Of Mice and Marriage

The Headmistress is displeased. Has been for months now. I don't get it. I mean, what's the big deal with having several dozen holes in our walls? C'mon man! That's a small price to pay for getting rid of electrical hazards and eyesores like the one pictured above (Headmaster pet peeve #1: painted-over electrical fixtures). I've replaced them all, but the old electrical boxes had to be cut out of the walls with a reciprocating saw - each one leaving a gaping hole in the wall, and fine powder-dust covering the entire contents of the Academy.

As a result of this complete rewire job, we have more than 36 holes in our walls - some large, some small, all hideous:

Our Kitchen Ceiling

Crop Circles in the Kitchen

Oh yeah, we have LOTS of these

My personal favorite. You can only improve a "stippled" ceiling.

Dining room wall - where the old service panel was located.

Ok, they look bad, but its something we can live with for a while, right? Now, instead of 39 hideous, painted-over wall outlets, we have 84 brand new ones.





Anyway, we've lived with the mess for over a year now, so I was in no hurry to undertake this massive patching project. Until last night. A small fuzzy rodent has managed to motivate me, where years of marriage had previously failed. This rodent kept us up for hours, scritching and scratching its way around the upstairs walls, apparently having unrestricted access to just about anywhere it cared to go. The Headmistress believes that all these holes in the walls were to blame. I am unable to convince her otherwise, and she rejected my suggestion of opening up even bigger holes and stuffing the cat into the walls. Therefore I've been put on a mission to close them all up by week's end.

Someday they'll find that darn mouse at the bottom of a bucket of joint compound, little cinder blocks tied to its ankles....