It’s the little things…

that can get us down, such as:

We are pretty much up to our eyebrows in laundry these days because the onset of the rainy season has made it more of a challenge to get it done. The washer is on the low spot on the patio, and even though it is up on three-inch high bricks it still is surrounded by water most of the time, so you are standing in a puddle every time you use it.

Then just getting the clothes up on the line and dry is a challenge between storms. It took four days last week to get everything from one load dry because of the rains and humidity!! But I’ve followed the leader of my neighbors and I now hang shirts and t-shirts on hangers as they come out of the washer. Then I hang them on the line that way. Much easier to grab and run indoors with them when the showers come, and they are already on hangers so they can go right on the curtain rods in the shower and the kitchen to continue drying.

Then our water has been off again a lot lately, complicating laundry, bathing, cleaning in general. Tough to do with the water off. Japame says its temporary…it always is, but we are on day two of our latest outage, just not fun. And it’s all of town this time, not just our end, so we can’t sneak over to the Lumppios for a shower because they have no water either!

The latest storms have been doozies. The worst thunder and lightning I can recall. And for hours on end…the last storm parked itself over us from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. and boomed and flashed the whole time. Of course, we lost power, so no air or fan, but the rain cooled it down enough to be tolerable with the windows open. But with the huge rain came a new channel in our road out front, moving closer to the house…we hope that trend doesn’t continue. And the wind driven rain made it’s way into the kitchen through the window and door frame and so we had minor flooding. Thankfully, the floor isn’t at all level, so it was contained to the “L” that forms the outside wall and the wall between the kitchen and the guest bedroom. Plus the guest room wall got wet again, same place, smaller wet spot!

We’ve both been bitten a ton from the onslaught of mosquitoes, flys and Lord knows what else…I bet I’ve got 30 bites on my legs alone, Ralph’s got more. We have just become food for these critters. We use bug spray in the house and apply “Off” and that does help, but it must be the rains that have encouraged them as we haven’t ever had this many critters about.

We even had a ant invasion. Got up one morning and noticed this gritty gray circle near the front door. On closer inspection it was full of tiny little ants…and the gray grit was the remains of the tile grout they had excavated in order to get inside the house. So I got my trusty bug spray and administered a good dose on the circle and the area where they came in. Instantly I had a huge outpouring of much larger ants and flying ants from inside the wall…hundreds and hundreds of them!! I kept applying the spray until they stopped coming out. Yuck! Had one more episode with them a few days later, but none since.

Then we had our first scorpion! It was a small black one only about an inch or so long, and outside, not in the house.

But even with all this we had one really cool critter made a temporary home with us…a big beautiful butterfly. Her wingspan was nearly as large as my entire hand, she was dark brown and spotted. She came inside and stayed all day…out of the 100-degree heat I’d guess. Night fell, she didn’t go out again, so we shut the house down and put on the air. Then came the big storm. She didn’t like the storm and fluttered about the house like a crazed mini-bat, wearing herself out. When we opened the windows we tried to encourage her to go out, but she was too freaked out. She finally made her way out the next morning.

But, even though all of this stuff can bug us and get us down, we also know how completely blessed we are to have a God who loves us and cares for us, and family and friends who do likewise. Thanks for keeping us in your prayers…those prayers keep us going from day to day and we are blessed to have so many of you helping us via prayer! Praise the Lord.