My last post was a week ago, although that does not mean that we have been doing nothing during the past seven days. What we have been doing, though, is low key and definitely not as energy-consuming as our tasks in the past.
This past weekend, we actually washed both the Camry and the truck. We had hoped to get a good coat of wax on the truck, but I am not sure that the weather is going to cooperate for us to do that. We are waking to sunshine each day with a promise of rain that has not materialized yet. And by 10:00 a.m., the sun is too intense to do anything.
We wanted to stick around at least for the first part of this week because I had a confirmed Arrow Environmental Services (read: termite and pest control) appointment set for 10:00 a.m. Ha! Just like the last time, that never happened. The last time the man was here, I brought him inside the house, even let him use one of our pens, and watched while he wrote the appointment down on his calendar. I added it to our calendar as well. We had problems with this same man the last time we had a supposed "appointment" for which he never showed. His excuse last time was that his truck broke down. OK. Crap happens, and we were willing to accept that. This time, however, when we called his number, we got no response. We called his office, and they could not tell us where he was. We called back later, and then his boss tried to call him, but got no response.
To make a long story short, by the time he finally called us back, Arrow had sent out another man. This man never sprayed the inside like the first man did, and he did not treat for subterranean termites like he was supposed to. He said that he would come back later to do that. Yeah, right. We are not pleased with this company, but they get some of the better ratings on Angie's List, and they actually are one of the only companies that has workers who are both insured AND bonded. Arrow bought out our old company, Bay Area Pest Control. Bay Area was really good, and we suspect that some of the ratings on Angie's List are from Bay Area. Arrow, we are not so pleased with. Each of their men seems to be trained a different way, and no two do things in the same way. One of our tasks when we return in the fall will be to look for new pest control. One cannot be without pest control in Florida, but we are both disenchanted with our current company.
Another reason Rick is ready to go north is because when he was outside with the pest control man, they both watched a three-foot long black snake slither along the north side of our house and crawl into our air conditioning unit. I am sure it was just taking refuge from humans and from the heat, and that last night it crawled away to hunt elsewhere, but it gave Rick the willies (he hates snakes), so he is ready to be done with the not-so-desirable portion of the wildlife down here. The snake probably lives in the overgrown back yard of our neighbor to the north. His appearance (the snake, not the neighbor) is just another good reason to put up the fence.
This morning we started to clean out the garage. We brought the bikes down and pumped up the tires, but it is really too hot today to ride them. We just gave up and brought them into the house so they would not rust this summer. We also started to bring in some other things that we do not want to cook in the heat and humidity for the summer.
One other task that I completed today was to scrub the front porch and to seal the grout in the tile. We wanted to do that last year, but the grout was too new. Now that is just one more task to mark off our "to do" list.
This afternoon, we went to the beach for the last time. Big mistake. The breeze was coming from inland rather than from the water, so it was breezy but hot. I waded in the water up to my knees, and the water must be approaching 80 degrees. I know why the children had no trouble swimming today. We stayed for about an hour; by that time, our backs were drenched sitting in our lawn chairs, and we were both hot and miserable. We packed up and came home. Mid-May is the end of good beach weather in Florida.
Tomorrow we will finish packing so that I can have some time on Thursday to clean the house before we travel north. We gave our neighbors a key so they can check on the house for us, and we will do a final check on Steve's house on Thursday to make sure everything is fine.
We will miss Gladys, but we are looking forward to getting back to family and friends in the hopefully cooler northern states.
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