Randomettes: Puking, Moths & A Drop Off Lane Miracle

I missed the girl's spring band concert last night, because I was home puking from food poisoning. Lovely. I missed last year's spring band concert, because I was tagging along with Scott on a business thing. I believe we were at a private Journey Concert that night. This year's excuse for not going was less guilt inducing, but also way less fun.


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This morning I rounded the corner into the drop off lane at school and witnessed a miracle. Everyone was doing it right. No one was parked by the kinder rooms waiting for the doors to open, no one had left a parked car in the hug & go lane to walk their kid to class. All the cars were pulling up as far as they could, dropping off students and then driving away in the correct lane. It was really, really weird. It felt like there was a rift in the space time continuum. Weird I tell you. There was another 20 minutes before the upper grades had their final bell so I'm sure someone fucked the whole thing up before school started though.


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The moths are back. They can hibernate in the pupae state apparently. This has been going on for a couple weeks and I just couldn't summon the strength to discuss it here. The pantry has been searched again and nothing has larvae in it and I can't find any pupae. The pupae can be in tiny cracks in the shelves or in areas outside the pantry. The pheromone trap has gotten a handful of moths and we have killed a half dozen or so. One moth was even trapped in a Ziploc after emerging from it's pupae in said Ziploc full of tea bags. Scott and I searched every tea bag and couldn't find the pupae. We threw the whole bag out of course. Sigh. That bag had been in the pantry since the original moth war lending credence to the hibernation theory and demonstrating the worthiness of all my cleaning, bagging and food containering. So there's that.


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I survived the girl's 5th grade camping field trip. This should be applauded for at least 2 reasons. 


1. I AM NOT A CAMPER.


2. 3 days & 2 nights with 70 5th graders. I really shouldn't have to explain why you should be clapping for this.


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The girl has to bring a 'sweet treat' to a school party tomorrow and I wanted to pick up something sweet to bring to my GNO tomorrow night where we will be having 'Booze & Snacks'. I'm over the puking and while I'm sort of hungry, I'm also sort of leery of any food and nothing really sounds good. This made it really hard to be decisive on picking treats. I did a lot of wandering and staring and then this happened:

My kids are gonna be thrilled. My thighs will not.




Peace & Love ;-)

Guess What I Found

I just spent the last 10 minutes opening, inspecting, shaking, inspecting and closing all my spices looking for... Yep. You guessed it... Moths! 


Bastards.


After 3 months with no signs of moths, dead or alive, I found a dead moth in a container of garlic powder. The carcass has probably been there for months as I prefer fresh garlic and can't remember the last time I used the powder, but it still pissed me off. It was a large Costco container of old hardened powder that I was happy to throw away anyway, but dammit! dammit! dammit! 


I then found a smaller, newer bottle of garlic powder and when I unscrewed the cap I found a dead larvae and it's abandoned pupae nestled among the raised, swirly, screw cap receiving line thingies. That's when I got REALLY PISSED! Here's why: 


I inspected that fucking pantry and everything in it no less than 5,000 times during the moth wars. It is infuriating that I missed even 1 moth much less 3 (there was another dead larvae situation under the cap of some other spice).


Just goes to show that those assholes are insidious and vigilance is prudent.


Also, I was sure I had dead moths that had started decomposing in my garlic salt because I saw several "wings" in there when I was shaking it all around. Then I looked at the label and it said it was Garlic Salt with Parsley Flakes. So that explains that. Probably.


Peace & Love ;-)

No...Wire...Hangers!

While I was with the girl at her activity yesterday afternoon, Scott and the boy ran a couple errands including going to the market. 


Greatly appreciated. 


BUT, when I got home and walked into the pantry, I saw... brace yourself... BOXES ON THE SHELVES. Multiple boxes of cereal and granola bar boxes. WTF dude?!? 


Boxes of food in the pantry is normal you say? Not in my pantry. Not anymore. Not since the the Great Pantry Moth Invasion and War of 2011 which you can read about here. I have officially declared Victory in the war, but I will remain forever vigilant. I will not go back to non-sealable containers, bag clips or boxes sitting on the shelves. Boxes may seem innocent, but they are in fact very good hiding places for pupae containing cocoons. Not gonna do it. Would not be prudent. Everything goes into clear sealable containers or thick Ziploc bags. EVERYTHING!


So upon spying the boxes I say very lightheartedly: "You guys broke the pantry rule. There are boxes on the shelves." 


The boy then says: "We know, but we didn't know how you'd want it done so we left the boxes for you."


Six! The boy is six. Oy!


What I then did was repackage the food appropriately without comment, but what was going on in my head was a full on Mommie Dearest style rant.


