I found myself on the roof of my house this evening. Not someplace I am meant to be, I can assure you. The circumstances aren’t overly important, although I will say that it was indirectly related to symptoms of PMS, as I find most bad things are. I am actually compiling a list of all the things I can blame on PMS. I may need to edit it before posting it in the blog however, as it is currently several pages long, and smeared with tear stains, mascara, and possibly just a little blood from where my fingers dug into the pen with a little too much vigor.
The first thing I noticed while on the roof was how well made my roof is (actually it was the second thing I noticed, the first thing I noticed was how slippery wet shingles are.) The next important revelation I made was that I don’t ever want to be on my roof again. I can’t imagine anyone going up on the roof on purpose. And yet, as I have teenagers, I know for a fact that they can imagine a whole lot more than I can.
I have several layers to my roofline. The roof over the front porch is easily accessible through my daughter’s bedroom window—very convenient when it’s time to hang Christmas wreaths—and the porch roof connects to another level as it wraps around the house. Essentially, someone could climb out my daughter’s window, walk around the side and up an angle and around to the other side and climb back in my son’s bedroom window. I know this because my son once did this in reverse to cause his sister to scream uncontrollably in the dark of the night when she saw eyes peering in her window.
Yes, he was reprimanded for this.
And yes. I laughed once I sent them to their rooms.
The kids have been prohibited from going out on the roof, although I suspect they still do when no one is home. I have spies in place to catch them in the act so I can devise some punishment that will, once and for all, discourage them from roof walking.
The funny thing about my roof is that the kids aren’t the only ones to find their way out there.
I got a phone call from a neighbor once to say that there was something that looked like a reindeer running around on my roof.
“A reindeer?” I asked.
A reindeer…without antlers. Apparently, it was just running around from the front of the house to the rear and then back again. Presumably looking for the chimney, I suspected. I didn’t pay much attention to the call until about an hour later when I noticed that my dog was missing.
It suddenly dawned on me that in the dusky light of evening, my little boxer/bulldog mix could look like one of Santa’s reindeer minus the horns. So I ran to the front of the house like a flash, and looked up at the roof line of my house. There, like a reindeer without his sleigh was my little Joey, running around with a stick in his mouth—undoubtedly something he pulled out of one of the gutters.
I told the dog to sit, and I ran back inside and up the stairs to my daughters room where I discovered an open window (minus the screen) where Joey had obviously gone out. I leaned out of the window and called the dog until he came trotting to the window and climbed back in wagging his tail.
Joey has always had a knack for disappearing. There was one night in particular that our daughter Lauren heard him crying at night, but couldn’t find him. She looked in the closets to see if he’d been locked in. She looked outside her bedroom door to see if he was waiting to be let in. She looked in Alexa’s room, to see if he was trying to get out. But he was nowhere to be found, so she went back to bed. After a few more minutes she heard him cry again, and thought the sound was coming from her bathroom, so she opened the door, but he wasn’t in the bathroom.
He was outside the bathroom window! On the second story roof yet again! Somehow he had gotten out a window that was closed behind him and he had been trapped on the roof. How long he was out there is anybody’s guess.
We are much more careful with leaving windows open. I think Mike wishes the geriatric Labradors would wander out a window, but they seem to have much more sense than that. With age comes wisdom I guess.
Until the next time…I’ll be working on my list of things to blame on PMS (I’m up to page four!)