Halfway done

Well, I have my new glasses now, but I'm not sure I like them. I could write a whole post on I'm not sure that I like them, but it's been a while since I've posted anything, so I should probably write a catch-up post instead and write about the glasses later.

Okay, so the stuff on my bedroom wall did turn out to be some termite thing. So I guess that the place either had termites before I moved in, or else they showed up about the first year or two, but I just didn't know what they were. I didn't see anything when we moved in, but later there was this brown stuff coming out of a few spots where the wall and the ceiling meet. It wasn't any big deal, but I'd heard that several of the places had serious roof damage, and I figured that's what it was, and that I'd probably make it worse if I didn't leave it alone. The roof repair guys were coming, and I'd just have to wait my turn like everyone else. There was once a few drips that came down in a really bad storm on another spot in the room, but it never happened again, and when the brown stuff did not get worse I thought that was the end of it. The roof guys said that my roof did not need repairs yet. (We have sort of a rotation repair plan, and it wasn't my turn, and I wasn't having any problems to ask to have my roof replaced early.) So I just sort of forgot about the spots.

And then this spring, there was more of the brown stuff, only this time it seemed to have a pattern to it, and my husband is sure it's termites. I am not so sure. I try to find a picture of something like it online, but I only find pictures of holes, not stuff coming out of the wall. And again, this stuff is where the wall meets the ceiling, and I had thought that termites start at the ground and work their way up, not the other way around. But whatever it was, it did seem to me that it was insect related, even though I did not see any insects.

I thought for a while that it might be mold or fungus instead. It did rather look more like the type of mushroom that grows on the side of a tree. Only that wasn't quite it either. It also sort of resembles cauliflower, only not quite. It most looks like brown coral, which it can't be, since we're not underwater.

Okay, so it might be a fungus (which would explain why it seemed to just appear out of nothing overnight), or it might somehow be termites even though we did not find any "tubes" going up to the ceiling, or it might be ants or some other kind of bug damage.

After a while I got over being afraid. If it was somehow termites that got to the ceiling without any "tubes", that's not so bad. Termites don't eat people, they just make a mess. Ants, on the other hand, might attack me or do any number of things, as there are all kinds of problems with ants, depending on what kinds of ants you might have, and I just haven't kept up (except that I know there's a "new" ant that eats electronics). Termites have been around for a long time. There are people who know what to do about the termites. That might be better to have than some sort of fungus that makes people sick.

Anyway, I had to clear all this stuff out of the way to make room for the exterminator to come in and have a look around. He was very nice, and didn't seem to mind that I had two or three storage units worth of junk in my house. He just sprayed around the stuff. And then he looked at the bedroom, and he said it was definitely termites. He didn't even have to think about it. Termites. End of story.

But it was odd that the damage was up on the ceiling and that there were no "tubes". He said the tubes must either be outside (which there were not) or inside the walls. If the tubes were inside the walls, then my neighbor must have termites as well, even though he didn't see any. But he's only being paid to deal with termites that he can see, so my side of the duplex is getting treated and the other side is not.

Okay, so the brown stuff on the walls is apparently made of bug vomit. Which is not quite as bad as I thought it might be, as I imagined that it was bug shit. The stuff was vacuumed away, insecticide foam sprayed into the walls, a little trench dug around the house and holes drilled in the driveway. I'm told the stuff is more like a virus than regular bug spray, so it didn't smell bad. The other insecticide he used didn't smell bad either. So it wasn't near as bad as I feared. And it's supposed to keep the termites away for the next two years, but I wonder if that will work, since apparently there are termites all over the area, and he's only been paid to deal with the ones that we can see. So that was my place, plus the house two doors on my left and three doors down on the right, and that is also a duplex, so there's probably termites on the other side of those too.

Anyway, the office was offered two options, one was to treat only the houses where termites were visible and get a two-year warranty on that, or pay more and treat all the houses even where no termites were seen or even suspected, and we'd get a five-year warranty on that. The office chose the cheaper option, so the termites will probably come back. But at least I'll know what to look for now.

While most of this was going on, my husband was out of town. He was gone for a few days the week before last, and then he went out of town for a week, and then after looking at the schedule it seemed like a serious detour to come home for one night before heading out again, so he'll be gone for the whole two weeks this time. I got a lot done Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I didn't do much except wait for the exterminator and watch him work. Thursday I did some work, but not much, as I had convinced myself that I had nearly finished with the kitchen and there was no need to hurry when I had the place to myself for so long. Friday I mostly ran errands and watched Jonah Hex. Saturday I did some more work in the kitchen.