NO...MORE...BOXES...IN...THE...PANTRY...EVER!


Peace & Love ;-)

Move Over Sliced Bread

Introducing my new most favoritist thing:

TA DA.... Lysol Disinfecting Wipes!

Short Version: 


Bought a 4 pack at Costco as part of the pantry moth cleaning frenzy. Thought I might send a couple tubs to my daughter's classroom. Have become obsessed with their simple fabulousness. All 4 giant Costco tubs are staying here. When  gone, they will be replaced. These things rock. I heart them. The end.

The wipes among the new pantry containers. These are my 2 main lines of defense in the moth wars.

Long Version (because I cannot stop myself): 


I'm no stranger to various presoaked wipes. I have 2 kids and have used plenty of baby wipes. The youngest has been out of diapers for 3 years and I still have baby wipes around as they are genius in so many ways. I mop my floor with Swiffer Wet Pads. Again genius. We have flushable wipes by every toilet for that super fresh feeling. Anything that enables independent pottying = genius!

Cleaning wipes aren't brand new and while I've purchased them before, I've felt a little guilty and wasteful and lazy. How hard is it to get a rag and spray some 409 on it? I used to be really good about using cleaning rags. Well, I used to be really good about having a stack of cleaning rags for my cleaning lady to use. She would come use them and leave them in a big pile on my washer. I could get it together to wash them and have them ready for her when she came back two weeks later. I have not had the pleasure of professional cleaning services for at least 7 years now. I'm sad just thinking about it. I still use cleaning rags some, but have drifted over to paper towels which really doesn't seem less wasteful than cleaning wipes.

What prompted me to buy the Lysol wipes was the moth thing. When I was at Costco buying air tight containers for the pantry I saw the 4 pack of tubs of the Lysol wipes and threw it in the basket knowing I had to go home and wipe down every nook and cranny of the pantry with no patience left to spray and wipe. Initially, I thought I over-bought and would send a couple tubs to my daughter's classroom as she reported her teacher likes the kids to use them on their desks, but after using the wipes for a few days I have rethunk that idea. Nope. No way. I'm using these suckers. They are the greatest. So simple, yet so wonderful. They make the wiping down of the kitchen and the bathroom so fantastically easy. Just pop open the lid and pull yourself out a wipe. No smelling the sponge first to see if it's moldy. No 2 step process of paper towel and squirt bottle. Just pull a wipe out and wipe away. I haven't looked into, but I bet Windex or someone else makes a wipe for cleaning windows. The very idea of window wipes makes me giddy. I will be checking into that situation ASAP!


Peace & Love :-)

I Call Bullshit!

I think most people most of the time can relate to that feeling of 'it's always something'. We have progressed from 'it's always something' to 'when it rains it pours' and I am calling bullshit! 


I am the first one to admit that my current problems are small in the grand scheme of things. We are happy, have a home, an income, good kids, blah, blah, blah, but that doesn't make all the day to day bullshit any less bullshitty. This morning when the boy child started puking all I could think was "are you fucking kidding me?" Obviously, it's very sad to have a puking child at any juncture, but I was selfishly focusing on how it was just one more thing in the recent quagmire of bullshit. 


Let me back up and 'splain a bit.


Around here it's been one ridiculous thing after another. We are still dealing with the raccoon and the moths. Although we were assured by several sources that if we cut off the raccoon's food supply for several days it would wander elsewhere, it showed up in our garage last night after not having access for an entire week. Either it really likes us or it was smart enough to realize that eventually we'd forget to shut the cat door overnight. The moth saga continues (get the latest body count here) and my pantry OCD is soaring to new heights.  


In addition to all the animal fun, Scott and the girl child have poison oak. Scott got it 2 weeks ago while cutting back a jungle area in our yard. He'd never had it before and initially thought the scratches on his arm were just scratches from a branch. He kept getting new spots and got itchier and itchier and uncomfortabler and uncomfortabler until he finally went to the doctor last week. Our daughter's case isn't nearly as bad as Scott's, but she and Scott now have an assortment of pills and washes and creams. I don't have it, but I start to itch all over when they are comparing spots and rubbing various concoctions about their bodies. Our son does not seem to have poison oak, but he did have some unexplained red bumps on his torso for a couple days. They are getting better, however, this morning he puked and he has a low grade fever. I think the puking and fever are unrelated to his fading spots, but can't guarantee it. Unlikely his pediatrician could confirm or deny it at this juncture so I'm not even asking.


My parents are supposed to visit this weekend. After hearing the updates on all our sagas including the newest addition of a puking child, my Mom seemed slightly less sure about coming here. She was being all humorous about it, but I think there might be some actual concern over purposefully placing herself under the black cloud hovering over my house. Go figure.


