Yet another reason

Way back in the early 1980s, Rick and I lived in Italian Village which is in Columbus, OH. Much like German Village and Victorian Village, this area was targeted for urban renewal and had some amazing houses in it, mostly in really bad shape.

We rented a cute house, which you can sort of see if you Google the address: 790 Kerr, Columbus OH. Go to the street view; it's the little yellow house almost entirely blocked by a tree. A guy at church had rehabbed it, and mostly I loved living there. What I didn’t like were the roaches. Because the houses on either side of us were still uninhabited, the roaches zeroed in on our house. They came in droves or flocks or whatever you call lots of roaches.

It was bad enough when they were in the kitchen. I’d flip on the light and they’d go scuttling. Or I’d open a drawer and they would swarm out of view. I kept asking Rick to have our landlord get an exterminator but for whatever reason, it never happened. I’m sure since I was a stay at home mother at the time, I was a LOT more aware of the situation than Rick was!

The last straw came when I found a roach crawling on the rail of Ben’s crib—on the second floor. I told Rick the boys and I were going to visit my folks (nine hours away in Cape Girardeau MO) and that the roaches needed to be dealt with before we came back.

That did the trick, and an exterminator came in and bombed the house. Rick said the clean up was horrific, he said it was like raking dead leaves.

This morning I noticed Eddie and Chloe staring at something where the kitchen linoleum and the wood floor meet up. It was a roach, about as long as my thumb.

I need to find a count down clock to add to this blog—17 days and counting.

Odds and ends

First, here's a final picture from Friday's rain. Please note this was a very small part of what actually ended up in the glass. Pretty gross, eh?


Next, here's a blurry picture of Wally, who's found the top of Kent's dresser. You may wonder why he's so exhausted when it's still early in the day. Well he's pooped because he's been shredding toilet paper again. I have mixed feelings about this latest shenanigans because on the one hand, that's an activity he did in Kansas City. So I wonder if he's feeling less stressed. On the other hand, he destroys perfectly good toilet paper. . .

Teeny Tiny

So I’ll be joining Kent in Boston by the first of July. The apartment is really small with no storage. I mean, there's only one small closet that can hold a hanger.

Fortunately I’m not a pack rat. I find it almost fun in a weird way to just purge things from my life. I’ve had a couple of pangs letting some things go (my wedding dress, for example) but for the most part, I realize they are things, they don’t define me and really truly I won’t have room for them anyway.

It is a lovely dress, though. I felt like a complete princess walking down the aisle toward Kent. And I'm so glad I was able to wear this dress on such a special day. My mother-in-law is taking the dress to a consignment store in Tulsa that specializes in wedding clothing, so perhaps some other woman can feel as special as I did and not break her wedding budget to do so!