You might have guessed that I'm still working on the kitchen.

Well, I just don't know what else to do about it. I just don't have places to put things. I realize that I just buy too much stuff, and that is what is wrong with the rest of the house. But in the kitchen I just really do not have places to put the things that people normally have to cook with. I have some storage space under the sink (which I think people usually just keep cleaning supplies), where I try to keep the stock pots and the cookie sheets and the larger things that just don't fit anywhere else. I have four doors of cabinets on the wall over the stove where I mostly keep canned goods and such. I have two more doors on the other wall over the sink and the washing machine, and that is where I keep most of the dishes. I have one cabinet door on the ground, which holds a few small appliances, and above that is my one and only kitchen drawer, which will hold a few small things or the silverware tray, but not both.

So, I have no place for things like serving spoons and cheese graters and spatulas. And there's no place for stuff like plastic bags and aluminum foil. And these are things that a person needs to have in the kitchen. This is not stuff that I should just give up and throw away or give to Goodwill. People need spatulas and such.

I've thrown away a lot of food. I still have more things to throw away, but I did not think it fair to the trash guys to put so much heavy stuff out all at once. But I have all these canned things that either have gone out of date or I just can't find a date, so I'm throwing it out. So now everything is clean (except maybe I should still clean off the top of the cabinets, but I'd rather wait til I'm not the only one here in case I fall off of the ladder), but I still have all this stuff that I don't know what to do with, so that it just clutters up the tiny counter space I have or the top of the washing machine (which then prevents me from doing the laundry until I find someplace else to put the stuff). I also have no place for tall things such as bottles of oil or boxes of cereal, so those go on top of the fridge, and then I forget they are there and they go out of date.

So except for the boxes of stuff I don't know what to do with, I have a clean kitchen. Not that I have a clean dining area. There's still more there, and the laundry is there, and some of the photography stuff is there.

Okay, it isn't normal to have all this photography stuff, but I still think the kitchen just doesn't work for a normal person. Normal people need aluminum foil and spatulas.

I did manage to clean out the back closet, which I haven't done since I moved here. And I threw away a shelf unit that was too rusty. I've wanted to get rid of it for about two years, but there was too much other stuff in the way for me to move it. So, shelf unit gone, and closet mostly cleaned out, except that there's a few things that I don't want to put back in but I don't know where else they should go. So, half of a clean bedroom, a clear hallway, a mostly clean kitchen with a couple of boxes of stuff that I don't know where to put, and a mostly cleaned out back closet, with the rest of the house in it's usual state of chaos.

Oh, and there's still this hole in my kitchen wall. The exterminator took a picture of it while he was taking pictures of termite stuff/damage, cause the maintenance guys might have to come but later and do repairs. So he took a picture of my wall to remind them that they were supposed to do that too. I've been trying to remember when they did this to my wall and did not come back to finish. I was thinking it was a year or two, but now that I'm thinking of who was manager when that happened, and now I'm thinking it's been four years or more. And it isn't like a little hole in the wall. They removed half of the wall to do repairs and just left to work on something else and never came back. So I thought that maybe it was somehow an honest mistake, and with this little reminder they would rush right over and fix it, but no. They haven't even called to apologize or anything.

I am back to thinking that I should just fix it myself, and "upgrade" it somehow. At first I was looking at the pictures where there are little sections of wall cut out to make space for things like spice racks. I have a saw now, so I could do that, but there's so much plumbing and stuff on that wall I couldn't do much with that, and I'd worry about hitting a pipe or cutting a wire or something. And then I was thinking pegboard, and then I could have just hooks and such wherever I wanted. But then I'd be left with a zillion holes to fill in or cover up somehow. Now I'm thinking a few removable hooks at the upper part, and attaching a bunch of magnets on the lower part that I'd have to replace. Then maybe the magnets could hold things like cookie sheets.

Anyway, I'm still thinking.

I have run out of money. I have decided that I should probably buy a three dollar saw blade in an attempt to hand cut a few bathroom tiles. (The tiles are not going in the bathroom, but under the kitchen sink.) Anyway, I had a bit of a splurge on Chinese food Monday. Not a really bad splurge, just about eight dollars, and I got four meals out of it by cooking noodles and rice to go with the leftovers. Then I bought the major expenses, pills, twenty bucks of gas, lottery tickets, etc.... I spent another eight dollars or so on fast food for the week. And then Friday I had money left over and bought a few things that I needed, and a few things that I didn't need, like three dollars for nachos and an extra box of cookies.

