The Almost Perfect House

It has been one heck of a busy Labor Day weekend in our home. Or should I say homes? Yes, at the moment we have two. Grant and I conscripted some of our friends into some hard labor this weekend. They were beyond amazing and moved by far more of our junk than I could have hoped for. So we now have a fabulous house filled with most of our things and a dusty old apartment with our couch, one giant bookcase, our office and our clothes.

Funny thing about services, for whatever reason, they can be difficult to 'turn on' and it takes time to get them set up. So our phone and internet access are still in place at the old place. Which means we start our evenings there and then head out to the house, where we become completely unplugged. It's kind of odd and kind of nice at the same time. Everything should get hooked up in the new place this coming weekend. In the mean time we continue to shuttle odds and ends from our closets to the new place.

The new place, as it turns out, is almost perfect. I say almost for one very simple reason, the bedroom is infested with ants. We haven't seen any in the kitchen, or any other room of the house, but they love our bedroom and they are driving us batty.

In order to acclimatize the cats to their new home we started by moving them into our bedroom with us. This means their food lives there too. Sunday morning we woke up to a food bowl full of ants. We've spent the entire weekend moving the bowl around the room and trying to kill the ants as fast as we spot them. In light of my delicate condition we're not inclined to go for major chemical spraying and our land lady has suggested cayenne pepper as a solution. It doesn't work. So now we're hoping some caulk around the base boards will seal them out. In the interim, we've expanded the cat's realm to include the back half of the house and moved their food into the hallway bathroom. Here's hoping the ants did not find this new location for the food.

Other than the ants, the house is everything we hoped for. The outdoor space is wonderful and we are making full use of it. We fired up the grill and ate on the patio last night. The pool stays a chill 72 F, so I'm hoping the heater isn't broken. That said, it feels really nice when it's hot out and the sun is beaming down. The flow of the rooms is wonderful and for the first time ever I feel like we don't have enough stuff to fill the place. This is shocking, given just how much junk we have.

If I have to share the space with some six legged neighbors for a while so be it. They are certainly cleaner and smell better than the old neighbors.