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Total hours of sleep since Friday morning: unknown but very scanty, mostly in half-hour snatches.
I had been about to turn in at ten-ish, after last night's all-night Diablo & online session stretched on into "I may as well just stay up and try to get myself back on a schedule resembling that of a Normal Person", and to this end I was sitting in the can finishing up A Dying Light in Corduba, which the library will want back by Saturday; I had concluded my reading and my business, and stood up to wash my hands... when some odd stray impulse, like that which led me to buy an extra 60-watt halogena bulb at Home Despot on Sunday just hours before one of the kitchen lights blew, made me pull out the catbox after I had done scooping it. I saw some black flecks which I wasn't sure I liked the looks of caught in the cruft along the side of the bathtub. Hm, said I, well, better safe than sorry if there are confirmed Intruders Of The Six-Legged Kind within the building, and pulled the box all the way out to scrape out the crack --
And LO, what should lunge out at me but my mortal enemy, a foot-soldier in the service of the Family Blattidae?
Bleating "Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!", I attacked the beast with a succession of plungers as it headed for the toilet. I forget what exactly I managed to smash it with, but smash it I did: identity uncertain, definitely a roach of some description but the dark color suggested something more of an immature waterbug than a german. No matter -- its presence in my bathroom was Unauthorized in the extreme. And Mum, who has to get up for work at six, refused to take an active interest.
It's at times like this in my life that I look into my heart and I ask myself,
"What would the Space Marines do?"
So I rolled up my sleeves, at a quarter to eleven at night having had no real sleep yet, and started cleaning the bathroom preparatory to applying one tube of the two tubes of Combat that we had gone to Home Despot for on Sunday. Mum roused herself enough to tell me that I was being obsessive. But, hell, I can't get to sleep knowing that Nasty Ooky Crawly Runny THINGS are lurking within the defensive perimeter; I sorted out what could be thrown out anyway (the old cat box, a cracked laundry basket, and the roof of the cat bed which had sagged from the weight of the cracked basket of semi-dirty* laundry), shook out each and every piece of dirty and semi-dirty laundry over the bathtub (no further intruders found), damp-mopped dust and crud out of the cracks with paper towels since a broom doesn't do much on our Crevice Lint, and tackled our 6x8 cubicle with most of the tube of Combat. (For some reason I was singing a medley of Oompa-Loompa songs under my breath; I've had them stuck in my head all day, but "if you are wise then you will go far" seems to have only tangential relevance to extermination duty.) Generous applications went under the collars of the pipes to the sink and the radiator (one or the other most likely having been the path of ingress), under the lip of the medicine cabinet, and in assorted other crevices where the cats can't get into it. (Hopefully.) When I ran out of holes and cracks, I went and squirted a few gobs behind the bookcase that we need to move to get the bathroom-pipes access panel put back on; unsure of the results, but just knowing something more than damp borax is back there and (I think) in the access hole makes me feel more secure. Since there was still a bit left, I repeated the pipe-collars procedure on the radiator here in my "office", and then fired off the small bit that remained in the tube down into a Notorious Gap in our kitchen (we do not have a stove as such because I'm allergic to gas, so for some reason a small bureau has ended up in the stove space, with the microwave on top; this inaccessible hole is the likeliest Point-Of-Entry in the kitchen so overages always go back there, just in case). Mum will be made to do the main kitchen application of tube two when such is convenient to her. [/sarcasm]
I do feel much relieved at having taken even this portion of the problem in hand. It smells like a roach's bonbon box in here despite Combat's claims of "no vapor or fumes" (granted I'm probably the only person in the world who could smell it, or cares) so I've got some windows open; luckily it's quite warm out, although it's raining. Snip is running around like a nut and getting into things; she got her paw into one glob almost immediately, but I grabbed her and washed her off before she licked too much poison off her foot. To dissuade her from that particular application, I put the Discipline Squirter (which she has learned to run from on sight, smart kitty) where it's in her way if she tries again; now she's jumping around here in the dining room with me, climbing my artwork and the open French window and wandering into the kitchen to jump up and sit in the crock-pot. I would say from her energy level that she didn't ingest a fatal dose...
Must clean rest of house soon. We made much headway during the last binge (and thank god we sorted out the walkthough closet into the bathroom before any of this started), but there is still the Closet Of Doom to contend with, and much miscellaneous clutter. Fortunately for my peace of mind, I had just spent some time organizing my Projects-in-Progress yarn into a wheely-set-of-drawers which we got on Saturday to keep it all away from nesting mice, so that's already done.
Man, all I want is some Life Conditions where I can hold the unnecessary complications at bay long enough to get some work done; I just can't concentrate with any sort of fauna population around me, I keep breaking stride to go squint at dirt or the floaties in my own eyes make me jump...
No mice today, BTW. I guess they figured out that the scouts weren't coming back... I just hope they don't go and eat all the bug poison on me, I need it for the bugs.
(*semi-dirty laundry: laundry that has been through the wash already, but then got left somewhere that rendered it too dusty to wear before it made it into proper storage. Our apartment is waaay too small...)
