The ants have arrived.

Sports Guy and I bought a house back in November. It's a lovely house with an even more lovely view.

Yes, it's instagrammed. I like it.

In the pic you can't even see the mountains off to the right. But they're there. You can see the cows, though. They're not ours. But we do have cows for neighbors.

The location of this house would have qualified us for a rural loan from the US Dept. of Agriculture, but we make too much (in what universe?) so we went through the regular business.

We had the usual new-to-us problems. The wallpaper was ugly...

This was the paper in Agent N's room. Not quite appropriate for a 9 year old boy.

And then when we took it down, it turned out that they had glued it directly to the drywall, causing us to actually rip out chunks of drywall.

Screw you, wallpaper!

But, we survived. Winter came & went, and it was fairly mild, all was right with the world. Spring arrives, we retrieve the screens from the shed and attempt to wash them. Sports Guy turned on the only outdoor spigot (only one, really) and a little water comes out, but not a lot. Agent N comes screaming into the garage, "Mom! There's water running in the basement!" ... the pipes had cracked (no, we did not leave a hose hooked up, thanks, it cracked because it hates us)  and the water was leaking into the basement. The finished basement. The basement with ceilings like the ones upstairs. So when the plumber came, he had to cut a hole in the ceiling. Luckily, it's a small hole, and I don't give a damn, so it's still there.

As the weather has warmed up, the animals have awakened. The cows had babies and they're SO CUTE. I have no pictures of baby cows. Sorry.

And the ants have woken up. OHOLYCRAP the ants have woken up. So have the flies and the gnats. I now present to you the stages of life with insects:

1. Oh, hey, there's some bugs. I'm gonna put out some traps.
2. OH HELL NO YOU DON'T. Ant poison procured. Solutions researched on the internet & implemented. 
3. Inform Sports Guy that he needs to find an exterminator because I have done all the insect elimination myself & he could pick up a phone for me. Exterminator chides me for leaves next to house foundation. I'm pretty sure that's not the only source of ants, but I clear them away anyway. 
4. ... false sense of security... it appears the ants are gone...
5. WHAT THE F!!!???!!! Ants continue the Bataan Death March, I continue to exterminate on own, while paying exterminator. I start killing ants with bare fingers because I just don't care anymore.
6. Ants declare victory, throw party on deck even though I haven't had a chance to throw party there myself. I die from ant poisoning.

Troll Ant mocks me