minor moving tribulations

My cell phone is not ringing these days. That’s not a problem with the hardware but with the people who should be calling. I haven’t talked to Rudder for two whole days. Possibly more important though less enjoyable, no one has called about buying my car in several days. I put it up on Autotrader.com; I don’t quite understand what else I can do. (It’s so small a sale sign wouldn’t be readable in the window.)  Call me, people! It’s a nice car! It’s sporty! It’s fun! You know you want one!

October is coming up fast. Tomorrow I meet with a decorator who’se supposed to help me figure out how to stage the house for sale. Also tomorrow, I get to take the cat to the vet. Crating him is going to be a real challenge with only one person. Not so much actually getting him in; I use the pillowcase method, which is basicaly putting the cat in a pillowcase, then dumping the whole thing in the crate. This works well because pillowcases are smaller and less of a tip-off to what’s coming than the crate itself. The hard part will be getting him to stay still enough to pop the pillowcase over him, because this is the cat who’s scared of everything.

We need to have a going-away party. The only issue is that the most practical Saturday evening for us is Cubemate’s bachelorette party. I don’t want to miss that, but Rudder will only be here for a bit over two weeks. I think we may have ours at a bar instead of at our house, so Friday night might work as well.

Also, ants. I mean, ANTS!!! Yesterday, I came home, got on the computer for  bit, pulled some shrimp out of the freezer to start dinner with, then turned around to find the sink was crawling with ants, who were also exploring off onto the counters. First I paused with my jaw dropped for a few seconds, while I was mentally running in circles with my hands flapping like a chicken’s. Then I attacked them, first drowning the bastard emmets in water, then spraying an amount of bugspray probably not advisable in a kitchen, sweeping everything that could possibly stand it into the dishwasher (more to get off the bugspray than the ant cooties (is that redundant?)) and cleaning all the counters with antibacterial cleaner. I washed the few things that couldn’t take the dishwasher, plus one spatul I needed for my stirfry. Then I checked back periodically all evening. I saw a couple more ants later on, so I resprayed and rewiped. I also put down some ant powder outside the kitchen, in case they were getting in through the window. There were a few more again this morning, but only five or so. I’ll put out some ant traps this evening.

We’ve only had an infestation like this once before in our eight years in this house, and that time they got into the cat food. This time they weren’t anywhere near it. I have no idea where they came from or why. I somehow managed not to get bitten during all of this; if they’re the same ants as those outside, they do bite, and it itches worse than a mosquito bite. I didn’t sleep well last night because I was itching all over last night with phantom ants. I do hope the damn things are gone for good.

One more thing: I need to start yet another blog, to report on our experiences to family and friends (so I can keep this one for venting).  I need to decide whether to make it a standalone or a LiveJournal one; I like having it on its own, but LJ handles discussion better. Any ideas for a title? Rudder has already vetoed Innocents Abroad and A Tramp Abroad.