Pat and the Assault on Pinewood

Only the post-Hurricane Ike effort generated a greater physical, mental and emotional challenge for me.
I arrived at our former Pinewood home to find the place filthy and in disrepair. We love that house, which has a charming set of bones and soul. There is just something great about waking up to the sound of hooting owls, seeing deer standing in the front yard and experiencing Pinewood in general.
Taking a first look at the empty house (or mostly empty due to a bunch of debris the tenant left behind), it was rather heartbreaking and demoralizing to see all that needed to be done to get it ready for the market. This is MY house, and it had been victimized.
There was little in the way of structural damage, but it was just messy, as underscored by a full load of unwashed stuff in the dishwasher.
But the crowning example of the home's brief lowpoint was discovered in one of the boy's former bedrooms.
There, sitting on a closet shelf, was a evil baby doll, crawling with clawed hands and bearing a mouth full of fangs. It was a shocking moment.
I wanted nothing to do with this thing and left it for the cleaning crew to remove. A photo of it was posted on Facebook, which drew a demand from the copy desk to bring it to work. I obliged.
Yesterday, hijinks ensued when we stuck it in front of the CBS19 cam in the newsroom. They quickly posted the image on Facebook, and it became a mini-viral splash.
The copy editor who has adopted the baby has named it "Pat" due to gender uncertainty. (Remember Pat from Saturday Night Live?)
Our Pinewood home has been made whole again thanks to contractors, a cleaning crew and lots of my own hard work. And the abandoned Pat now lives under the copy desk.
Long live Pat!