The Battle

What a week this has been! WHEW! I am so glad it is almost over!

The week started out with a late night. I was up doing laundry. I started to fall asleep on the couch, so I decided to go up to bed. Forget about the laundry, it can sit in there overnight without a problem, right? What's the worst that can happen? It sours and I rewash it, right?

So, I get up, turn off all the lights, and head up stairs. Well, not really up the stairs. Just over to them. Didn't make it up the stairs because they were covered with......... wait for it...............................................................................................................................................................

PILL BUGS!

I am dead serious. I live in a split level, so when you come in the door there is a set of stairs going up and a set of stairs going down. The landing, where the door is, was also covered with bugs. COMPLETELY. It was so full that they were falling off the landing down onto my living room carpet. That area was also completely full of bugs. I am cringing as I remember how gross it was.

I started killing them with kleenex, toilet paper, paper towels, whatever I could flush down the toilet. Didn't really make a dent. I then made the, probably unwise, decision to start up the vacuum cleaner. It was 3 AM. Yes, that's right. 3 AM and I was sucking up hundreds of bugs. Mike wasn't too happy. Apparently I woke him up. Should've closed the bedroom door and turned the swamp cooler onto high before starting up the vacuum....OH WAIT! Couldn't get up the stairs. That's right.

Next morning, vacuumed up 100s more. Mike set off 2 bug bombs, 1 upstairs, 1 downstairs, while we went to work. When we came home, the ones inside were all dead, but the ones outside were still coming in! WHAT THE HECK?!

So, being a man, Mike heads off to Home Depot. (Where else? haha) He buys a new door sweep that goes on the front of the door. We had one on the back, but the plastic piece got ripped off by Marshall a while back (it was really cheap and started ripping 3 days after we moved in). We get home and take the door off, which was a struggle in and of itself because the hinges had been painted over.

So, door's off, we put the door sweep on and put the door back on, as it's RAINING, and the door doesn't close because the sweep is getting stuck on the threshold. UGH!!

Mike tries to take the threshold off, but the screws are rusted in. Can't take the whole piece out because it's cemented in on the outside and the tile grout was on top of it on the inside. Lemme tell ya, whoever built this place was pretty dumb to make it impossible to replace the door without ripping up the whole front of the house!

So I go off to Checker to buy an easy-out stripped screw kit, because the screws are not only rusted, but stripped. So lovely. I come back, and Mike has the piece out, but one of the screws had broken off during the process. We go BACK to Home Depot, return some things (shivs cuz he thought he could level out the unlevel door frame) and buy a new piece of wood, that's a little smaller than the old one, and head back home.

Take the door sweep off the door (now there are holes in the front of the door, looks really great with the crappy ancient paint job they did who-knows-how-many-years-ago) install the new piece of wood. Well, whaddaya know? It doesn't work! It's too small! Hmm....I could've told him that when we bought it, but did he listen? No. He's a man. I also told him before he did anything to call his dad. Again, did he listen? No. He's a man. "I can do it myself" he says. hahahahahaha

We jimmy-rig the door so that the bugs won't come in. At least, that's what we think. Funny enough, they still come in. At about midnight I went outside with a can of ant spray. Yes you read that right. It's all I had. I used the entire can and sprayed my whole front porch down. It worked pretty well. They actually are still dying out there thanks to the ant spray :)

Next day we go back to Home Depot. Again. We buy a whole new threshold. Never mind the fact that we can't get the old one out, Mike says he can use some of the pieces to replace the old ones. We go home, and he can't get the new piece in. Big surprise. He got so frustrated that Marshy and I left for a drive. We ended up doing some grocery shopping, forgetting a lot of things while we were at it.

Come home and find Mike finished. He put the new piece where the old one with the broken screw was. So now, after 3 days of he** we are back to square 1. Yeah, it didn't really make any difference. The bugs still come in. They die, eventually, thanks to the bug bombs, but now instead of vacuuming up live bugs I vacuum up dead ones. UGH!

Mike says he'll replace the strip of plastic stuck to the bottom of the door this next week. It involves taking the door off the hinges again. So don't wanna do that, but oh well. He figures the bugs are like ants. They always find a way in. He figures that until the landlord puts in a/c units in each building instead of the swamp coolers we will always have this problem.

Oh I can't wait until winter when I won't have this problem!! But then, spring comes too quickly and it'll be back again. UGH!

I am so tired of waging war, but I guess it will be over soon. Someone said to try boric acid. Someone else said to try Bounce dryer sheets. Someone else said fly paper. Anyone tried any of these before? Let me know. I think tonight I will try the Bounce, since I don't have boric acid or fly paper on hand. :)