Caught in the Middle

Once, a long time ago, a counselor told me that I am the 'lynch pin' of our family - the 'peacemaker'. This is not an enviable job. Trying to juggle the emotions of the varied personalities in our family is a real struggle sometimes.

Take our latest crisis. We have some very, very tiny guests that have decided they would rather live in our house than their own. I am talking about ants - to be more specific 'pavement ants' (or so the exterminator tells me).


They have been congregating in our daughter's (Miranda's) bathroom (and bedroom and sitting room), and she has been getting more and more freaked out about it.

I have bought her ant bait, and advised her about spraying, but nothing seemed to work. Finally I had to agree to call in an exterminator - which we did today (hence the knowledge of the type of ant we are dealing with).

Disregarding the horrendous cost of de-anting our house, the exterminator told us that we would need to leave the house for 4 hours while they did the inside treatment. Although their stuff is non-toxic, it might be a bit of an irritant to those with asthma or breathing problems.

This threw my husband (Bill) off the deep end. He is already pretty upset about his surgery not going well, and the fact that he already has breathing problems. Although the exterminator assured us that they use hand tanks, and only blow mist into the walls, I am sure what he envisioned was this:


As the poor exterminator stood by listening (until she was smart enough to go outside to write the whole proposal up), Dad had fits about the heat pump blowing contaminated air all through the house, and what kind of residue would be left that might cause problems. This caused Miranda to practically have hysterics about being sick of dealing with her ant problem and she can't take it any more.


We finally reached a compromise. They are going to come and do the outside part of the extermination treatment later on today. Monday at 8:00 am the heat pump experts will turn up to turn off our heat pump so that air won't be circulating. At 8:30 am the exterminators will turn up to do their thing, and we will all leave (Tim will be in school). Four hours later, Miranda will return and open up her windows to air everything out. She and Tim will spend Monday night at home, while Bill and I will stay at a motel (more expense!!!!). Tuesday we will have a house-cleaner do her thing (which should get rid of any residue), and we will come back from the hotel. And Wednesday morning the heat pump guys will come and turn our heat pump back on (and do the yearly maintenance - more money - while they're at it).

I think a lot of this is overkill, but anything to keep the peace at home. I just wish it wasn't so expensive!!

Unbelievable!

It is hard to believe all that the family has gone through in the past four months. It all started on December 17th (a day to live in infamy), when I ended up in the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital and had an operation for a strangulated hernia. This hospitalized me for three days.


In early January, my older daughter (who lives with us) had emergency surgery for a hemorrhagic ovarian cyst.


On the same day that I went into the emergency room (Dec. 17th) , my husband had a prostate crisis and after fighting with it for a couple of months, this culminated in wearing a catheter for six weeks, and then having surgery - in April.


The only member of the house who had NOT ended up in the emergency room was our adopted son/grandson Tim. So what did he do this Sunday? He accidentally swallowed a balloon.


We spent hours on the phone with the consulting nurse, while Tim ate bananas and bread in an attempt to push the balloon down farther and escape the risk of choking. My husband had to go back to urgent care for an infection he had developed in his throat (his uvula got nicked during surgery), and Tim had to come along so that we could 'monitor' him and make sure he would be okay.


I would like to say that this is the end of it, but I still have to have more hernia surgery at some time in the future. What a year! Unbelievable!