The heat and humidity have dropped to a more tolerable level today which is putting me in a good mood 😁. It went from the 7^th circle of hell to the 9^th circle over the weekend and it was just awful, so the drop is most refreshing. 

As I have well documented how much electronics hate me, there is a new little twist to this evilness. On Saturday, I pulled out the old riding mower and (thankfully) got the yard taken care of. I parked it outside on the lawn so that I could finish with the weed whacking and clean the debris off the mower before I packed it in for the day. I complete all my tasks, put my tools away and jump on the mower to start it up. I turn it over and it does it “attempting to start” noise and I realize I forgot to push the choke. I push up the choke, turn the key and nothing. No sound, no lights, no gauges registering – just nothing. My neighbor came over to help me push it into the garage and figures it’s a fuse, because of course it is 🤦‍♀️. So, I am going to attempt to replace the fuse myself. Just me and You tube 😆! I’ll let you know if I succeed 🤞.

Then today, I went to turn on my bedroom tv as I was getting ready for the day and nothing from the DISH receiver 🤦‍♀️. It was fine when I went to bed and somehow this receiver has disconnected from the main receiver in the overnight hours. Thankfully it wasn’t that hard to trouble shoot but it is a sign of a darker force at work 👹👹.

That darker force? Working just fine one minute and crapping out the next. The electronics are now openly taunting me with their evil nature. So now I have to sage anything with a power source or a computer chip so that I can drive out the gremlins that have attached themselves to my home electronics. I will not be defeated (insert maniacal laugh here 🤪)!

And since these kinds of things happen in threes, I wonder what next on the list 🤔🤣.

But it is a beautiful day and I refuse to let this disrupt my zen. And on a half glass full thought, the auto parts store is just 2 minutes from my house, so the mower should hopefully be an easy fix. Gratitude acknowledge 🙏🏻😊.

So, what water into wine moment will you acknowledge today? Give it a shot and see if it doesn’t help your spirit feel lighter for the day.

Note: I think I may have overdosed on the Olympics a touch last week. But I’ll do a brief summary of my thoughts tomorrow 🙃. Also “crapping” has made the list of no no’s for Word 😜!

I would like to welcome you all to the 7^th circle of hell, a.k.a South Carolina. While the thermostat may read a balmy 91 the heat index makes it feel more like 910 degrees 🥵 (ok 99 if you insist on accuracy 🙄😆). Here’s the thing, I lived in Las Vegas for 9 years and the last year it had about two weeks with temperatures over 110 degrees during the day. I am familiar with hot. But those who have had the experience of living in both dry heat and humid heat can tell the difference. At least when I lived in Vegas, I didn’t spontaneously sweat buckets if I was outside for more than 5 minutes. South Carolina, I turn into a sweltering mess without actually doing anything more strenuous than standing outside. I feel for the tennis players who are struggling with similar conditions in Japan.

The point is that both climates suck but for entirely different reasons. And both make me become a hermit in the summer 🤪.

We almost had a break in the heat for about 30 minutes when a storm that had been threatening us all afternoon came roaring in a little before 7 pm. It was so violent that my front door flooded along with the upstairs window in my laundry room. And my staked tree was knocked over – AGAIN. I’m thinking I should move it to a safer location and just plant a big bush out front. I may put a bush out front regardless because if that tree keeps getting uprooted, it isn’t going to survive at this rate. Poor tree.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen Good or Omen the last two nights. They probably sensed the storm was coming and took shelter under the back porch. I hope they are ok because the wind with that storm was awful!

The Olympic coverage has hit a bit of a weird patch for me. Lately it’s been about tennis, volleyball, and swimming. Even gymnastics is only getting maybe an hour in prime time (most of it is covered by streaming ☹️) and quite frankly the spoiler headlines make it a non-issue from a watching standpoint. I want to see the Kayaking and Canoeing get some love (although I caught highlights of both, and the Kayaks and Canoes look the same to me 🤷🏼‍♀️). I am going to give NBC the asshole of the day award for their swimming coverage only because they keep cutting away from the third-place finisher in many of the races and will do interviews before showing how the field finished – which I found highly aggravating 🤬! But I taped some events that I wouldn’t normally get to see last night so I have that 😊.

I’ll close out with a quick, hopeful outlook on the ant situation. A man I’ve hired to help with landscaping the back of the property used to do foundation treatments another lifetime ago. I texted for a possible recommendation, and he called me back with some helpful info. He has convinced me that the holding pattern is the best option for the moment as my pest control had treated the yard with some sort of ant bait/poison that should assist in killing the queen. So between the spray and the bait/poison the queen may not last much longer (if she isn’t already dead 🤞). As my friend Arin said “There’s only room for one queen in this house!” 🤣🤣🤣

So, either Good or Omen (my new pet names for the froggy’s 😊) returned last night to moon me the first time I attempted to take a picture – like he literally turned his butt to me as I went to snap the shot 🤪! The other was MIA for the night although I have a third back yard frog who likes to hang out on my grill’s propane tank. How do I know it’s not either Good or Omen? This one’s bigger and needs a name – maybe Lucky? 🍀 🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀  🍀   

I’m also posting a short video of my little friend. I tried to catch him eating the bugs attracted to the light, but he was not cooperating. Probably still annoyed I was pointing the camera at him 😆.

On the ant front – it looks like I may have to take my complaint to the warranty folks. You know the people who can’t get my name right? Yeah, them and I’m not even sure they’ll help 🙄. At this point I may wait 2 more weeks and see if the ants start to resurface and then find a company that can help.

And as if the email from the builder stating they wouldn’t help wasn’t bad enough, the return email from the builder addressed my name in the email incorrectly, of course. They used just my exes last name, not the hyphenate 😡. Trust me when I say I sign all professional emails with my hyphenated name. So, learn from me and please respect peoples preferred names (especially transgendered person’s new name – don’t “deadname” them).

