Plagues Upon Us

The other day I was driving home from Seattle and I called my mom to check on how the boys were doing.

Mom: Oh, they're good, but...I think you might have a problem..."

Thoughts flash through my mind - A problem? The boys are sick? They aren't getting along? One or both of them is showing signs of being socially-awkward, or sociopathic - or some other negative socio-word??

Me: Uhm, what's the problem?

Mom: Well, in the last hour, I have killed probably 15 to 20 flies in your house.

Ohmigod. Bugs?! This is so much worse than anything I had thought of.

Me: You mean, like, fruit flies? (Please, please, please let it be just fruit flies!)

Mom: No, like regular house flies. The big ones.

Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Ohmigod!

Me: Ohmigod! Gross! What do we do?? We need to bomb my house. This is so disgusting!


My mom calmed me down, and said she had researched fly infestations. She had taken all of the precautions suggested on how to remove the sources of the flies. That sounded great, but I mean, it's not like we live amongst solid waste, people. I may not be the most organized person, but I do try to keep my house freaking sanitary! Unfortunately, those precautions did not help. Later that day I killed a little over 10 flies myself, the next day was about the same, and yesterday I killed close to 20. For the life of me, I cannot figure out where they are coming from, they just seem to be multiplying out of thin air. It is disgusting and frustrating. It makes me wish more than ever that Richard were home, because I am so not cut out to handle this sort of business.

Then I got another wonderful surprise before dinner yesterday evening. I was about to get the boys' chairs set up, when something caught my eye...something that was moving. Actually, it was about 20 somethings - ANTS. Yes, not only do we have a fly infestation, but we now apparently have an ant infestation on top of it. Seriously? I mean it's like we've got the 10 Egyptian Plagues descending on our house, for crying out loud.

No sooner had I vacuumed up those 20 ants, but dozens more appeared. I was almost in tears at that point, and my parents are out of town, so I called my brother and all but begged him to come help me. Tim drove all the way up here - bless his heart - with his baby in tow. He sprayed all around the outside of my house and helped me place fly traps around the windows. I am keeping my fingers crossed now that this is the end of the story, because I don't think I can handle much more.

Oh, but if I start breaking out in boils, all bets are off.