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Sunday, August 14, 2011

It's A Date

A big hearty "Thank You" to all my faithful friends and readers out there in blog land over your concern about my interior plumbing.  Heeding your wise comments, I have indeed rescheduled my colonoscopy for September 21, 2011.  I now have a little over a month to quake in fear.

The doctor's office was very sympathetic to my crying about having to take the pipe flushing medication again and they provided a prescription for a different kind of medication that they promise will be easier on my stomach.

I don't know why they didn't give me that in the first place.  Maybe it was my loud wailing that convinced them to do something quick to shut me up.

The nurse that I dealt with was very kind and said that after I swallowed the medicine I could drink something else as a chaser, alcohol was not included in that...

On our house sale front, we've now had over 15 realtors show the house without a single offer.  The feedback we've received from some of them is the house is beautiful, but everyone seems to want a finished basement, which our home does not have.  We're considering dropping the price a little more, but there is no way we're going to enter into a basement finishing project, which would run around $40-50K.

It's been interesting trying to keep the house in show ready condition while living there.  Most of the showings have been on weekends so we try to stay at our nearby campground in the Journey, which is where we are now.  It's a gorgeous 76 degrees and we're sitting outside in our lounge chairs enjoying the day, hoping for another realtor to call with that one buyer we're waiting for.

This week we have had an invasion of those little black sweet ants in our kitchen (of course!).  An online search revealed that they need water, it has been very dry lately.  I went to the store and bought some of those ant baits that the ants eat and take back to their nest and die off.  They work well and usually in a couple of days, they are all but gone.  I also picked up a can of ant spray.

On Friday morning, Marti told me when she went downstairs for her cup of that foul and evil liquid called coffee that there were ants all over the place.  When I went downstairs, there were long lines of ants coming and going to the half dozen ant baits I had placed around the kitchen, which showed the baits were indeed working.  After Marti left for work, I took the ant spray and sprayed down all the lines of ants, and then headed out to take care of some errands.

Nearing lunchtime, I picked up some lunch for Marti and dropped it off at her office which is near our house.  I debated going back to the house first and giving it the usual once over for realtor showings or the campground first to set up for the weekend.  Before I reached the place on the road where I had to turn one way or the other, my cell phone rang.  It was a realtor wanting to show the house.  Great!  They'd be there in 15 minutes.  Not so great.

I flew home the couple of miles and went tearing into the house to do a quick vacuuming of the carpets, they look better with no footprints in them.  I came in through the garage and when I entered the kitchen, there were long lines of recently departed ants all over the place.  To make matters more interesting, the kitchen stunk of ant spray!

I threw open the kitchen windows, grabbed a couple of handfulls of wet paper towels and scurried around on my hands and knees wiping up all the dead ants, all the while terrified that the realtor would walk in on me.  When I finished that, I took the vacuum cleaner and ran it over the carpets to give it that fresh look. 

Now that the carpets were done, I ran back to the kitchen, and took a last look around.  It still smelled of ant spray, so I had to hustle around and find some Fabreeze.  I squirted that liberally all over the kitchen and then through the downstairs of the house.

Finishing that, I went back out through the garage, hopped in my car and backed out of the driveway just as the realtor and clients showed up.  Hopefully, these are the buyers we've been waiting for, I don't know how many more close calls like this I can take!

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

14 comments:

  1. One of our houses sold because the clients loved the smell in the house. I had chili on low!

    Another house, boiled water and cinnamon!

    Might try that!

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  2. We'be been gone 4days in the MH and the house has shown 3 of those days. Hope we didn't have any ants move in while we've been gone and the grass got cut.
    Syl

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  3. Look at all the excercise you got taking care of those ants! :)

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  4. Leave it to Judy to put such a positive spin on things. Fingers and toes are crossed for both the house selling and your making it through the plumbing situation.

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  5. You and Bill have developed a second career...house prep;o))) He has had a few close calls as well, but you guys are tough...you can take it!! OK Soldiers... let's get these houses SOLD!!!!

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  6. darn ants anyway..geesh if they are going to move in..the least they can is buy the place before they die off!!

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  7. Your stories are way to funny sometimes. Hope things go well on the sale of your home.

    Brenda Brown

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  8. Glad to see your having some action on the house...I mean lookers/viewers and not the ants lol also happy to see that you've rebooked the big C test..altho I'm positive you could have done it and been successful with the initial prep..next time if you lose the 2nd round don't tell the bad witch of the north nurse..

    I would think an unfinished basement would be a plus to the buyers...they they have the opportunity to do it the way they want it done!! Hang in there I'm sure it will move soon...
    Elaine

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  9. Certainly glad you've decided to go ahead with the plumbing check again. As though as it is, you need to do it but you already know that.

    Just wait until you get those little black ants in your motorhome. They aren't fun there either. We've been there, done that and didn't enjoy it one little bit!

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  10. Keeping the house show ready nearly put me over the edge and we did not have any ants:)

    Diligence will pay off in the end.

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  11. Whew! I'm sweating bullets just reading about your race to beat the realtor! I hope all those little black ants are now resting in peace and the people loved that fresh Febreze smell so much that it prompted them to submit a big offer!

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  12. Being the odd person that I am, when I got ants in my house in Florida, I put the ant traps outside hoping they would stay out there. :-D Surprisingly, it seemed to work.

    Only you can make a story about ants so entertaining.

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  13. Now this was hilarious. I can just see you on the floor and running around with a spray can.

    Seems pretty inconsiderate of the ants to pick now to move in. It's hard enough to keep a house spotless without their help. Bet they are all seriously sorry they did. Although since they are history I guess they can't really be sorry. But that'll teach em'.

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