August 24-28, 2010. Ever came home from a trip where you wished you stayed on vacation? This was one of those times. Everything went wrong. Maybe not everything. But just about everything.
We arrived home late Monday night, so we left all the unpacking and catching up for Tuesday. Tuesday wasn’t bad. Then it all hit on Wednesday. As I cooked dinner on Wednesday evening, we discovered fire ants in our kitchen floor. Huge red fire ants that bite. They were coming from our yard. They were all over our backyard. So the plan was Nathan was going to take the girls to Home Depot and purchase supplies needed to get rid of the fire ants inside and outside. I had to be at church Wednesday night.
As we were heading out the door, Nathan found his car had a completely depleted tire. He had two tires he needed to replace because they were pretty worn. But the depleted tire was not one of the worn tires. It was one of the newer ones, of course. That put us down to one car and I had to miss my meeting. Instead, we took a family trip to Home Depot and bought ant killers for the lawn. As soon as we returned home, Nathan spread it throughout the yard.
That wasn’t the end of it. Friday Nathan took his car in to purchase two new tires and have the hole patched in the depleted tire. It turned out that the hole couldn’t be patched. So $240 and five hours later, we have all new tires on his car. Five hours? Yes, people. The mechanic told Nathan it would take an hour. Well, he was wrong.
And Friday morning, I woke up with my body itching. I didn’t think much of it until I saw small red marks here and there. Then I freaked. Could it be bed bugs or fleas? We don’t have any pets and had no idea how either one of those pests could get in the house. So I washed everything on our bed in scalding hot water. Then dried in the dryer with the heat turned on high.
But then around 11 p.m. the red marks turned into hives. I started to break out in hives all over my body. After some backtracking and detective work, we came to the conclusion that it was the fabric softener that we used to wash our clothes in Washington. I never use fabric softener with our laundry at home. But Nathan’s mom had some at her house and it smelled fantastic. So I used it. Now I know. I’m allergic to it. I went through all our clean clothes to pick out the ones washed with fabric softener to rewash them. Twice. Fun.
Saturday Nathan took my car in for routine oil change and tires balance. The mechanic told him it would take half an hour. Three hours later, he came back with news from the mechanic that we need to have our transmission fluids flushed and there is a crack in the crankshaft and is leaking oil. We thought we would take it for a second opinion elsewhere.
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