Killing all the bugs

Man, what a day! We spent much of yesterday and the day before getting ready to have the house fumigated. This meant a lot of placing food items in gas-proof bags, double-bagging them, and then putting them back in the freezer. Those things get *heavy* when full. Lots of lifting. Then Jess decided that *despite* all the assurances offered by the exterminators, that all the baby stuff needed to get out of the house, too, so that’s another many, many, boxes of stuff for me to haul around. Both cars are currently full of stuff, both food-and-baby related.

And who did all the heavy lifting? The post-pregnancy lady with a whole in her abdomen, or the big, manly dude with huge arms. Yep. Lots of lifting and carrying and packing and taking care of a baby, too.

So we spent last night at the house, and in the morning I got the last few things packed up, watered around the house, got some baby supplies together, and then Jess went off to the hotel with Tyler while I waited for the exterminators to show up (and played video games).

So right before the exterminators showed up, I got a call from Jessie. She had found bugs in the hotel room. Bugs! Two of them! One of them was in the bed. Using her degree in entomology she determined that they were deadly ticks (that is a joke Jessie doesn’t have a degree in entomology) and asked to be moved to another room. I got a call a few minutes later that despite the fact that she couldn’t find any more bugs, she was sure they were there. So right when the exterminators showed up, I gave them the go-ahead to start tenting the house and then hoofed it off to meet up with Jessie.

Using her super-mother powers and her adorable face, she convinced me to move everything out of the hotel room and back into the cars so we could go to a nicer hotel. I allowed her ridiculous paranoia *this time*, but I maintain that getting all that worked up about unidentified bugs in a room we aren’t even *in* anymore is silly, especially when I was going to have to do all the lifting again, but she has a new baby, so she has the trump card.

So we moved down the street to a more expensive but much nicer hotel, which probably still has bugs in it because bugs are everywhere but whatever, the room is nice and they gave us free dinner and breakfast, which might actually pay for itself, considering we were going to have to eat out, otherwise. Most of our stuff is still in the car (including our chocolate...oops, it’s hot out there) and I took the rest of the day off after doing all the moving and running around and general baby-wrangling. (It wasn’t that much moving, but it felt like more.)

Tomorrow I’m planning to go into work, unless we find any more bugs in this room, though I’ll have to leave early in order to help Jess move out of the hotel in the afternoon. We’re supposed to be able to go back into the house around 3:00, so we’ll see how it all works out. DIE, TERMITES, DIE!

Also, here are some pictures of my house covered with tarps and my adorable son.







-N

Closer, Ever Closer

I think the strangest thing, for me, are those moments when I realize that any moment, it could start. Let’s be honest, most of the time we just sort of pass through our lives, making tiny decisions, but mostly just cruising through ruts worn by decisions we’ve made in the past. Not like that’s bad, really, it’s certainly less stressful. But at any moment, it could be Time. Capital T. At any moment Jess could give me a call or yell from upstairs (she’s napping) that it’s time for us to start the next chapter, and all of a sudden it’s Time. Life pops into stark relief and you are torn between trying to get past something so tough and taxing, and at the same time wanting to remember every moment, because this is one of those big ones.

Except for the pain, though. And that really bugs me, actually. I read somewhere that, according to the W.H.O., once you get an epidural, your birth can no longer be considered ‘normal.’ Why? The pain is not productive, it’s just painful. And even more obnoxious, in a way, is how we are forced to talk about it. It can be 'tough' or there can be 'pressure' or some other platitude. It hurts! It's horrible pain! Let's not kid ourselves!

There’s no reason at all to get all excited about how much hurting you have to go through. The pain is a symptom of progress, it is a sign that things are happening, but we are intelligent animals, we don’t need horrible, repeating pain to let us know that something big is going down. Let’s be honest with ourselves: if there was a switch we could throw to turn off labor pains, childbirth would be *better*. It’s frustrating, is all.

Mom Swanson is here, for an undetermined amount of time. We got her a 1-way ticket and, lucky us, Tyler decided not to show up early. We are 1 week away from the official due date, too. Everything still normal, but we are closer and closer at every moment. It’s very exciting, though there’s every chance he’ll just be two weeks late and I’ll run out of excitement-juice.

In more mundane news, we’ve ordered a freezer, which will be nice, because our current one is bursting at the seams. We went to the farmers market and the library today. The market was cool especially because we got to get some basics, and for not too much more than normal. We got some milk (I’m excited to compare), eggs, and some staple produce for only a touch more than it would cost at the supermarket. That’s exciting, to me, the idea that a farmers market could pass from a simple diversion to something really utilitarian and useful.

I also bought myself a book. The bread baker’s apprentice. You should look it up on amazon. It’s for serious bread people. The instructions are very, very explicit and there’s whole chapters dedicated to just explaining the process. I plan to make a loaf or two this weekend, it could be really nice.

King cake party went off without a hitch. I’ll put some pictures up later, Dragon Age 2 came out and I am excited, though if Tyler shows up I may not have any time to play it. We got a second bid for the termites that was 1400 more than our first bid. And my weight is creeping up so I’m trying to cut back on food, again. Which is why I just ate a whole bunch of graham crackers and frosting. Curse you, self-control!

-N

Damn Bugs

Just in case you haven’t heard, we got bugs. The bad kind. Here’s a primer. You got yer common wet-wood termites. They live underground, they eat wood quickly, and they are relatively easy to treat. Those are the kind you *want* to have. We don’t have those.

We have dry-wood termites. They eat wood slowly, but they are nearly impossible to treat without tenting your house. Tenting your house sucks. It’s expensive, disruptive, and expensive, as well as being expensive. We got the first quote back from some guys we’ve had to call in from out of town, because evidently the bugs we have are *so rare* that no one it town deals with them. Lucky us. Their quote is on the order of $10,000. I’m not happy.

We could rush this and try and get everything cleaned up before Tyler gets here, but it would be a real rush job, and at $10,000, I'm thinking we should get a few more quotes. Further, it's not *likely* that Jessie would go into labor *while* our house was being tented, but do you really want to take that chance?

On the plus side, it looks like the bugs have actually been nesting in our house for about five years, which means that there is some chance that the previous owners actually knew about this before they sold us the house. Oh, wait, I’m sorry, that’s not good news, that’s more bad news.

It’s been a rough few weeks.

-N