What goes up must come down

Last weekend we were supposed to have house guests, but when plans fell through we found ourselves with time on our hands and no real excuse not to get something done around the house. There were a ton of things we'd been putting off for a while, but at the top of the list was a thorough cleaning of the garage (taking everything out, washing down the floors and reorganizing) and the much-needed task of putting a floor down in our attic to increase our storage space. After debating as to which job we wanted to do least, the weekend's forecast of rain decided things for us—and since the attic is really a one-man job, that meant I drew the short straw.

So after a quick morning workout (why would you want to be fresh and rested for a day of wrestling with plywood?) Carrie and I had to remove everything we had piled onto our 16 square-feet of attic floor space over the past eight years. From there, the rest of my day was spent playing John Cusack's role in Being John Malkovich while imbedding splitters in every piece of exposed skin on my body and inhaling large chunks of 60 year-old insulation.

All of that a aside, things went really smoothly and I was pretty happy with how things turned out.

So with two extra boards left over, I decided to lay a quick and dirty floor down in the attic above our garage (the other part is just off our bedroom).

Big mistake.

I should have known to call it quits when it took nearly every ounce of energy I had left just to get the boards through the opening in the garage's ceiling, but I carried on. Once I got up there, the space was a lot tighter than I thought and probably wasn't worth the effort, but I got everything in place and was ready to finish up when I needed to move a large box containing every book report Carrie wrote in the second grade along with the telephone bills from her first apartment.

That's when this happened.

To give you perspective, it's just over two feet in diameter—large enough for an adult male to fit his entire body through—although luckily I caught myself before finding out for sure.