Say what?

My daughter just stomped out of time out. When I explained she needed to go back to time out and that it's rude to stomp, she claimed she "just wanted to play marching band."

...to further this story, as I am writing this, she just flat-footed it out of the room. Which sounds like stomping.

I dread the day she enters puberty.

The boy child, meanwhile, has turned into Peter Pan. He chases his shadow around the house and he just informed me that the shadow was "bad."

Fuses and buttons

It took me 20 minutes, but I replaced the fuses in the string of Christmas lights we had that stopped working halfway through the season. I plugged them in and they are good as ... wait.

One light is flickering. One green light.

So I gave up on them for the night.

I need to be a success and sew buttons back on my coat. If I have two posts about this, does it make it a recurring blog theme? Or is it just sad that it's been three years and I have the same coat, still missing buttons?

New Year New Post

This is the year that I am finally going to stop biting my fingers.

My actual new year's resolution is to waste less food. Because last year's resolution was to stop biting my fingers, and it seems silly to make the same resolution year after year after year.  I have some sausages going bad in the meat drawer right now, so it's not looking like a good start for this goal.

Exciting house news, though: We discovered that the oven does, in fact, have a light switch. You know, so you can see what's cookin' without opening the door. It only took seventeen months to find.

Return of the Ants

The ants are back. They have taken over my kitchen. I am officially surrendering it to them. I cannot get the dishwasher unloaded and reloaded without one surprising me, so I quit. Now, they will be able to find food, and they will invite friends, and they will make a tent and decide to stay. I don't see them anywhere outside - just in my kitchen. I think they already decided to live there.

Ant remediation and property lines

The husband has handled the ant problem. He sprayed, and poisoned, and put out death bait. I'm sure it helps that it got cold again, too. Knock on wood - there have been no ants in the house this week. This is extraordinarily exciting for me, and if it keeps up, I can stop obsessively searching the bed every night and my socks every morning. Last week, there was a day of winged ant infestation in my kitchen window. I made the husband handle it, which he did. Because it was so gross.

Then we discovered a problem of a different nature - we found out our property line is different than we thought it was. Our neighbors apparently put up a fence inside their property line. I am not sure why they would do this. There is no gate, or anything, just a fence, and then a strip of land a few feet across, and then our property apparently starts. We had just been assuming that the property line started at the fence - but instead it starts at this decades-old retaining wall, which clearly runs between two metal posts. The posts are actually mentioned in the deed. Obviously we failed to do our due-diligence here (not that it would have mattered to us at the time of purchase, but still a failure). It's a bit disappointing to find out that you don't own a strip of land, however small, that you thought was yours.

Ants are back

Unfortunately, it seems like winter has stopped pretending to exist and completely given up and it's intermittently floating up into the 70's every few days. So earlier this week I went to put the recycling out on the curb and.... THERE WAS AN ANT. He was sitting in the recycling. He was pretty sluggish - probably just woke up and came out of the ground and was enjoying his first good meal for months.

Then it kind of got cold again and ... I mean... he was outside, so... not so awful yet, right? But... today... I found two dead ants in my living room. THEY ARE BACK. I begged the husband to put out bait, but he said we should avoid attracting them unnecessarily. Maybe I can convince him to spray the foundation this weekend at least.

I will now spend the weekend feverishly cleaning my house so as to not attract them.

Also... I have no idea how they wound up dead on the floor??

Mousecapades

Some mice decided to come in out of the cold and live in our upstairs. (Our upstairs is a quasi-attic. We have a cape, so the upstairs was once and will again be living space, but right now we just threw down some insulation on the floor and have a few items stored up there... so it's acting as an attic.)

Every night, we heard the scrambling and running of little feet... and gnawing? So it was time for action.

The husband has had most of the fun with the mousecapades. He bought traps and bait, and set them. The first night, he was obsessed with them. (Traps!) Every time he heard a noise, he ran upstairs to see if he'd caught anything.

About 2am, he did. Now, he bought two of those traps that hide the dead carcass so you don't have to witness what you've done. But the husband wanted to see... and when he did, he squealed. In case you are faint of heart, I will not relay what he saw. Since this time, he has been much less enthused about the process.

Two nights ago, trap number two went off. These suckers pack quite a punch - apparently it flew several feet across the room. From downstairs, we heard a random "pop!" ... husband waited until the next day to actually go retrieve the trap.

I might feel a little sorry for the critters... but at some point in the last week, they got into my diaper bag, which I store in the stairwell to the upstairs. And they nibbled everything in the bag - a juice box, a book, diapers... and a brand new footie outfit for the small child. So they are now my archenemy. And they must die.