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Fruit flies, redux

I’m getting kinda tired of the fruit flies; you can’t even set down a drink at our house and expect to be able to pick it up again sans files. Ick.

So I started an all out campaign. I fully cleaned the kitchen again and made sure there were absolutely no dirty dishes about (I’ve been hard core about that for a week now with little results). We got all of the food - even the potatoes - out of reach.

And I’ve started the fruit fly traps. My goodness, that’s not a lot fun. The first 24 hours with a fruit fly trap caught us a couple of hundred of the buggers. Now I’ve got two fresh traps set out and nothing else for them to munch on.

And I’ve started vacuuming. While it’s nearly impossible to catch a significant number of flies with your hands, you can easily suck them into the vacuum. It’s effective and it feels good, too.

Last year when we had this problem, they died off because winter came. Unfortunately, that’s a long way off.

Anybody know how to get rid of fruit flies?

This is the second summer in a row that we’ve had problems with fruit flies.

I’ve cleaned the kitchen from head to toe. I’ve removed the trash can and gotten rid of all fruit and unwrapped food.

But the fruit flies are everywhere. Actually, I think they’re worse in the house because there’s less food for them in the kitchen.

I don’t suppose anyone has any great suggestions?

Television moving … again

Katie and I have flip-flopped about television and cable since we bought this house nearly two years ago. First we had it, then we didn’t. Then we had it again, and soon it’ll be no more.

We got the full digital cable dealy this time because of the baby. There was no way, we figured, that either one of us should be up at three in the morning with a fussy, wide-awake baby and have nothing to do.

But the Bug will be eleven months old next week, and she’s no longer getting us up in the middle of the night (Katie won’t allow it). Now the television is a distraction.

For me, the problem is its location. The tv, and its million cable channels, is in the living room, where I’m currently watching - for the eighty millionth time - Silence of the Lambs. And our house has a fairly open floor plan, especially for a hundred-year-old house. When one person watches tv, everyone watches tv.

But because we have a huge room upstairs that’s being underused, we’re going to turn it into the tv-focused family room, and free up the downstairs. It’s all a part of our child-proofing weekend. I hate the thought of everyone having to watch Silence of the Lambs just because I am.

I’m excited and anxious. And I hope we can leave cable off for longer this time.

Should’ve mowed the front yard first

I’ve been needing to mow my grass for a while now. I took care of it not long before heading off for the beach two weeks ago, but in grass years, two weeks is a lifetime.

Tonight I finally found the time to get outside with the mower, and I decided I should get started where it needed it the most: the backyard. Our back yard is an unruly mess. I need to spend at least a good day out there with a chainsaw and a weedeater. The really annoying thing is what the weeds cover up: bricks and pieces of cinder blocks.

It’s an old house.

Anyway, tonight I started on the back yard, because I mow it less frequently than the front yard and it needed more attention. I made it 3/4 of the way through before I hit the rock that spelled the end for that lawnmower blade.

Oh well. I didn’t want to mow the lawn anyway.

By the way, did I mention that our vacuum cleaner broke last weekend?

Well, I missed that creek cleanup

Our neighborhood does regular creek cleanups, since one of the local creeks runs right through it. The creek - creatively named First Creek - actually runs behind my house.

I was dreaming this morning that I went out to the cleanup to discover that the creek had flooded our house, but the fact of the matter is the creek is pretty far down there. It’d be a biblical flood that would get water near our house.

But I was dreaming that as I was supposed to be helping clean the creek. And I’m not proud of this.

I always try to make it to the cleanups, both because I want to be a good member of the neighborhood and because they’re cleaning my own yard. I kinda feel bad thinking that someone else is back there while I’m being lazy.

But I almost always miss the cleanup, and it’s never (ok, there was that one time) because of laziness. Usually I am out of town. Today I was asleep.

Excuses excuses. The Bug didn’t sleep well last night, and I was up at five taking care of her. By eight I was back in bed, and I slept through the bulk of the cleanup.

Slacker neighbor am I.

Not off to a great start

This morning I forgot both the Bug’s hat and her food. Then I found out that Katie could’ve kept her today (neither is feeling great) since she was forced to call in sick.

Personally, I’m so sore I can barely walk. H & I took some time yesterday to clean the gutters. We had to bring out the big guns - the 32 foot extension ladder (complete with stabilizers). Just maneuvering it to rest on the house was nearly impossible, and I can feel every muscle in my legs, back, and arms.

Does anyone mow anymore?

Not that I’m complaining. Really, I don’t care so much. I just find it a tad odd.

I’ve noticed lately that my next-door neighbor doesn’t tend to mow very often (read: the backyard has yet to see a mower this year). But as I went for a walk yesterday, I realized I was in the minority as far as lawn mowing was concerned. Of the five houses in a row - with mine in the middle - I was the only one who had mowed in the last month.

And I keep thinking I need to do better about mowing, but really there’s little point, is there?

And we have electricity!

We’ve had the worst trouble keeping our dogs in our newly fenced in back yard. Obviously I’m talking about the two little dogs, not the soon-to-be-huge Leo pup. Katie had trouble at her old house - complete with chain link fence. For some reason, I naively thought a wooden fence might be better (not that that’s why we went with wood over metal). But unfortunately, that was not the case.

Once it became clear that no fence would hold the dogs for long, I knew what we had to do: it was electric fence time. It took us a while, but we finally got someone to string a line of electric wire around the bottom of the fence to discourage the dogs from digging. And it took him a while to get finished (you can’t rush quality work).

Incidentally, I still feel a bit guilty for not doing this job myself, but there are only so many chores you can do yourself in a house this size and age; sometimes you have to delegate. And he really did do a good job (he even put a new plug - dunno the technical term - under the back deck).

Anyway, the whole process was finally finished today, and I plugged it in when I got home.

And yes, I tested it. That should slow down the digging a bit, lemme tell you.

Looking forward to getting nothing done

I am digging this mild weather. I keep thinking I’m going to go home after work and clean the house or mow the lawn, and I end up sitting on the front porch all evening instead.

On Monday, it was cool enough to have a nice fire going inside, yet it was warm enough to sit on the front porch with Katie, the Bug, and the pupster. It was no contest.

I have now given up any hope of accomplishing anything in the evening as long as the weather is this great. Why would I want to work when my front porch has a ceiling fan?

Seriously, enough with the spiders already

Even though I’ve got a nice fire going inside, I’m sitting here on my front porch in the chilly, rainy evening, enjoying the weather and goofing around on the internet.

And twice now I’ve had a spider (one was at least an inch and a half long) join me in surfing the intertubes.

And I do not appreciate it.

On to the next phase

Now that the contractor is finished putting a closet and lighting in the room that will be E’s, it’s time to move to phase two: taking care of the crumbling chimney.

The new bedroom, upstairs from our living room, has exposed brick from the chimney, but the mortar needs some attention. I’m hoping to be able to sand it down with a steel brush and then throw some polyurethane on it.

I’m halfway through the brushing, and I have to say that this isn’t the most pleasant chore I’ve ever undertaken. Specifically, the dust is horrendous.

I hope the polyurethane stage is better, because after that I’ve got to start patching holes in the walls. We’ve got to get it painted and carpeted (yes, we’re carpeting it) before it can really be a bedroom.