The best part of today was the visit from the pest control guy. My parents have used the same company for... since dinosaurs roamed around, I guess. I called their "people" to get a second opinion on my mortgage-sized termite fix. When the guy walked in, I didn't quite know what to think. He looked like he'd walked straight out of the movie "Joe Dirt." If my mom hadn't been standing there, I might have laughed out loud. Anyway, Mr. Joe Dirt went back outside and crawled around under the hedges in the front yard a while and then paced the perimeter of the house and all inside the garage. Then, he came back in with a handful of dirt. He said, "See here. You got 'em in the molding out there yonder 'round your winders." I was in a real bind at this point. I was struggling with having Joe Dirt standing on my new floor with a handful of dirt and hearing him say that the little buggers had invaded the window frame, too. Cry? Laugh? Suck my thumb, rock back and forth, and say, "Find a happy place, find a happy place?" I ended up just staring dumbly at him for a few seconds. He asked me to come 'out yonder' with him and look at the damage for myself. Yep. I could see where they had snacked on the window molding (which had been caulked up and painted over by the last crew that painted our house - nice). When I finally admitted to him that Terminix had also surveyed the damage and relayed to him what their damage report said, he looked quizzically at me. The guy on Saturday told me they were in the soft part of the stucco. This guy told me that I don't have soft stucco. I have hard coat. He then began using a huge crow bar to chip away the bottom few inches of stucco to prove to me that there wasn't any Styrofoam in there. He invited me to stick my hand up under the stucco, too, but I know my limitations. Heck, this guy was like Billy the Exterminator and Joe Dirt rolled into one. Are you getting the image now? Anyway, he then went on to show me that the Terminix guy hadn't even tried to pull away the landscape cover from the wall to check a thing. I'm not prone (at this point in my life) to blindly believe what other folks tell me so I surveyed the situation myself. He was right. Not a piece of the decaying pinestraw behind the shrubs had been moved in any location other than the one Mr. Dirt had just exposed. Long story short, I ended up chatting with this guy for a while. He and his wife have two grown sons. One of the boys has Downs. I wish you could have seen Mr. Dirt's face when he talked about this child. He said that he's non-verbal and simply likes to sit and watch movies all day. He said that he had to transfer all of the movies to VHS tapes because his son gets excited and starts throwing them and can ruin them. Not once did a look of frustration cross his face. Geez. I wish I could be more like that. But, back to the bugs. Basically, the little colony these critters have set up will only require a heavy spot treatment and then the rest of the house will be treated, as well. This guy will also do all of the stucco removal and handle the whole job for $700. So, the first guy is going to charge me $1300+ and that didn't include any of the demo. Mr. Dirt was lucky that I didn't give him a big hug! So, by Saturday, the colony having the all night buffet in my walls will be on its way OUT! Thank goodness! And, instead of destroying the sheet rock inside the house, this guy only needs to put several small nail-sized holes in. I admit that I did ask him how much he'd charge to get rid of the other "bugs" in the house (as I point to the rest of the clan - Annie sitting on the table eating ice cream, Grant at the table blowing air into his water so it splashed up in his face and was making Annie laugh hysterically, and Dasha trying to figure out how Grant was doing it but simply submerging her face in her glass). The guy said, "Anything with two legs or under gets way out of your budget, mam."
As for the update on day two of Grant's sex ed class, he wasn't as amused today as yesterday. I guess the novelty wore off. Today was on HIV and AIDS. He didn't have too much to say about it. However, I did learn that my joking around yesterday with him about terminology for out of control parts backfired. Now, he's acting like he's in 4th grade and commenting on anything that resembles, well, you know - a banana. I finally had to put an end to the silliness when Annie picked up a long Lego and declared that she had a "banana." Yeah, she was pretending to have a real banana to eat... oh, my.... ok. Let's change topics. Anyway, no more body part names in front of Annie. Dasha has been sequestered to the library during the sex ed classes for the last two days. She thinks that she's having some sort of privilege. I can't imagine what the girls are learning!!! Can you imagine the look on her face if she'd had to listen to some of those conversations? Wow.
OK, so I'm heading into cyber space now and then to bed.
Good night, all.
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