Our New Apartment, OR Murdering Maggots in the Morning

So, I'm beginning to feel like Pharoah must have felt when Moses came and there were all those plagues. Okay, not really...but we have had some troubles with this new apartment.

Plague #1 Elmos
We have lots of Elmos. There are a whole bunch of Elmos of different types in the corner between the couches. It's a little bit creepy, but Hazel likes to look at them.

Plague #2 Junk
The apartment is a sublet, so the girl we're renting from left her stuff here while she went away for the summer. I thought that meant she was going to leave everything in her bedroom (which locks) leaving the furniture and the rest of the space for us. Well, I was wrong. When we got here, there was stuff all over the place. Every surface was covered in random junk. *sigh* So we sorted it, bagged it, and stowed it in the garage.

Plague #3 Alcohol Paraphernalia
When we visited to check the place out beforehand, I somehow overlooked this. Empty vodka bottles (maybe they thought they were decorative?) on the counter, a couple of drinks-mixy contraptions, a few bottles that still had the alcohol in them...

Plague #4 Filthiness
Also something I overlooked when we visited. I mostly looked at the living room, where we were sitting talking to our prospective landlady. It looked pretty good. I think she shampoos the carpets regularly. But, I didn't look closely at the edges (which may have never been cleaned, ever), or the kitchen floor/cabinets (ick!). And, when some things in a house are dirty, I feel like EVERYTHING is, and I can't rest until it's all clean.

Plague #5 Coins
Why would someone leave little piles of coins spread throughout the house? I don't understand this.

Plague #6 Air Fresheners
Every room had multiple air fresheners. Spray fresheners, automatic-squirt fresheners, plugins...why would you want so many? It made the place stink!

Plague #7 Unfamiliar Cleaning Products
As I was gathering up the junk in preparation to clean the surfaces it was all resting on, I looked for cleaning supplies. I found several, but almost nothing that I'd ever used before. On the upside, I discovered that the multipurpose Fantastik is quite good!

Plague #8 Untrustworthy Dishes/Disposable Dishes
Part of the deal is that we got to use her dishes and stuff. But, her dishes mostly worried me. Nonstick pots with the nonstick coming off, stuff that didn't look clean... Also, she just didn't have a lot of normal dishes. Some things there were a lot of, but others (like plates and silverware), we just couldn't find enough of. It seems like she was mostly using disposable dishes, which were bountiful indeed.

Plague #9 Sauces
When I went to clean the fridge (which was pretty gross), I found that they had tons and tons of sauces and condiments. We managed to relegate them all to the door and the bottom drawer, but the door was TOTALLY full, with a goodly amount of the drawer taken up as well.

Plague #10 Brown Decorations
It seems like most of the stuff she chose to decorate with is brown or beige. I think I'm just not classy enough for that. I like color too much.

Plague #11 Poor Lighting
No overhead lights, except in the kitchen/dining room.

Plague #12 Dead Clocks
I counted six.

Plague #13 Daddy Long-legs
Okay, this one isn't really a plague. But most days there is a daddy long-legs on the screen of the back door. And it usually stays there all day long.

Plague #14 Ants
Two days ago, we found ants in the baby's room. This was really disgusting to me. However, I found out that there are many ways to kill ants, and I so I attacked them with baby powder. I'm not convinced that it kills them, but after powdering them, vacuuming thoroughly, and powdering again, they've been gone for over one day. It's kind of cool that there's something that I don't mind Hazel touching that will keep ants away. :)

Plague #15 Maggots
Finally, the worst thing of all, and the thing that caused me to want to write this post. MAGGOTS. Gross! We have been battling maggots all day. Here's how it went.

This morning I went into the kitchen, and I was like, Anthony, there's a little white wormy thing on the floor. And he was like, oh, there's another one.

That's when we realized there were LOTS of them! And they weren't just any old worms, they were MAGGOTS. And I began to feel like this:

Then we began killing them. (Anthony did most of it, because that is the arrangement. Anthony kills bugs for me. That is one of the reasons I love him so much.) We discovered that the only way that actually works, is to squish them, one by one. These things are practically invincible! We used spray bleach, we dumped boiling water on them, we drowned them in rubbing alcohol, we moussed them (I read hairspray would do it; we don't have any), we used Raid, we sprayed them with Comet, and combinations of some of these things. Time after time, they crawled right out of whatever toxic chemical we had just put all over them.


Well, the maggots are gone now. I hope.

After all this complaining, I should give you some good news. How about:

Hazel is still the cutest thing ever. :)