There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza...

My family and I returned from fleeing Rita last Saturday to Clear Lake, where we found no flooding, no damage, and no tree sitting in the middle of my living room. We even had power! I was amazed, and I felt blessed.

My father wanted us to check on my condo, but I figured that could wait till later in the week. I finally made it over to good 'ole BriarGreen yesterday, and found everything in order except for some weird lookin' stuff on my kitchen floor. I figured it just fell of of my trash can when I emptied the trash before I left my apartment. Oh boy was I wrong.

Later on Tuesday night, I opened my pantry door and I realized that the "stuff" was insulation. There was a hole in my ceiling in the pantry closet, and insulation had spilled out onto some cracker and cereal boxes inside the pantry. It almost looked like someone had punched a hole in my ceiling!! It was kinda freaky.

So then i did what I usually do when I didn't know what to do. I called Ahila. The conversation initially went something like this:

"Ahila, there's a hole in my ceiling." Laughter on the other line. "Ahila? Did you hear me? There's a BEEP hole in my ceiling!" More laughter.

I'm not quite sure why she found this so funny, but somehow she managed to get over her laughter, and she came over to help me repair the hole until I could call someone in the morning. She brought her flashlight, and I decided that the hole was "non-communicating" with the outdoors. Ahila said I was a nerd for using that term, but I was kind of proud of myself. I also told her that the hole was approximately 8x3 inches, which I was proud of also because I had measured it. I mean, I knew a lot about my hole in my ceiling.

Well, everything except where it came from. I also happily realized that nothing had fallen through the hole, such as a racoon or a skunk or something. I told this to Suneal on the phone, that I was happy that a racoon hadn't come in my house to give me rabies. He pointed out that rabies was most commonly found in bats. Damn my microbio memory.

Anyways, we fixed the hole with duct tape and some plastic. I was pretty proud of what it looked like, and I hoped nothing would crawl through.

This morning, I got "Shawn," one of the "condo guys," to look at the hole. He decided that he looked like someone had stepped through the ceiling. He said, "Yep, looked like someone just stepped right through. That hole is the size of my foot." He said someone musta been up there in the attic doing some work and created the hole.

The condo guy made the diagnosis and I had failed. Maybe this reveals my insecurities, but I felt kinda dumb at this point, like I have many times in clinics when I present a case to my upper level or attending, and they make the diagnosis in a snap. I mean, damn, I should have deduced that the hole was in the shape of a foot. See! This is what med school has done to me. A hole in my ceiling turns into a competition with Shawn the condo guy to see which one of us can figure out how the hole got there first. Ahhh well. I've talked to the condo property management since then, and they've agreed to fix my hole. So I'm happy. As long as nothing crawls through ...