Bertha Has A New Trick

Please note the time I'm posting this... I know there are some of you for whom this is still a relatively early hour, but I get up at 4:30. I was supposed to be asleep at 9:00 -- 10:00 at the very latest.

But my house is making a new noise. What it sounds like is a plastic soda bottle -- a small one, not a two-liter or anything -- popping out. You know, like when you close it while some corner of it is still pinched in a little, and jsut when you've forgotten that you ever even bought a soda in the first place -- PAP!

Like that. Only in the walls. All over my house.

I heard it first in my office, where I thought that it was coming from the fridge. (It's important to have a fridge in your office when you're in my business. If everybody had one, the White Tavern might not have such a hard time keeping their gutters clean, if you know what I'm saying.)

But then I heard it in the living room, where I didn't really connect it to the sound I heard in my office, and where I assumed if was the chimney falling to quiet pieces in the wall.

Tonight, though, tonight I heard it in my bedroom. Three times. And my bedroom's brandy-stinking new (well, everything except the shell of it is only two years old).

PAP from behind the headboard. And no, I wasn't doing anything.

Twenty minutes later, PAP from the corner by the closet.

Just when I'm almost asleep (again), PAP from the ceiling near the skylight.

I don't have any sleeping pills, so I'm going to put some earplugs in and hope that I don't sneeze. Because I think I've decided that all this humidity (which, apropos of nothing, has given me the baby-softest skin) is squeezing all the nails out of the house like so many rusty blackheads.

PAP PAP-PAP PAP.

It's enough to drive a person, well, slap-pappy.

Wish me luck.