You can go up there, but do it when I'm gone and won't be back for a week, so you have time to find all the escaped bats

I was sitting on the couch the other night, thinking about how much I dislike our family room, which is where we are the majority of the time because we only have one lonesome recliner in the living room. The family room is dark beige. Dark blue carpet (white, shedding dog). Curtains from the 50-percent-off bin on one window; blinds on the other.

So to cheer myself up, I thought of the rooms in the house I like, like our pale bedroom upstairs and our drama queen red dining room with the gold-painted ceiling.

Then I was thinking ... There's a place in this house I've not ventured. That means I'm paying for something that I'm not taking advantage of. I own something I've never seen. It's right above me and I don't know what it looks like.

The attic.

I've not touched the thing. Never seen it. Dave's not seen it, either, though the home inspector told us it was, well, an attic. I'm terrified of my own attic.

I've always wanted a "Goonies" type attic, where I could go and poke around in my grandparent's old chests and discover treasure maps or at least some old love letters tied together by twine or something. Yet the only attic I remember having in all my life is the one in a house I lived in in Kentucky; 15 Bluffside Drive. It was a hot, stuffy attic with light coming through some sort of vent. My armpits hurt from my dad holding me up so I could see over the floorboard, saying "See? That's it. I told you, nothing up there."

But this attic, the one I'm a proud owner of, is probably infested with bats, rats, bees, wasps, centipedes, millipedes, devils, spiders and the like.

That's a shame, because after having been occupied for almost 100 years, I bet this house has seen its share of love letters and Goonies.

Dave suggested we pull down the ladder and just go up there.

No.

"No. Remember when we were looking for a house, and I had that anxiety attack about owning bugs?"

"Yeah."

"You said we could have an exterminator come over."

"I only told you that so you'd stop freaking out."

Oh. Then yes. Let's go up there. You first, and don't mind me when I push this ladder back up. Goonies schmoonies. I'm not going up there.