I was already upstairs and Richard had nearly finished brushing his teeth when he caught a moving shadow in the corner of his eye.  A bat was making sweeping figure-8s from one end of our galley kitchen to other.  While Richard stood in the open archway between kitchen and dining room, waving his arms to deflect possible sonar waves, I dashed to the garage for a snow shovel (in hindsight a broom might have been the better tool, but I admit to reactionary thinking.)  Whether or not the arm and snow shovel waving created the desired interior air current, we were successful in directing the unwelcome visitor into the night.  Thus began our most recent construction job which has included:  bat extraction from the attic, remedying a damp basement with a WaterGuard® Below-Floor Drain system, and hiring an electrician to bring power to the sump pump. 

Prep work for the new drain system required handling everything in the basement to create an 8-foot open corridor around the perimeter, including five trips to the county waste-to-energy center.  Once the work was completed, (jack hammering, old concrete removed, and new concrete troweled into place) everything was handled a second time to remove the thin layer of concrete dust that coated every surface.  We spent September getting ready for the contractors and it feels like we will need all of October to recover.