Bloody roofers

I'm about to leave for the grocery store. What international oddity should I buy today? Hmmm....

The roofers left on Saturday. We're still finding nails, but at least they're new nails, not nasty old rusty nails full of black goo from old shingles. We went with the cheapest bidder. We'd used him before at our old house, so we knew it would take a while for him to get to us and that once he started, it wouldn't be a one-day rip and tack operation.

The problem with waiting for him is that we've spent all the insurance money. You see, in spring we had a fabulous hail storm – it was the biggest hail I'd ever seen – big as baseballs, some of it. It was very exciting and somewhat frightening, too, and I was really glad I'd put the van in the garage. Our whole neighborhood got reroofed this summer.

So, on the roofers' first day, the owner's grandson, who's 22 and looks like he'd rather be playing God of War on the PS2 or having a nice toke, ripped a lovely long gash in his hand. He climbed down the ladder and asked Eric for a band-aid. Eric tried to help him wash it, but it was gushing blood all over our kitchen. Eric wrapped it up and told him he needed to go to urgent care.

About then, the poor boy started turning a greener shade of pale. His grandma pulled up just then to get him some more water, and Eric pushed him into the seat next to her. Then he started to shake. Grandma couldn't look.

He ended up with four stitches and came back to work that afternoon.

But now we're done with all that. Thank goodness. Hopefully we won't need to reroof until we're so old that we just sell the house as-is and check into assisted living.