Besides the many projects that occupied tons of time when we moved into our new house (installing pantry shelves and various other shelves all over the house; learning how to/installing three ceiling fans in the house, landscaping, appliance shopping, lawn care/revival, etc), we faced a couple of other majorly time-consuming issues, one of them being constant ant infestations. Almost from the minute we moved in to the minute we moved out (more about that when we get to this year's posts...), we were overrun with ants more often than not, mainly in the kitchen (conveniently). (Yes I mean that sarcastically.) Ants, ants, ants, ants, ants, all the time. And following their trails and baiting them and wiping them down, over and over and over again, is incredibly time consuming and frustrating. It's a good thing I was over my phobia of black ants by this time, because from the time I was about 7 years old til I was twenty-something I was very scared of them because of a dream I had when I was a kid. I remember it vividly, still: I was standing out on the driveway at my (first) childhood house, and for some reason I was covered in tiny, tickling, crawling black ants and it was so awful. My grandpa was out there with me, leaning on a cane and laughing wickedly instead of wiping them off of me. (Sorry Grandpa, no reason that I know of for that!) That was a bad year for dreams, as bad as that ant one was it was nothing compared to the dream I had about the Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka...anyway, I'm not going there. They and Gene Wilder still scare me. But back to the point, ants are awful.
Another event that ended up being very time-consuming, with long-lasting effects, started off rather innocently on a Friday afternoon in late September I believe. Our mini-van has a sometimes-automatic sliding door that apparently didn't get closed after the kids and I returned from school that day. When Seth came home later on, he noticed the door wide open, and closed it. We didn't think anything of it until around ten a.m. the next day when the family was getting in the car to go somewhere. Seth had gone around to the side of the house, but the kids and I had climbed into the car and were fairly settled when all of a sudden out of NOWHERE, this humongous, incredibly fluffy gray cat was wildly bounding around in front of me, back and forth between the driver's seat and all sides of the dashboard, "ROWR! ROWR! ROWR!" claws out, fur flying. I of course was screaming (having never been more surprised by anything, ever, in my entire life) and holding my hands in front of my protruding belly to protect it from frantically digging claws. By some miracle the cat never actually landed on me, and after what seemed like five minutes but was in reality probably around ten seconds, the cat finally jumped out the passenger side door. Thankfully in my awkward pregnant slowness I hadn't gotten comfortable enough to bother closing the door after me yet. Seth missed out on the entire thing, except for hearing the screaming, but once the cat was out the full realization of what had happened set in, along with the terrible, horrible, no good very bad smell that lingered in our car for months. You can imagine what that was from, having a cat locked in the car from 5 p.m. one night til ten a.m. the next day...yeah. Praise be, there was nothing in there that required scooping out, but the wetness was bad enough. It took many shampooings and vacuumings and months of air fresheners before it was mostly back to normal.
Unfortunately it will probably also take many months of therapy before Joshua is back to normal. The poor kids , although completely untouched by the cat, were completely panicked just from watching the chaotic scene and listening to Mommy scream. My kids, the boys especially, were already scared of dogs and wary of animals in general, which I am fine with, but after that, they all hated cats for a long time. I think Hannah and Eli are mostly over their real fear of cats, but I recall a time maybe four or so months back when all three refused to go out in the backyard because there was a cat back there and they instead stood just inside the (tightly closed) sliding glass door in the back quietly discussing the possible danger if they dared to venture outside. Joshua is still extreme in his fear; he absolutely refuses to approach a cat under any circumstances. Not two weeks ago he jumped out of the car at the house, started to go up the sidewalk, then doubled back to the car because there was a cat dozing near the front window. But it wasn't the same cat. I'm pretty sure we have not seen that once since it spent the night in our car. And as a family we have gotten much better at making sure the car doors and windows get closed!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment