in the sweltering attic and I cut open the bales of insulation and fed them into the blower. Once I got my rhythm down, it was easy and actually a little fun. Nothing like slicing open and ripping apart a bale of insulation to ease any frustrations!

We stopped for a break halfway through, because Dave was dying of heat, and because there is a birds' nest in our carport and the babies looked like they were in desperate need of some water. Yes, I halted our project because of some birds. I just felt for the mama bird! She was sitting so patiently on our neighbor's carport, looking so anxious to feed her babies, and I totally understood how she felt. So we hid out in the backyard for a while, eating Popsicles and drinking water.

And then, suddenly, all the bales were gone, the attic was 8 inches more full, and Dave was covered in tiny fluff.



I especially liked the way the fluff clung to Dave's eyebrows.

For sure, I got the easier end of the deal. I was barely dirty at all! The worst part for me was worrying about what Jed was up to inside with no supervision and worrying about the baby birds dying of thirst.

After we got everything cleaned up, we had to take the blower and hose back to Home Depot. We spent the afternoon in Lufkin, running errands, and ended up coming home during a tornado watch. The lightning show was so awesome! The sky was constantly lit up and it was gorgeous. And you know what? The sky really does turn an eerie greenish-yellow color when there's a tornado. We never saw a funnel cloud, and the wind wasn't that bad at all, but I know in the town to the east of us, a tornado did touch down and tore up a bunch of trees and fields.

I am glad we spent the day the way we did, even if it was lots of work and a little scary coming home. Anything that Dave and I do together is fun, and that is the best definition of love that I know.