Peace & Love :-)

Nightmare on Aisle 3

I went to Trader Joe's today for the first time since the Indian Meal Moth War began (if you missed my last post, but would like to get up to speed on the moths read it about it here). Well, I tried to go yesterday. I carefully coordinated my workout time with a trip to TJ's anticipating just enough time to execute both stops and get to school pick up on time. What I didn't do was check to make sure my wallet was in my purse. Luckily I noticed this while in the TJ's parking lot and not at the check out with a full cart. Having no interest in schlepping the children back to TJs with me and figuring if no one drank milk with dinner there would be enough for this morning's cereal I waited until today to go back. 


Turns out I am completely traumatized by the moths. Everywhere I turned there were seemingly innocuous dried goods and all I could see was larvae lunch. I love Trader Joe's and I in no way mean to suggest that their inventory is full of Indian Meal Moths in various stages of their life cycle. In fact, although I cannot be sure, I think that the original eggs/larvae/pupae/whatever came in on the raisins that I got at a different market. The thing is that right now, if a food does not go in the refrigerator or the freezer, it freaks me out. 


While I have developed OCD in the areas of cleaning, tossing, repacking, and inspecting the pantry and surrounding areas we are still seeing a few moths. From my obsessive internet reading it seems it takes a little while to completely break the life cycle and eradicate the fuckers. The few moths we are seeing have hatched from pupae we didn't find during the scrub down. Our 'attract the males' pheromone trap is trapping moths and we have smashed others. Hopefully we are managing to execute the assholes before they mate and eggs are lain. If eggs are lain, then hopefully hatching larvae starve as we have done our damnedest to cut off their food supply. Then, there is the possibility that food that looks clean and we have sealed really has eggs in it and will one day be crawling with larvae. In that case, at least it will be confined to that container that can then be tossed. There sure are a lot of hopefullys in this situation! (I've put a new tab on the blog entitled Body Count. Check there often if you are interested in how the moth war is going as I'm going to try (but probably fail) to not post only about the insects in my pantry.)


I now really really want to have less things in the pantry and not more. I don't even want new bottled or canned food. I'm going pantry minimalist. 


The dried fruit and nut aisle was particularly anxiety provoking today as the two things that were literally crawling with larvae were a bag of fruit and nut mix and those mini boxes of raisins. I almost stopped to explain to a woman putting dried fruit in her basket how important inspecting and sealing that package is, but I don't think I could have done it in a non-crazy, non-ranting sort of way.


While I can go a long way towards feeding the family on fresh refrigerated and frozen food, we do like cereal, crackers, pretzels etc. around here. I did buy cereal and crackers today, but only 1 box of each because that's the amount of sealed container space I had available. Usually I would buy several varieties of cereal and maybe 2 kinds of crackers or some chips or something. NOT TODAY. Even if we manage to actually eradicate this ourselves and don't have to get the house tented (see the comments on the moth post for a truly horrifying tale), I can't imagine buying dried goods in bulk ever again. I do not even care that it will be more expensive and result in more frequent trips to the market. Maybe I will buy a refrigerator especially for the cereal and it's cohorts...


Peace & Love :-)

Turkeys and Moths and Raccoons, Oh My!

Jack Hanna could totally come to my house and do a show. He would not even have to bring any animals with him. 


First, he could do a segment on wild turkeys:


Gaggles of turkeys wander the streets in my suburban neighborhood. While it's true we live at the edge of suburbia, almost in the country and also there are acres of open land at the edge of the neighborhood, it's still a fairly dense suburban neighborhood. I thought it was sort of quaint and almost cute (mainly cuz there's always a bunch of babies in the gaggle) when we first moved into the foothills from the city and spied turkeys wandering up the sidewalk. Turns out, there is nothing cute about turkeys in your yard. Their poop is huge and they kick bark all over the walkways and grass. Now when I see turkeys in the yard, I let the dog out to chase them. Turkeys probably have really small brains, but each summer it only takes a few times of the dog chasing them to get them to avoid our yard. Last week, the 5 y/o boy comes up to me and whispers, "Mom, there are turkeys in the yard. I'm going to chase them with my sword." Since the dog is out of town (she spends A LOT of time at my parents' house, but they aren't dognappers), this seemed like an okay idea to me. Very stealthily the 5 y/o opens the front door, plastic sword in hand, and runs at the turkeys yelling and waving his weapon. The turkeys flew across the street into the neighbors yard right quick. It was hilarious. My only regret is that I do not have it on video. Next time.


Next, Jack could introduce his viewers to the Indian Meal Moth: 


We are at war with the Indian Meal Moth aka the Pantry Moth. 


