The Good, The Bad, The Bug-ly

This week has been a bit of a roller-coaster here in the mid-Willamette Valley.  Beautiful sunshine and temperatures in the high seventies have brought out both the best and the worst in all of us.  You see, we Oregonians (native and transplanted) are not used to seeing the sun until July-- last year on Memorial Day I was wearing a down coat and carrying an umbrella-- and we are not equipped to handle this unexpected gift.  Kind of like how lottery winners immediately go off the rails and wind up living alone in cheap motels and drowning their sorrows with over-the-counter cough syrup.*

So anyway, three things that happened this week:

THE GOOD:

Yesterday a pal and I took a quick road trip to Eugene, where we visited the Home Goods (I returned the navy rug I'd bought for the dining room-- more on that some other time), ate lunch at the Cornbread Café (vegan, delicious, this-could-only-happen-in-Eugene-Oregon diner), and checked out a place that'd been highly recommended by reviewers all over the internet: Oak Street Vintage.

If you live within driving distance, you absolutely MUST check out this tiny, flawlessly curated spot.  I've been in quite a few antique and vintage haunts in Oregon, and most of them are full of useless tchotchkes (think the 80's Coca-Cola glasses that came free with your Big Mac, etc.)  Oak Street Vintage, on the other hand, has a thoughtful collection of beautiful (and fairly priced) midcentury pieces.  I almost lost my head and whipped out my Visa card over the Edward Wormley console table (scroll down and click the photo.  Yeah.  It is amazing.  In person it is even more stunning) but for reasons that will soon become apparent to you, I resisted.  But I've been looking for just the right piece to go behind the couch, and I'm not saying I won't go back for it.  Actually, I might go back for it.

I did leave with one pretty amazing treasure.  Both my pal K and I were wild about two things: an unbelievable oversized teak ice bucket with brass bull-ring handles ($16) and a set of teak-handled fireplace tools with brass bands ($30).  We flipped a coin, and I won the fireplace tools!  They are SO. GORGEOUS:

This set replaces the cheap ones we bought from Target-- we paid $20ish for those and one of then handles fell off immediately upon use-- and I'm always thrilled when I can replace something generic from a big-box store with something unique and special.

THE BAD:

One or more dead rats somewhere under the house or in the walls + lovely warm temperatures = a smelly and fly-infested week at our place!  Our pest-control company came out to retrieve the rat at our request, but after halfheartedly sniffing around for like thirty seconds the tech announced that he had no idea where the rat was, and he didn't want to go into our super-narrow crawl-space, so he left without doing anything.  We pay $70/mo for their services, and I'm really unhappy with the quality we've gotten.  One of their techs is awesome (he's the one who immediately located and removed FOUR dead rats from the attic) but all the others are crap, and you don't get to pick who shows up.  Every tech that's been here has given us a different story on whether or not the company offers exclusion services and attic/crawlspace restoration.

So after the tech left on Wednesday, I finally broke down and called the pest-control company that everyone in our town fervently recommends.  Rather than poisoning the rats like our current company, they do complete exclusion work and then trap whatever rodents might still be left in the house.  They're coming on Wednesday to give us an estimate, and based on what others have told me, I expect this is going to cost me upwards of $2000.  Which explains why I didn't buy the Edward Wormley console yesterday, right?  But I don't even care about the money-- I'll charge it and pay it off forever if I have to.  I'm at the end of my rope here.  At this point I would give them WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT if it means we'll live in a rat-free house.  

THE BUG-LY:

Ants ants ants ants ants ants antsantsantsants.  ANTS!  Ants are everywhere.  Tiny little ants on my living room ceiling, crawling out from the gaps between my floors and my baseboards, hanging out in the bathtub, circling the toilet, chillaxing on the walls in my hallway, cruising up the windows in my guest room.  In fact, they are absolutely EVERYWHERE in the house except the kitchen (can someone please explain this to me?  I mean, we keep the food in the kitchen, not on the living room ceiling). 

I've had fresh Terro out for them morning and night for over a month, and they're still coming.  They show not the faintest sign of slowing down.  And our current pest-control people refused to spray even a drop of professional-grade ant bait unless we paid them $200 up front.  Yes-- that's on top of the $70 we pay them monthly to not do a goddamned thing.

So, quick recap: we're having lovely weather and I scored some awesome fireplace tools, but my house reeks of death and has been overrun by every gross thing you can think of.  On balance, I'd give this week a C.

 
*overly dramatic comparison