Sounded the Warning

The Home Inspection on our home was scheduled for this morning at 8:30 by the buyers. I was prepared to go over to my mom's for a few hours. The kids were off from school and I didn't want to be mucking about.

Early this morning (4 am to be precise) Baby Girl came into our room announcing that she had thrown-up. So with a thorough clean up of her and her bed, I relocated her to our room. None too soon, she threw up again. Twice.

I planned to still go to my mom's, and take extra clothes and the throw up bucket with us.

6:30. Brown-Eyed Girl came in my room. Her belly hurts. I told her to get a throw up bucket too.

7:30. Cease fire on the younger one barfing. BEG commences barfing. Okay. Do I risk taking the barfington twins in a car just to watch them puke at my mom's and then bring them back in 2 hours.

8:30. I was still home and announced to the inspector and the potential buyers, as I opened the front door, that they were welcome to continue with the inspection if we could stay. But my house smelled oh- so lovely.

I sat there in the frontroom with my older two kids reading books, the sick girls spread out on a mattress pad on the floor, and the one-year old running around staring at the weird people who were leaving on all the faucets.

It's procedure, I know. And even though it wasn't my business, one can't help leaning in to hear what the home inspector is telling your potential buyers about your home. It was compelling, yet I didn't want to hear, because I can't do anything about it until they submit their findings and requests for repair. That means I will have to wait at least 3 days. It was maddening.

Not to mention that the inspector kept pausing to talk to the buyers about their jobs, or the latest movie he'd seen. I felt like screaming, "Hey! Get your crap done and get out of my house so it can become their house, and I can get on with cleaning up barf!"

I'm not so nice when I'm tired and smelly.

Thus my warning:

If you have a home inspector coming to your home, and your children just happen to come down with the flu, the plague, scurvy... go to your mother's for two hours. You won't have to strain to hear what's wrong with your house, then worry about it for the next two days when you can do nothing anyway.

Plus your mom might have some good ideas for getting vomit out of hair.

A lot of Aimless Stuff

Cut the girls' hair

Bought a glider swing (for me and those quiet evenings under my nice tree, when the kids are in bed and I am unwinding at night- I'm going to miss my nice, gorgeous, Maple tree)

Listed our house for sale (I'm going to miss the house that we've worked so hard on, but I'll miss the tree more!) Let the giddy girls stay up and read in my room until they got tired

Took my daughter back to a friend's house to return something that she borrowed, even though I told her that she couldn't borrow anything this time (In my book- that's stealing.)

Helped my sis with her computer (I didn't fix a thing, but I tried)

Felt good and happy.

Found out What this Bug is

So my husband points out some weird, sandy formation around the drain by our water heater and furnace. It's hard and looks like an insect created it. The pictures I took are impossible to see, but they looked like this (but instead were around the drain and the base of the water heater);I poked it with a stick and out came these little black bugs with long wings, and some white larvae bugs. Well, that was it, I sprayed them with bleach, and scrubbed everywhere I could. I kid you not, they were back in 2 days. It was unreal. I made it my morning routine to go downstairs and pour hot bleach water down the drain and around the floor to keep them away.

In the mean time, I scoured the internet. I typed; "mud tunnels", "bug drain water heater", "bug furnace drain", "sand tunnels bug", "exterminator bug basement". I found NOTHING!

Well, the bleach was working, so I figured they were gone. After a month of my morning bleach routine, I decided to stop and see if the bugs would come back now that the weather is warming up and the furnace is no longer running- which means that it is no longer damp by that drain. They didn't come back, so I made the bleach water routine a weekly chore. Simple enough.

Along with warm weather comes children playing outside. My 6-year-old and 3-year-old daughters were playing "hide and go seek". Our yard is the worst place for this game. There is one tree, two bushes, and the grass. Not so challenging. The girls recently figured out that they could crawl into the window well for another hiding spot.

So the other day, I here the 6-year-old yelling that she was hiding in there and can't get out! After I pull her out, I warn her about the spiders and see a humongous one right where she was standing. I grabbed a jar and trapped the black-widow-looking spider. I couldn't see the tell-tale red hourglass on the spider in the jar (which, by the way, is on the under side, not the top side where I was looking- duh!)

About an hour later, BEG started scratching her arm violently. When I looked at it, it was swollen so badly that I knew something had bitten her. Since I didn't think this trapped spider was a black widow spider, I sat down and tried to search for different spiders to determine which black spider this was, which might have been the one that bit her.

It turns out that I stumbled onto a pest site that did not show the spider I had in the jar, but the exact mud things that were in my basement a month ago. You will NOT believe it.