We got ants. Little ones.

First it was termites, so we called in on our termite warranty and had the man come out. He drilled holes around the foundation, sprayed something in there, then filled the holes back up. He told Nikki all about subterranean termites vs. swarmers. The swarmers are the ones you see flying around. They’re the ones that were squeezing themselves through the shower tiles. They get food from their underground counterparts. The treatment is supposed to cut the swarmers off from their brothers down there, so they’d eventually starve to death. The Man also informed us that we should expect to see them “coming out,” maybe for months. This was very comforting.

We called Orkin to come out a few weeks ago. Something about this bug situation seems really out of hand. We’re not too into the bugs to begin with, but we both agree that something seems off. I think the bugs are pissed. I think nature wants humans dead. The bugs are looking at us like their enemies, and they all want to kill us, from the inchworms to the spiders. I really can’t deal with spiders.

The Orkin Man said we should expect to see whatever bugs there are continue to “come out,” for an indefinite period. Clearly, no one knows how to get rid of these things. It’s 2006, and we know how to nuke an entire country, but we haven’t figured out how to get insects off your property. We’ll pay people good money to come out and spray chemicals around, and they’ll essentially tell you to your face that they’re really not doing much of anything. It’s like hitting the button at the traffic light, the button that’s really not connected to anything, but it gives you something to do while you wait.

Maybe I’ll start a placebo company. Why whitewash it? We’ll sell things that don’t do anything, and we’ll be completely honest about it. I can build all sorts of contraptions. I’ve always wanted to build a computer pull-start. That would actually do something, so maybe we couldn’t sell it at the placebo company. The device would connect to the power supply, and you’d have to literally pull-start your computer. It would require at least 70 lbs. per square inch of pressure and three-plus pulls to get it going, and it would make an insane amount of noise. The cost of the device: $199.99 plus local sales tax. For an additional fee of $300 per hour of labor (with a two hour minimum), we’ll install it for you.

So I ran out to the store and bought a can of Raid the minute we discovered the ants under the kitchen table. I sprayed ‘em, then vacuumed them up with the insanely loud hand vacuum my father-in-law swears by. Supposedly he has two of them. This thing’s got some major torque with a gyroscope or something inside, so that when you turn it on, it literally tries to rip your arm out of its socket. It makes Ava cry hysterically. It makes me cry hysterically, but I cry on the inside. Need to be strong for the kids. A few minutes later, ants are crawling out the back of the vacuum. At first we thought they were after food remnants, considering where they were, but we also found them in the bathroom. They came back yesterday.

I know they’re related to the termites. They’re not-too-distant cousins, I’m sure of it. They’re all related, and they all want to kill us.

I’m realizing this last string of posts is starting to resemble Ricardo Semler’s “The Seven Day Weekend,” if only for their titles. I can’t speak for the content, since I still haven’t gotten past the second (or third?) chapter. There needs to be some better time management taking place in my life so I can actually do the things I’ve resolved to do, one of which is reading that book. If only I could absorb the material through osmosis. If I could, I’d be a much more knowledgeable person right now, since I’ve got what I believe to be a fairly diverse book collection. I don’t have a ton of books, but I think what I have are good books. Of course, I can’t say for sure. I’m going on the reviews that I’ve read for the most part, since this last book is just one of a series of books I’ve resolved to read but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

So we were having a conversation last night while cooking. We’re about forty minutes or so into boiling a pot of water when it dawned on me why the water was refusing to come to a full boil. We have a propane (or LP, or whatever it’s called) stove. We ran out of propane three months ago, once again in the middle of cooking. Looks like we’ll be filling that puppy every three months, not every year like the single woman who lived in our house before us claimed she filled it. I gather she didn’t do much cooking. In fact, having lived in this house for eight months, we’re really trying to figure out what exactly she did do. She certainly didn’t clean the windows (well, not REALLY clean them), and it’s pretty apparent that she didn’t have much of a problem with her cat pissing all over the place, particularly in what’s now my home office. Incense helps.

The house was in good shape when we moved in. I complimented the seller at closing about the condition of the place, and she said it was really clean when she moved in. The translation of this is that she bought a house, lived in it for roughly two years, did absolutely nothing during this time, then sold it for about a sixty grand profit. Now that the real estate market seems to be correcting itself, we probably won’t be seeing much more of this type of thing. I can’t help but feel a little annoyed, sort of like I paid some woman a $30,000 a year salary for taking up space for the last two years. The least she could have done was clean the cat piss.

We’ve been talking about starting a reality show, “Reality Real Estate” or something like that. We’d basically be doing the real estate thing, except we’d say what we really feel about how these people are living. So when we walk into the overpriced place with a pile of garbage in the living room blocking the fireplace, we may refrain from belittling the homeowners directly, but we’ll have plenty to say as we drive away. Considering the state of things these days, there should be no shortage of material. The upside of the show could be those real gems being sold by people who actually take pride in themselves and their property. Maybe each show could end with a successful sale of one of those, to buyers who really appreciate what they’re getting, a genuine win-win situation all around. Despite all the horror stories, these deals can and do happen occasionally. I know, because our own deal went smoothly. Sure, eight months down the road, we’ve got a few gripes, but it’s really not so bad. The gripes are minor at best. The other side of the show could be highlighting other agents and their full range of colorful personalities. With 26,000 or so agents on Long Island alone, that could be a whole show in itself.