And then I realized that I only had ten dollars left, and I have another week by myself, so now I can't decide if I want to spend three dollars on a saw blade.

Okay, I've found Jeremiah on Hulu, and I'm going to go back to watching that while I try to figure out a better place to put the spatulas and such.

Busy day

Well, I finally know when the exterminator is coming. He's coming tomorrow. And of course, I am not ready. And of course, now that I know when he is coming and should ask my husband for help moving things away from the walls and such, he is going out of town.

And while I am not ready with the cleaning and such, my husband has made no attempt at cleaning and making things neat at all. So this room hasn't had anything done to it at all. There's just stuff piled on top of more stuff. So I guess if the exterminator comes in the house he'll just have to spray the stuff instead of spraying around the stuff.

I can't do anything about this room, because I have other rooms to straighten, and there is major work to be done in the kitchen. I had given up on the exterminator coming, or thought maybe he had already sprayed outside the house and that would be the end of it. So Sunday I had started a little project, which involved pulling out everything from under the sink. And so today I must finish up with that project (or, finish up enough of it so that I'm at a good place to stop for a bit) and then put everything back where it was. And this of course is in addition to having to wash a rather large stack of dishes and do laundry and the usual stuff. So I will have a very busy day today.

And I'm still just not sure that the exterminator is coming in the house. They never have in the past ten years that I've lived here and in the apartment (or else they came on a day that I was out of town and I just didn't know about it). So the plan for Wednesday is to go outside every ten minutes or so to look for him, and if he is not going inside houses that I should have to stop him and ask him to come in for a moment.

And of course all of this is going to happen when my husband is out of town, and there will be no one here except for me, and I'll be the only one asking questions. And so probably I will forget what to ask when the guy gets here. Hopefully he will just see the problem and tell me what to do about it.

So I am a nervous wreck, but at least it is going to be over soon and I will know one way or another what is going to happen.

Mystery Meat

So, my husband is going here there and everywhere, but no place particularly interesting is scheduled, just middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma. I have been to middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma many, many times. While I maybe have not gone to some of these particular places before, there doesn't seem to be anything in them that I need to see, and we don't have tons of money to make it into anything really fun anyway.

And there's still tons of stuff to do here, and I usually get more done while he's away, so, I should stay here and try to get something done. And I couldn't leave for very long anyway, unless I make arrangements for someone else to water the plants, and most times the someone else doesn't do a good job with that anyway. But, depending on the weather, I can sometimes leave for a day or two without anything bad happening, and I did think that just one night away might do some good. And the schedule was written just so that he was going away for one night and then coming back for one night before heading out again for a couple more nights.

And this particular place that he was going for the one night was not that exciting and not that far away, but it did have a motel with a hot tub that we like, so one night there would probably be a nice thing, as I could really use a hot tub right about now.

Still, whenever we get ready to go anywhere, I start to get nervous, and I sometimes get so nervous that I even change my mind and stay home, or else I stay nervous during the whole trip and might as well have stayed home. So I was starting to get nervous and wanting to stay home, cause the whole getting nervous thing is worse when the house is really messy, which it was, and I have this fear of people coming in the house when it is like that. Not that I have any real reason to believe that someone would come in the house, as the stuff that needs to be repaired has been neglected for about two years now, and I don't think that they will suddenly decide to fix it anytime soon. But still, I worry about it so much that I cancel trips and stay home and do nothing.

Okay, so I decided that I needed to go out, even if it was just for one day, even if the house did look like a tornado hit it, because we needed to do the whole bug fogger thing. And I know that we had bought stuff to do that, just in case an opportunity like this presented itself, only the night before we are ready to go I cannot find the things. So, I decided that I would go if we either found the things or had time in the morning to go out and buy some more, or else if we didn't I would just stay home.

So we didn't find the things, but we did get up in time to buy more. So we put stuff in the car and began the process of fogging the house, and then I have no choice but to get in the car, cause no matter what you think you might have forgotten, you can't go back into the house.