I had been about to turn in at ten-ish, after last night's all-night Diablo & online session stretched on into "I may as well just stay up and try to get myself back on a schedule resembling that of a Normal Person", and to this end I was sitting in the can finishing up A Dying Light in Corduba, which the library will want back by Saturday; I had concluded my reading and my business, and stood up to wash my hands... when some odd stray impulse, like that which led me to buy an extra 60-watt halogena bulb at Home Despot on Sunday just hours before one of the kitchen lights blew, made me pull out the catbox after I had done scooping it. I saw some black flecks which I wasn't sure I liked the looks of caught in the cruft along the side of the bathtub. Hm, said I, well, better safe than sorry if there are confirmed Intruders Of The Six-Legged Kind within the building, and pulled the box all the way out to scrape out the crack --
And LO, what should lunge out at me but my mortal enemy, a foot-soldier in the service of the Family Blattidae?
Bleating "Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!", I attacked the beast with a succession of plungers as it headed for the toilet. I forget what exactly I managed to smash it with, but smash it I did: identity uncertain, definitely a roach of some description but the dark color suggested something more of an immature waterbug than a german. No matter -- its presence in my bathroom was Unauthorized in the extreme. And Mum, who has to get up for work at six, refused to take an active interest.
It's at times like this in my life that I look into my heart and I ask myself,
"What would the Space Marines do?"
So I rolled up my sleeves, at a quarter to eleven at night having had no real sleep yet, and started cleaning the bathroom preparatory to applying one tube of the two tubes of Combat that we had gone to Home Despot for on Sunday. Mum roused herself enough to tell me that I was being obsessive. But, hell, I can't get to sleep knowing that Nasty Ooky Crawly Runny THINGS are lurking within the defensive perimeter; I sorted out what could be thrown out anyway (the old cat box, a cracked laundry basket, and the roof of the cat bed which had sagged from the weight of the cracked basket of semi-dirty* laundry), shook out each and every piece of dirty and semi-dirty laundry over the bathtub (no further intruders found), damp-mopped dust and crud out of the cracks with paper towels since a broom doesn't do much on our Crevice Lint, and tackled our 6x8 cubicle with most of the tube of Combat. (For some reason I was singing a medley of Oompa-Loompa songs under my breath; I've had them stuck in my head all day, but "if you are wise then you will go far" seems to have only tangential relevance to extermination duty.) Generous applications went under the collars of the pipes to the sink and the radiator (one or the other most likely having been the path of ingress), under the lip of the medicine cabinet, and in assorted other crevices where the cats can't get into it. (Hopefully.) When I ran out of holes and cracks, I went and squirted a few gobs behind the bookcase that we need to move to get the bathroom-pipes access panel put back on; unsure of the results, but just knowing something more than damp borax is back there and (I think) in the access hole makes me feel more secure. Since there was still a bit left, I repeated the pipe-collars procedure on the radiator here in my "office", and then fired off the small bit that remained in the tube down into a Notorious Gap in our kitchen (we do not have a stove as such because I'm allergic to gas, so for some reason a small bureau has ended up in the stove space, with the microwave on top; this inaccessible hole is the likeliest Point-Of-Entry in the kitchen so overages always go back there, just in case). Mum will be made to do the main kitchen application of tube two when such is convenient to her. [/sarcasm]
I do feel much relieved at having taken even this portion of the problem in hand. It smells like a roach's bonbon box in here despite Combat's claims of "no vapor or fumes" (granted I'm probably the only person in the world who could smell it, or cares) so I've got some windows open; luckily it's quite warm out, although it's raining. Snip is running around like a nut and getting into things; she got her paw into one glob almost immediately, but I grabbed her and washed her off before she licked too much poison off her foot. To dissuade her from that particular application, I put the Discipline Squirter (which she has learned to run from on sight, smart kitty) where it's in her way if she tries again; now she's jumping around here in the dining room with me, climbing my artwork and the open French window and wandering into the kitchen to jump up and sit in the crock-pot. I would say from her energy level that she didn't ingest a fatal dose...
Must clean rest of house soon. We made much headway during the last binge (and thank god we sorted out the walkthough closet into the bathroom before any of this started), but there is still the Closet Of Doom to contend with, and much miscellaneous clutter. Fortunately for my peace of mind, I had just spent some time organizing my Projects-in-Progress yarn into a wheely-set-of-drawers which we got on Saturday to keep it all away from nesting mice, so that's already done.
Man, all I want is some Life Conditions where I can hold the unnecessary complications at bay long enough to get some work done; I just can't concentrate with any sort of fauna population around me, I keep breaking stride to go squint at dirt or the floaties in my own eyes make me jump...
No mice today, BTW. I guess they figured out that the scouts weren't coming back... I just hope they don't go and eat all the bug poison on me, I need it for the bugs.
(*semi-dirty laundry: laundry that has been through the wash already, but then got left somewhere that rendered it too dusty to wear before it made it into proper storage. Our apartment is waaay too small...)