It's the little things

It’s the little things that make you fall in love, setting that one person or place apart.
But it’s also the little things that start to drive you crazy. That’s what this blog is about!

Every night before bed I take the dogs out to go “wee”. I have a path I always take when walking in our yard, it is the “safe zone”. Last night I foolishly wandered off the safe zone. One moment I was walking along, not a care in the world and the next second my feet were on fire. I had walked right over a fire ant hill and the little buggers were biting me like crazy. I ran to the pavement and threw off my sandals but they were all over my feet. I started smushing them to death, but they just kept biting me. So I ran into the house and hopped in the shower to wash my feet off. This got rid of them, but my feet were still on fire and this morning they are so very itchy!
It’s not really the fire ants themselves that makes me so angry. It’s the fact that I cannot stand in my own yard for more than 30 seconds for fear of getting attacked. They have stolen my freedom, I can’t put Ashlyn down in our yard, or play with the dogs, even standing still long enough to pick lemons or avocado’s is risky. I am a prisoner to tile and cement floors.
However I do retaliate against the ants. Every time I have been attacked I find their hill and douse it with vinegar and baby powder (according to my research these are two things ants hate).
Insane? Absolutely. But it makes me feel better.


The fire ant hill covered with a nice powdering.





The second thing is how dirty my house always is. I can sweep and mop the whole house and within two hours, it looks like I haven’t touched it in days. It is infuriating, especially because it’s so hot here I sweat buckets sweeping and mopping. You would think in a country where all the houses have tile floors they would have some great mops; like the Swiffer 2000 or something. But nope, I’ve got this wooden handle with a cloth mop head that I attempt to wring out by hand. After a week of mopping with it, it’s just smelly and gross. So now I am a prisoner to dirty, tile floors.

The third thing is the electricity is always going out. The electricity is on a schedule because the power company’s generators were built in the 50’s and can’t handle the country’s demand for power. So they shut the power off Monday thru Friday from 7 am to 2 pm.
It took about a week of trying to turn things on and a few spoiled bags of milk to adjust. Now I have gotten use to using our propane stove to heat things up and moving perishables into the freezer everyday.
But these last few weeks almost every time it rains, or for no reason at all the power on our street goes off. This mostly happens at night, and then Adam and I just lay in bed sweating, trying to decide if it’s worth opening the windows and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes or just to lay there and sweat. After a week of the power going out almost every night Adam did some investigating. He finally figured out there is a faulty transformer on one of the street poles. The power company has plans to fix it in a month…or so.

These are a few of the little things that are driving me a bit crazy. Someday I will write a blog on all the little things I really love about living in Nicaragua, but today is not that day.