Having gone to this particular place several times before, and having gone out in the general direction many times, we have this place that we like to stop that is a bakery, and we usually get jalapeno and sausage in a roll for breakfast, and then either kolaches or cookies, and then we look for discounted focaccia or beer bread. So off we went, and we got our traditional breakfast thing, though I'm trying to be good and not load up on cookies and kolaches. And we looked for the focaccia and beer bread, but there was none on the discount rack, and I did not want to spend four dollars each getting them at regular price. And then we noticed the four dollar bags of what looked like a six-pack of the sausage and jalapeno things, and six-packs of other similar things, probably roast beef. And while these are a good discount, somehow I didn't think it was a good idea to buy something that contained meat off of the discount rack. But we decided to get just one bag, and off we went.

And then there was the problem of where to eat for lunch. It was too early by the time we reached a certain bbq place, so we went on to the motel and got our room. And I thought that we would just get something cheap at KFC, only that one didn't have either the Monday special or the value menu, so we ended up at Whataburger instead. If we were going to spend that much money on lunch, we should at least go someplace one of us really wanted to go, and that is one of his favorite places. We bought him something for lunch (half of it went to waste cause he thought he was supposed to leave half for me, and I was just planning to eat one of the jalapeno sausage things), and then he went to work, and I stayed in the room and knitted for a bit. I also tried reading a certain book, but this part of the book maybe is going over my head a bit, and while I'm getting the general idea, right at the moment it isn't a real page turner.

But of course there was the hot tub bath in the room, and you can sit in it all day if you want to. In fact, you can turn the tv just a bit so that you can watch while sitting in the tub, so that you only have to get out of the tub to eat and such. Not that I stayed in that long, but when I got out I found that I had somehow managed to burn myself, and I have these two perfect circles on my back from all the time I spent in the tub.

The burns are not that bad, and I would be back in that tub right now if we were still there. I love hot tubs.

Okay, so then I was on the computer a bit, trying to decide what we would do on the way home the next day. I am always wanting to go to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, but we never seem to be in the area at the right time of year when we have time to be tourists. So this is the right time of year (not perfect, as the bluebonnets in my yard have flowers, but those south of us are mostly at the stage of making seeds), but about an hour and a half in the wrong direction. So that would cost gas and three hours of drive time in addition to the time and money actually spent at the place, and we decided against it. In Waco there is an exhibit of a wooly mammoth, and it opened to the public a few months ago, so we thought that we might do that. Only on Tuesdays it doesn't open til eleven, which would have left us just waiting around in Waco for an extra hour or two looking for something to do (and probably spending money for it) and also that would mean that we would need to eat lunch there (and the particular place that I wanted to eat lunch was more money that we should spend right now). Anyway, we were both rather tired already, which didn't make any sense as it was early and we hadn't yet done anything to get tired, but we decided to skip the whole thing and just head home (except for stopping at that bakery again). The wooly mammoth has been there a long time, and Waco is not that far away, and we can see him another time.

So, on to the bakery, where we bought sodas and again looked for focaccia and beer bread on the discount rack, and again did not find them, but found more six-packs of meat in a bun, though they were not marked and this time we could not tell just by looking which meat was in which bag. We made a guess and bought two bags anyway, so we now have about a dozen left, and he will take most of them to have for breakfast.

Anyway, we tried some that we were guessing to be roast beef, but they turned out to be pepperoni, and I rarely turn down pepperoni, so that was good.

So that was it. I guess it was a bit of a dull trip, but it was really good to get out so that we could deal with the bugs. So I will spend much of the day dealing with dead bugs, which I am much happier to do than deal with unwanted live bugs.

I might not be writing for a bit

Not that I have been writing a lot. I might go out of town today. Or I might not. I can never decide.

It's only for a day or two anyway. I couldn't leave for longer than that without making arrangements for my plants to be watered and such.

Anyway, I've been planning to go for about a week, and now I'm starting to panic. I tend to panic now every time I leave the house, but it turns out fine.

Okay, I've decided that I will leave or not leave depending on whether or not we have time to go and get one of those bug foggers before we leave. It is about time to do that again, and I was sure that we had already bought something for that purpose, but I can't find them now, so we will have to buy some more. Anyway, if we can do that I will go, so we can get rid of these damned bugs and not have to be here until a full day after it is over, and it won't smell so bad when we get back. If we don't have time to go and do that, I'll just stay here and wash dishes or something. He can go without me.

The bug fogger idea also gives me an excuse for not having finished washing the dishes and such, as I would wash them again afterwards anyway.

Okay, I have about an hour left. We'll see what happens.