Bluestocking Women’s Pub - it’s Maytime!

[ErrolTheDragon]

Welcome to any women who want the company of women!

Thats it really….ok so this place is staffed by gerbils with the occasional quokka or capybara but it functions like a friendly pub where you don’t have to know what’s going on all the time.
The drinks don’t intoxicate and the food is delicious yet healthy so please do come in.

And I've just discovered we've got bloody ants in the house!

I have quite a few every summer, Magpie. I never know where they come from or where they disappear to! Only when the weather is very warm, and they never "get into " anything, just wander around the ground floor looking lost. (but I do keep all my food in the fridge or plastic containers)

Ours are using the skirting board as an ant superhighway but I can't figure out where they're going to. I know where they're coming in, behind my sofa, which explains why I found one crawling on me last night.

I woke up with a sore stomach and aches and pains all over: initially feared that I'd picked up a bug.

Then I remembered that I was at the seated Senior Flex class yesterday. The trainer had us doing seated star jumps and several abdominal exercises. "If you can, bring your knees to your chest..."

It's all done to '60s and '70s music. I recall that the Sunday Post used to run wee jokey articles in their centre pages: "Can you imagine what today's teenagers will be like dancing about to pop music when they're in they're 60s and beyond?"

Reader, I am living it.

We have returned home. But with the beer. We will venture out again at 2.30pm then have food by the river after 4pm.

Very warm and sunny and loads of people and dogs.

I love dogs. I keep thinking we should get one and the Walrus says no. Even though we have a lifestyle where they wouldn't be left alone, he had dogs before and says they're a lot of work.

He's right so I indulge my love for dogs at days out.

We had this in our previous house - I put Ant Stop around the bottom of the walls outside, and that solved it.

In my case, I've had problems with shudder the occasional slug getting in.

The worst was when one sobs fell through the fan in the wet room. The second worst was when the light in the wet room failed - it's a proper bathroom light, but an old fluorescent light - and I discovered the desiccated remains of a slug in the fitting.

Whimper.

We have ants in the summer. I can never quite get rid of them. Not a fan - I spent a lot of my childhood abroad where insects in the house were not good news.

And Myrtle, dogs are wonderful but they are, indeed, a lot of work and a massive tie. I love ours and wouldn't be without them, but the boarding fees when we go away 😳
And the vet 😳
And when I tot up what I've spent on training 😳(but that was a choice, due to their breed type and what I want to do with them)

I'll know that I've hit 'old' when I decide that the next puppy has to be from a different, less energetic, less driven and more chilled-out breed.

But at the moment, I keep trying to convince DH to get a puppy. He says no.😢

Oh, I get a few of these, after heavy rain. One made it all the way into the kitchen once, determinedly heading for the living room. I think they come in through the orangery, as the windows are floor-to-ceiling and open in, like doors, so the seals on them are not as good as on fixed windows. The trade off is the airflow I get through the house in summer (and occasional cats)!

The house is old, cracks and crevices, so I live with it. But I do empathize!!

I think I must've been a Buddhist in a former life, because I can't kill even ants! I just scoop them up and throw them outside (to no real purpose, I know).

The only insects I've never had a problem with killing were mosquitoes (the New England vicious, bite-you-just-because-I-feel-like-it variety) and horseflies (see above). There are some nasty bugs on the East Coast, especially black flies in Maine, which Chickadee will know all about (drive you mad !)

Oh, and the centipedes (common variety), of which enough said, and I'm not going to talk about them anymore except to say that my first apartment when I was 19 had them everywhere and I can't even think about them without shuddering. About 2-3 inches long. Google them if you dare!

We sometimes get leopard slugs in the kitchen. This is a decent modern upvc thing which doesn’t let in draughts but they can flatten themselves and ooze in - I once caught one in the act. Well, the actual catching had to wait till s/he was fully through. (What is the correct pronoun for a hermaphrodite?)

I’d really like to know what a seated star jump is!

I could do with a repertoire of seated or standing Pilates-type exercises to do when I’m on holiday.

When we go away DSD stays at home so we wouldn't have to put a dog in kennels. But it's the walking and the training and the letting them out at night last thing. And a dog wanting to be up early. Not for us.

And vets fees!

Cats don't have quite the same issues, and are pretty untrainable anyway, but I hear you on care for them when you go away. Luckily we have teenagers in our neighbourhood who can be bribed to come in and feed them and scoop litter trays, with parents who make sure this is actually done.

They?

shame- Margo was becoming quite excited at the prospect of having another place to trash home

@AngleofRepose luckily black flies tend to stay up country and leave us Portlanders alone! Ants though… I hates ‘em and commit anticide regularly.

WAW "If you can, bring your knees to your chest..."

I think I'd need to somehow unscrew mine first!

Magpie I had an ant superhighway in my last house and a friend advised me to soak a cotton wool ball in any essential oil and wipe it along the skirting board they were using as it disrupts the pheromones they are following. It actually worked! I think I used lemon grass, but lavender or tea tree would also work. It also made the house smell lovely.

Chickadee, my mother's family used to have a farm just south of Parsonsfield, that's where I developed my "appreciation" for black flies. It definitely seems to be worse inland, and especially on a farm!

Yes, I've occasionally tried kitchen roll soaked in white vinegar-not so nice smelling , but works for a while.

They made such a song and dance about not being British when they'd only been over there for a wet weekend, you'd imagine they'd be more aware of us having to fight desperately not to be British for 800 years🙄

Sorry to hear about your various creepy-crawly and slithery stories😬
I couldn't kill an ant either, Angle, but I've heard that the 'disrupting their paths' technique works well, hopefully it works for your and your unwelcome visitors, Magpie

I've often wondered how slugs get through what should be impermeable door and window seals, I assumed it was like Star Trek and they beamed themselves indoors! I don't like them in the house, obvs, but I like looking at slugs in the gardens, some of them have quite cute little faces.

I wonder if I could engineer a showdown between the ants and the pigeons? 🤔
Furthermore, I wonder which would win!

.

Or like the creepy "flat" guy in the first season of XFiles! I couldn't sleep for a few nights after I first saw that.