Okay, so now both sinks are full of standing water. The dishes are washed and left to dry in the garage, and the mess in the kitchen is more or less cleaned up.
So it was back to the refrigerator, where the shelves were still laden with alien life-forms whose excreta had left them sticky and gummy.
Threw out vast quantities of former food; hauled trashcansful out to the alley.
Pool pump sounded like it was laboring. Pressure up to 18 psi.
Backwash filter, clean out pump pot filter, reassemble, restart. Looks OK.
Hack back the jungle vines that are trying to suffocate the pool equipment. Work on espaliering the Lady Banks rose. Pick up dog mounds; haul more garbage, dog mounds, and vine cuttings out to the alley.
A great deal of time has been wasted fooling with the dishes. I’m determined to get through at least one other project I’d planned to do today, and so decide to take on the hall closet. This dark cave has been collecting bottles of prescription drugs since 2007(!), along with piles of ancillary debris.
Two hours later:
Not bad, eh? Tidy.
Top shelf, cleaning and ironing stuff. Next shelf: health and hypochondria. Below that: vanity stuff—creams, perfumes, soaps, cotton balls, and the like.
Negotiate a deal with a new client. Damned if we didn’t get a fair hourly rate. Things are looking up.
Throw out another large trashcanful of debris.
The day is still middle-aged. Decide to move on to cleaning out the garage cabinets, especially the desperately annoying collection of debris where I like to stash cute bottles, potentially useful bottles, cool bottles, and colorful bottles. Bottles. A lot of bottles.
Toss out more old jars and plastic containers and fancy tea cans than carter has oats and hauled another ton of debris to the trash. Carry it around the front and side of the house to the garbage bin in the alley, noticing that the Devil-Pod Tree’s undead roots are sprouting more suckers.
Hike back to the garage to get extra-concentrated Roundup; poison infant Devil-Pod Trees. Carry bottle of undiluted Roundup concentrate back to the garage, dodging fierce tiger-clawed eye-gouging twigs on the Texas ebony and the palo brea. Pick up gloves and trimmer; cut back fiercely vicious tiger-clawed eye-gouging twigs; haul skin-ripping plant debris to the alley.
Enter the kitchen, anticipating a bourbon and water. Very, very, very tired.
There, confront a battalion of marching ants. Yes…it’s…
Ant Wars!
The Battle of the Bosch
They’re entering the theater of action through a hole under the threshold and advancing on the dishwasher.
Spray them all with DIY Windex, which in the past we’ve seen slays them in vast numbers. They keel over. But they have reserves. Many reserves.
Sprinkle diatomaceous earth (pool supply) across the threshold. Move on to cleaning out a garage cabinet.
Fill up another trash can with glass jars, plastic jars, fancy tea cans. Wonder what possesses me to keep these things.
Haul piles of junk to recycling bin. Arrange surviving glass- and tinware in the cleaned out cabinet.
Wow! You can actually reach stuff! Those old blue water bottles make great bud vases. And surely I can find something to do with all those other…valuable pieces.
Back in the kitchen, the ants have regrouped. They’ve burrowed a trench through the diatomaceous earth and again are taking over the dishwasher. Engage battle. Engage. Engage. Engage. Engage. Spray floor with Simple Green, scrub kitchen floor on hands and knees, beating back the ants at last. Clean dishwasher innards.
Stagger away, exhausted. It’s after 7:00 p.m. I’m hungry but even if I could use my kitchen to cook in and even if there were even something to microwave in there which there is not, I’m too tired to cook and probably too tired to eat.
Fall on the bed.
Discover a strip of veneer peeling off expensive goddamn bed. Figure out how that can be fixed. Think it’s a little beyond my carpentry skills but maybe not. Feed the dog & wash the dog’s dish to discourage ant interest.
Now it’s 10:09 p.m. and I am exhausted.
Never. EVER. Fails.