We recently returned to our house after a 4 month
absence. We knew our house would be
filthy – it can turn that way in a few days when you are living in it, if you
don’t stay on top of it. So we were
prepared – or so we thought. Here are a
few of the things that MOST disgusted me on my return….
1.
Mold – it was on some of the walls and the
cupboards (and even in our truck). The
humidity and the heat together make a perfect petri dish for growing mold. It gets on clothes and shoes and leather
books and belts. I even found it on some
of my pots and pans. Thankfully I have
bleach to make it go away.
2.
Geckos and spiders – they are not so much nasty
as they tend to startle me. When I reach
under a cupboard, or open a door, and one scurries out, it makes me jump. And spiders create webs. I HATE the feeling of walking through my
house and having cobwebs catching on my face and body. Ewwww….
Now, both of those creatures eat mosquitos, so we only evict them if we
have company coming who do not appreciate the finer points of their character
(or if the cat catches them and eats them.)
3.
Dead mice in the washing machine – for some
unknown reason, our washing machine seems to attract mice – who then die and
harden on the tub. I have no idea how
they get in there – thankfully I have a husband who removes them for me and
runs bleach through the machine. All said,
the dead mice are better than the live ones.
We had one of those as well - the cat was afraid to go into the tub to
get him, and I didn’t want Jim to get bitten, so we sent him through a spin
cycle until he got dizzy and Jim could grab him by the tail with a pliers. The cat enjoyed playing with him before she
killed it, though the mouse didn’t run very fast and tended to lilt to one side,
making it NOT as fun as an unspun mouse, apparently.
4.
Sticky plastic – stored plastic, no matter how
clean it was before you stored it, always seems to get a sticky film on it. It
is so gross. A lot of my perfectly good Tupperware
(not the brand necessarily) got sticky and a little yellow. I am sure there is a perfectly good
scientific explanation for it – but I just want it to go away. Hot soapy water and a scrub pad seem to be
helping.
5.
Snake in the trash pit – come on, really. Not that it couldn’t happen when we are here,
but for some reason, a python felt that he was allowed to invade my private
living area (which is big and MUCH broader than my house…). We really hardly ever see snakes, and this
one took up residence in my trash pit – but that is another whole blog entry.
Overall, the adjustment has been pretty easy. We are getting
smarter as we get older and are figuring out that we will NEVER remember all
the things that seem so obvious to us at the time. Like remembering to throw a switch to get
power into the house, or making a grocery list to leave behind for your return,
or writing down how much fuel you have stored for the generator, or how much
you paid your guards before you left….
Of course, once you write all of this down, you have to remember where
you put the paper (that was about an hour process for us.) But at least we wrote it down this time –well,
maybe not how much fuel we left behind – but we covered the rest of it. All of that forgetting may be the effect of
the jungle on the brain, but I always leave a fall back to blame – my current
excuse is the antimalarial that we take.
(Not that I have any idea if forgetfulness is a side effect, but it is
working for me at the moment.) Each time
we return, the surprises seem less and we get back into the groove a little
faster than before. But the
aforementioned things I can ALWAYS do without.
