The unfortunates

Everywhere we've lived, I've shared with you the little quirky things about living in our actual house. You know that in Kenya we had safari ants, huge slugs, bats in the chimney, concrete floors, and vampire mosquitos that only came out at night. And you know that in Illinois we had big juicy ants in our kitchen cupboards, a full size window in our miniature shower, and tornado warnings every now and then. So I thought i should share a bit about our quirky Utah home.

But first - you know I love it here, right? I do.

Okay, now that that's settled....When we were in Illinois, we noticed these little moths in our home in the dead of winter. I thought it strange to see bugs in the winter time, but i actually realized that bugs come IN in the winter time because it's too cold outside. So these moths were just one of a handful of different kinds of bugs that made their home in our house. They were a neusance, but we never did anything about them, aside from smashing them on the walls.

(photo by David A)

Within the first week of living here, we have seen the very SAME moths. After some online research, Landon discovered that they are called Indian Meal Moths. After reading about these moths, we discovered that it's not the moths themselves that are the pesky part - each moth lives only about a week and during that time, can lay from 50 -500 eggs. And they only lay their eggs beside a food source for their little babies (we definitely moved them here and they multiplied during the 3 months in storage). Gross. So we read about how to get rid of them: we actually threw away ALL the foods that we brought from Illinois (corn meal, grits, spices, pastas, oatmeal, etc...) and in doing so, we actually found many of their little worms. gross. Then i cleaned out the drawers and cabinets with bleach. That was 2 weeks ago. Since then, we have probably killed over 10 more moths (which is much less, but still FRUSTRATING!). The little wormies can chew through paper and plastic, so simply closing boxes, or even taping them shut, does nothing. The only other thing we can do is purge EVERYTHING, bleach every surface of every cabinet, and from now on use tupperware for every. single. thing. argh. Maybe if we were nicer to Illinois, Illinois wouldn't be plaguing us still.

Since we've moved here, I keep hearing noises in my house. Every once in awhile, I have heard a ringing coming from my family room. I walk in there, putting my ear to everything....and finally discovered what it is! And while I'm working alone at home, sometimes I think i hear someone in my house. You know, when it sounds like steps are being taken - like there is actually movement? So i grab my scissors and search for any perpetrators. But there never are any (sometimes this happens more than once a day). The other night while i was asleep, Landon felt the bed vibrating. He thought that it could have been an earthquake (that is rumored to be the most likely natural disaster around here), and then realized that in fact, it was something else....

(photo by Ryan Greenberg)

The ringing in our living room is the wine glasses on the shelves "dinging" against each other ever so lightly but constantly making a ringing come from the shelves. The train tracks are actually SO close to our house that it MOVES the house. The movement we've been feeling and hearing "every so often" we have realized, coincides with the roaring train in our front yard. ha!

(photo by clockmaker)

The last quirky thing: our water. I'm not sure if it's because the ground here is rich with minerals (SALT, for instance, duh), or what, but my neighbors warned me of the "hard water" here. Having never lived in a place with hard water, I thanked them for their warning, and went on about my merry way. We've been here for just a bit over a month now, and I definitely know what they mean. There is a white film on everything that water touches: my amazing showerhead and curtain, and faucet, etc..., Duvick's water bowl, the sink, etc... So we bought a brita water filter for our faucet. So now the minerals are filtered out at least in the water we drink. But we were noticing little floaties in our glasses of iced water and now finally realize that the white floaties come from the ICE. gross. how do you filter your ice machine? And there were two things in the house that we absolutely had to replace because the mineral deposits were so dense that they stopped working. I guess we can attach a water softener to our water tank or something like that. I'm being persuaded to do so more every day.