ant infestation...

The weekend was a washout. Not because of weather, but because the good graces didn't smile upon us or our happy circle of friends with great luck. No. Not at all.

Aaron and Michelle were supposed to come visit. They dropped their transmission on their car. Seeing as they are all the way the heck up in Maine, and it was like Friday Night, we couldn't get ourselves together fast enough to get up there nor would we. They (A&M) had barely been at their house all summer, seeing as they were living out at Mount Desert Island while working with the parks service at Acadia, so they had kind of a messy house which needed some love and attention.

So we all opted to reschedule. Sadly.

Pictured above is Mr. Aaron himself, at his finest; a most intelligent, kind and loving rendering of him I think. HA! Aaron sent me this picture when I was grieving for Missy. He called me on the phone and said "Hey, check your email, I sent you something that will make you smile." The file name was something like "Tree.jpg" so I was not at all prepared for this. I actually laughed my ass off and started crying at the same time. Here's a guy who knows how to cheer a girl up!

That's a true friend.

Back to the story.

As you know,Geoff had a fever and was sent home from preschool Thursday... remember, we lost out on tix to the Pats/Deadskins pre-season game? Thinking this was your textbook little stomach bug, we (Doug) brought him home and rode the day out with him sleeping. That night he got ill (as in puking but no further details are necessary there... lucky for the babysitter we didn't abandon him with G-puke after all!) and I spent the night sleeping with him. Friday he was listless, we figured that was par for the course, and I waited to come down with whatever stomach bug he had.

He doesn't have one. He has an ear infection... come Sunday morning he was all crying and pulling his left ear and complaining that he couldn't yawn. So we got him to the doctor (thanks Dr. Barrett!) and got a prescription for amoxicillin. 48 hours later he's a new boy.

I think we would have been a whole ton of no fun at the way out inn if A&M had managed to come visit us. Geoff pretty much just walked around whimpering, and it was sad.

We did however get a closet cleaned out and organized books to take to the 2nd hand store. The closet is going to be a home entertainment center. We have to build in shelving and make it rock. I'm looking forward to that day.

I felt inspired after clearing out the closet. Empowered. Charged up.

I tore a fence out of the yard because of it.

We have a couple of old ratty white picket fences that are about 2.5 feet high, and they are so damn trashy looking. Doug refers to them as "shabby chic," but that's such a load of horseshit. They look like crap.

So I have been trying to convince him that one of the fences, the one over by the creek, had to go. I want to pull out the hydrangea, cut out the evil grapevine that actually has grown all up and around all the trees around our neighborhood (no lie) and cut back the tendrils on the black raspberries and blueberries.

That area is such a waste back there. It could be SO nice.

So Doug moaned and complained and said "we'd" do it later in the fall.

He went inside.

I started yanking on the fence. It pretty much came right the heck out, the total piece of shite that it is. He initially pretended to be hurt. Pretended is the key word. I didn't take him at all seriously when he protested. He whimpered like I was taking his teddybear away or something. Turns out he really was kind of angry with me. He let me know after I was completely done that he really did like that fence and he was hurt that I just dispatched it the way I did. I basically told him he was in need of counseling. I'm sick of living in a place that looks like it is half falling down. And my proactivity probably just shamed him.

I told him to get over it and move on.

I went back outside and all that was left was the bottom of the fence. I pulled it out and the whole thing was infested with ants. Crazy loaded with black maniacally scrambling ants!

I almost leaped out of my skin.

I didn't expect to see the wide Ant Diaspora of 2001 in my yard. An exodus caused by my hand. With creepy results!

I ran in the house to see if we had any Raid or anything. Doug shrugged and said to just pull the fence away and cart it out to the woods, chuck it out there before the ants could regroup and invade, thus eating us alive in our sleep as revenge.

In other words, "No, Ms. Stupid-ass For Pulling My Shabbychic Fence Down, we are out of Raid."

So I pulled all the parts of the fence together, threw them in the wooden cart, hauled them into the corner of the yard and chucked them all, piece by dreaded ant-covered piece, into the woods. I walked back around under the tree area, and pulled all the pieces back even further, just so they weren't visible from the yard or I would be sitting on the deck looking at broken nasty pieces of wood fence simply teeming with ants, thinking they were on their way to an organizational meeting on how to meet out their revenge by chewing me from head to toe in my sleep.

Shudder.

So now the fence is out. I've got some hacking and bushwhacking to do to clean the area out. I feel like it will be nice to have just a tad more yard to look at instead of something "shabby chic."

Not much else to report from this angle. I'll let you know if my sugar bowl is full of crawling little fiends later. Ugh. Shudder!