A few weeks ago Scott says to me, "I killed a handful of moths on the pantry ceiling last night and then some more this morning."


Me: "Yuck." 


And then we moved on with our lives killing moths here and there. I didn't really give it that much thought. I briefly considered it and decided they were coming in from the back slider which isn't too far from the pantry which is currently doorless (the doorless pantry is a whole other story best saved for another post) and were attracted to the light on the pantry ceiling as that seemed to be the general area where I always saw them. After the fact, Scott has said he figured the moths had infested the house, but it didn't occur to him they were in the food. Scott has a Bachelor's in Biology. Granted he is not an Entomologist or even currently a Biologist, but I still think he should have been better able to connect the dots than I who have degrees not in science.


A few nights ago Scott calls me into the pantry, points to the ceiling and says, "Look at that!"


Me: Looking at what appears to be a small yellow worm "Ewwww. What the fuck is that?" 

After we smush it, we start tearing apart the pantry to see if we have more icky wormy things on the walls and shelves. Then we start looking in the food (I really hope you're not eating right now) and find many many more icky worm things. There was a ton of them in an old unsealed bag of mostly gone fruit and nut mix. We start throwing things out left and right. Anything with worm or cocooned worm evidence was tossed. Anything old and unsealed got tossed. We were totally disgusted, but thought we did a pretty good job of inspecting and killing. The next morning there were more icky worm things on the ceiling. BLECK! 


Scott headed to work and I got on the Google. It didn't take long to find out that we had Indian Meal Moths, the most common house pest around, and that the worms were larvae and the cocooned worms were pupae. It also didn't take long to find out that these assholes are hard to eradicate and the pantry need a much more thorough going through and cleaning out than had been done the previous night. I went out and bought new airtight clear containers for the flour, sugar, cereal, crackers, etc. I tore open every sealed box and inspected every cake mix, pasta bag, granola bar, can of soup, etc. for any sign of the Indian Meal Moth in any stage of it's life cycle. We had a bag of those little boxes of raisins and every single box had larvae moving around in it. GAG! 


I repackaged everything into clear containers. Even the individually packaged fruit snacks and granola bars came out of their boxes and went into ziplocks. The idea is if anything does have a teeny tiny egg hiding on it, the larvae will be contained and visible in the clear ziplock or container. I did consider tossing everyfuckingthing in the pantry, hosing it down and starting anew, but Scott talked me down and got me to throw away lots, but not everything, and focus on eliminating future food supply. Also, and I admit this is gross, apparently if you unknowingly ingest the eggs or even the larvae or a moth it's not harmful to humans. Skin crawling, gag inducing and disgusting, but not harmful.


I moved everything off every shelf and wiped down every bottle and can and shelf and crevice. The next morning there was another larvae moving along the wall. So like a crazy women I started tearing open anything not repackaged the day before which only included boxes of light bulbs and folded aprons. There were larvae and pupae in with the lightbulbs and on the aprons. ARG! 


At this point I am confident that I've thrown out or opened, inspected and repackaged every single fucking item in that damn pantry. Even so, we went and bought this pheromone moth trap thing that attracts the male moths. After having the trap in the pantry for all of 5 minutes there were 2 moths flying around and zeroing in on it. While I was glad the trap was working, I was amazed and pissed that they had survived my wrath. I am now going into the pantry and inspecting the ceiling, walls, floor and all the food approximately 50 times a day. 


Finally, Jack could do a bit about a raccoon that comes into our garage and eats cat food:


Scott and I have been suspecting that an animal other than our cats has been coming into the garage and eating the cat food at night. We kept finding the lid to the food storage container off and when we super sealed it we would find the whole container upside down and knocked around. I brought home a new bag of cat food the other day, made sure to fill the cat food bowl so the cats wouldn't be starving and tear into the bag of food, but found it torn open with long tears the next morning. Last night Scott her some noise on the back porch and upon investigation found a raccoon sitting on the other side of the screen door. It retreated off the deck to the grass, but seemed totally unperturbed by us shining a flashlight at it from the safety of our upper deck only accessible from our bedroom. Eventually it made it's way back onto the deck and around to the garage where it couldn't get in because we had closed the pet door with the cats already in the garage and thwarted the raccoon. I was worried it might start clawing at the door in frustration and trah the door, but it just wandered off. 


Scott says it may or may not be illegal to trap raccoons where we live, but apparently we can call some relocating/trapping service. He hopes that maybe if we call those people they can also relocate the squirrels that seem to have taken up residence under our s curved roof tiles and may or may not someday eat through the substructure of our roof and fall into the house.




Peace & Love :-).