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!!