200 lbs of WHAT?

To feel like I was still doing something in the rest of the house while the kitchen was being torn apart, I called a chimney sweep.

YES, they exist! Sadly he had no Cockney accent, but he did tell me that he removed 200lbs of dead animals and composted leaves from EACH chimney in the house. And that I was lucky that he doesn't charge by the hour. When he left he looked like a real chimney sweep- covered in soot up to both elbows.

It's a good thing too, because we'll need those fires blazing if we can't afford to clean out the heating ducts.

It was just cold enough to turn them on the other day and a large amount of moldy smelling air wafted up out of the registers. I called the heating and AC company and they said they had a record of our house under a different name, but that although they had been called to do the service in 1991 the appointment was canceled.

How much slack do you think is appropriate to cut the people who lived here before? They had four teenage kids. Okay, maybe some slack.