They shoot horses, don’t they? July 24, 2004 ~ 10:47 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closedWell, let’s see. Trip to Lowe’s - accomplished. Sealant bought - accomplished. New toilet seat bought because the old one was cracked and attracting under-seat mildew - accomplished. Sealant applied and smoothed out - accomplished. Toilet seat installed - accomplished. Feeling nauseous - accomplished. Wait, that last one wasn’t on the list. And yet here it is anyway. Fun. The sealant will take 24 hours to set, which means, I guess, that I am showering at Rick’s tomorrow before I pick up the Youngest from her friend’s. No return of the fruit flies or the maggots yet, which is aces in my book. I called the landlady and told her what was going on here in the hopes that she’ll send someone over this week. And now I’m tired and nauseous. I think I’m just gonna call it quits for the day. I’ve been through enough, haven’t I?
Fruit Fly Invasion July 24, 2004 ~ 6:11 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closedFruit Flies in the shower - aaah! Why? Okay, I think I know why. I have a shower stall, not a tub. One of those vinyl fitted shower-stall things. And because I live in a basement that was not originally designed to be an apartment, the water doesn’t go away down a pipe. It goes about three inches down a pipe, and seems to stay there. Of course, I know it doesn’t. I mean, it doesn’t overflow into the shower, it just stays at that level. Whatever. But I think the fruit flies like the “standing water”. I’ve noticed a couple of them here and there over the past few weeks. Big deal. Brooklyn is having a fruit fly invasion, as near as I can tell. Everyone’s got them. So I kill them as I find them. I bought a drain cover so they can’t get in or out, and I put some vinegar down the drain, hoping to make the water acidic (or is vinegar a base?) and thus not hospitable to fruit flies. No problems.
Until I can home from Rick’s this morning and found like ten of them crawling around the shower. ew. So I sprayed the suckers with the pet/kid/food-friendly Ortho bug spray I bought a while back when I was having Invasion of the House Centipedes. Killed the fruit flies dead. I rinsed them (and some more bug spray, just in case) down the drain. Came back a half hour later to clean the bathroom to notice a bunch of little…well, they looked like short threads. What that hell is this? I asked myself. They were fruit fly larvae. The equivalent of fruit fly maggots, basically. I think they had crawled out of the drain. I sprayed those suckers down good, and then ran super hot water on them for five minutes. When I shut the water off, I noticed some of the sealant around the drain had peeled up. I peeled it off. No harm, or so I thought. However when I just went back to the bathroom, I see that the sealant had been covering a crack in the vinyl. And I just know that if I don’t do anything about this, I’ll have a leak. Not that I wanted to take a shower with fruit fly maggot corpses anyway, but I need to fix this. So I’m off to Lowe’s to buy sealant. Shit.
Oh, and my Marine cousin is getting shipped to Iraq in two weeks. I have a very bad feeling about this. I’ll go to Lowe’s after I finish my beer.
