So yesterday was one very interesting day. I was planning on cleaning the house so that Sunday we could bug bomb it. In the summertime our neighborhood seems to collect a lot of (disgusting) bugs. We'd been having a pincher bug problem too. Hubby swears the bugs are hiding somewhere, and we need to find where they are getting in from. Our house is in good condition- it's not like it's old and falling apart. And I keep it really clean. So bugs drive me bonkers. We bombed the house a year ago, and I think it just needed to be done again.
So I started some laundry, put two kids in the tub. I switched the wet stuff in the dryer (we had been to the water park, and swimming, so I had lots of dirty towels and swimsuits). I went to pick up the towels by the back door (Our house is all tile, and when you add in wet feet from playing outside, you get wet dirty slippery floors) and when I moved it to wad it up, there were maggots. From the kids leaving the door open and flies getting in (and not killing them), I guess under that towel was the only spot they could find. Gross.
So I threw out the towels. Not for the life of me was I washing them! Hubby swept up the maggots, while I watched the kids in the tub. Then the power went out. Then it came back on for a second. Then it went off again. I took the kids out of the tub and looked for a towel. Nope. None on the back of the door, none under the cabinet. So I grabbed the two towels in my bathroom and got them dried and dressed. We still had no power, and now we heard fire trucks. Not just one, 2 engines, a ladder truck, and a battalion chief, going up our street.
The kids were flipping out over the power being out (it'd been out for about 30 minutes by now). "The power's out! Mom need to buy more batteries. We're never going to have any power. Can't you turn it back on?" They are flying around the house like the world ended. Oh, and add in the favorite "What are we doing today? What are we doing tomorrow? MOM! What are we DOING today!?" Times 3. I kept telling them I didn't know. So we went outside and looked at the neighbors and looked at the firetrucks. At least there was no smoke.
So we decided to go to Walmart and out to lunch. At least it kept the kids from going crazy, and me from going crazy with all their questions. I don't mind questions, and answering them, it's when they ask the same ones over and over and are either a) not listening or b) hoping for a different answer. We bought bug bombs and two doormats. After a Walmart trip that ended with 3 unhappy children who were not behaving (like Daredevil being told not to touch the stuff on the shelves, and he kept doing it, and then standing on the wheels of the stroller while leaning against shelves of stuff). We went home to, no power. No power, and a bunch of electric trucks. That did not look promising!
Luckily, my electric bill came in the mail that day, so I called the emergency outage number. They estimated the power would be back on at 12:15 AM. It was about 3:00. There was no way I'd stay sane with all the question asking and panicking my kids were doing. Genius understood what was going on and was fine. Daredevil and Princess were a tag team of annoyance. "There's nothing to dooooo. What are we doing to doooo, What are you dooooing?" Hubby and I decided to bug bomb the house since we were going to go out someplace anyways.
So we emptied the cabinets, bagged up the food, and got the house ready to be bombed in about 30 minutes. All to the tune of- "Since we have no power, we're blowing up the house. Bye, Bye House." I promise, I tried many, many times to explain we were not bombing the house, it was just to kill the bugs. My kids get so dramatic sometimes. I can't imagine who they get that from.
We took a drive to the mall. Not the close by mall, the far away mall. Hubby and I got new shoes (It's so hard to pass up a buy one get one 50% off sale, when you are already buying one). Doorbuster walked holding his Daddy's hand all around the mall and he looked so proud and happy he was walking with the big kids. We ate dinner (there goes the eating out budget, but it was worth my sanity), then headed home. We stopped at the 99 cent store to buy flashlights just in case. Well, I figured if I bought them, the power would be home when we got there (no such luck). We needed flashlights for our earth quake kit anyways.
So we get home to a pitch black neighborhood, lit up with lots of flashing lights from all the electric trucks parked down the street. Princess is hysterical that it's dark, her stomach hurts, she wants to sleep with Dad, she's scared, it's awful, etc. etc. She acted like the flashlight I gave her was poison. It's 9:00. It's bedtime, and the house is open and airing out. The boys had a grand time playing flashlight tag, making shadow puppets, and hide and seek. Finally Princess went and played too. After the house finished airing out, we sent everyone in and to bed.
Once everyone was in there beds, the power came back on. YAY. Luckily all the food stayed cold, and nothing (aside from a underground transformer and the side of a neighbors garage) blew up. I still have most of my sanity too.