On the Olympic front – I stayed up waaaaaay too late watching tennis and men’s beach volleyball 🤷🏼‍♀️. I got caught up in the Tiafoe (USA) vs Tsitsipas (Greece) match which unfortunately Tiafoe lost and the US men’s beach volleyball USA vs Brazil which YAY we won. I also caught Naomi Osaka’s (Japan) match and it didn’t go well for her 😞. But I am still a fan 👏👏👏

*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT* Lastly, let’s talk about Simone Biles for a moment. Of course, the internet trolls are on about how she “quit” the team finals. And while yes, she did withdraw, it’s not as simple as she wasn’t doing well competitively so she quit. She had enough sense and mindfulness to realize she was hurting the team because she wasn’t feeling right mentally. So she opted to give them a fighting chance to win a medal instead of dragging them down and she stepped away. Sometimes it’s braver to step away in times of crisis than become a burden to your team. I salute her for knowing the difference. I’m so glad these younger athletes are really shinning a light on mental health in sports.

With all of that being said, I wish you the very happiest of days today!

Yep, we’re talking Olympics today because I can, and because I want to 😜. But let’s start with few updates.

First, I haven’t dealt with the builder yet. Apparently, they respond to emails better, so I’ll be dropping one to them after this. On the plus side, I haven’t seen a live ant for a week now, much to my relief 😮‍💨. I figure I’ve probably cleaned up about 1000 or more ants since the first outbreak (that includes critters both dead and alive) and my ant bites have healed – those things are a bitch!

Next, excoriate was a word on the New York Times Sunday puzzle. I seriously wonder why this word is popping up all over the place this week 🤔. I’m beginning to think it means I need to “excoriate” someone – perhaps the builder? 😁

Final (not really an update) update – last night the frogs came out to play. I had not one but two tiny babies on my backdoor and, yes, I forgot to get a photo. I think they are living in the plant on my deck. When I saw them, I got the strangest sensation that they were sent as good omens (as frogs are good luck in Japan). Let’s see if it pans out 😊.  Even if it doesn’t, I still love the little babies – as long as they stay outside.

Now to pivot to the Olympics, in Japan (see what I did there? 😆). We all know of the popular events – swimming, gymnastics, basketball, track and field, diving etc. This time around I’m trying to catch the less popular sports, the ones that might get a mention in the evening recaps. And it’s been interesting.

First a shout out to Ahmed Hafnaoui from Tunisia – wins gold in men’s 400m freestyle, upsetting the field. If you haven’t seen the video of his family watching the race, check it out here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jmg_-3Elag. Another shout out to Anastasija Zolotic for winning the first gold in Taekwondo for the USA. I had the joy of catching both of their wins so YAY them.

In other Olympic fun, I’ve decided that the announcers for the men’s mountain bike race take the asshole of the day award. You see a top rider from the Netherlands – Mathieu Van der Poel, crashed on the first lap and eventually had to drop out of the race due to injury. Well, the announcers apparently had nothing else to focus on an mentioned his crash about 50 times throughout the rest of the race (I surprisingly watched most of it 😮). I really hope the Van der Poel will be alright, it was a gruesome, flew over the handlebars, trying not to get hit by following riders’ kind of accident. Please send him some good vibes for a quick healing 😁.

I also caught the recap of the one of the newest events – surfing! I had no idea what was going on and I think they were qualifying matches, but kudos to the camera guys because they did a great job capturing the event – truly gorgeous. Unfortunately, two Americans were matched against each other and only one could advance ☹️. Congrats to Kolohe Andino for advancing.

Another (off beat) sport I watched was women’s street skateboarding. As a 52-year-old woman, I had no connection to what was happening on my screen, but I watched the young ladies (by young I mean the top three consisted of 2 -13 y.o.’s and 1- 16 y.o.) impress those who knew what was going on. Congrats to Japan’s M. Nishiya and F. Nakayama for winning gold and bronze respectively and Brazil’s R. Leal for her silver medal win – the first ever medals awarded in this sport. So YAY to those young ladies!

Other sports I’ve watched today include woman’s water polo, a few minutes of badminton and some tennis. All I will say is that the water polo athletes deserve mass props because that is an insanely arduous sport.

Well, that’s my take on the Olympics for now – I can’t wait to see what other uncommon sports I will catch over the next two weeks. Also, I wish whatever country, team, or sport you are supporting does well in these games! 

Note: asshole and bitch are the flagged words of the day with no recommended synonyms – I should start keeping count across all the blogs I post 😆.

I’d like to say that I’ve had a resolution to the ant situation but alas, no. I have left four messages and the only time they called back I was writing, and my phone was on silent, on a separate floor of my house because that’s how my it is in my world 😆😆. And the message basically said the cracks must be so big/long before they consider it an issue (they haven’t even looked at the cracks 🙄) and to get a pest control for the ants, aaaarrrrgggghhh!

And the fact that they never answer the phone is part of the problem. So, I looked for another number for the company and called it. Someone actually answered! I explained that I need to speak to someone about an issue and she said, “let me send you to the main office”. Boom I’m right back to the same voicemail I have been speaking to all week 🤦‍♀️. I just have to laugh, because this is my life on the regular 🤪.

The other issue I have tried to fix is my name with the warranty company. I know that if it isn’t correct with them, they will use it as an excuse to not honor it. So, two months ago, I called asking them to change it to my legal name (they are one of the companies that decided they would shorten my name 😡). The young lady I spoke to said it would take a few days to be completed. I waited (ok, I forgot 🤫) and went online to sign-up again and the same message pops up “The name doesn’t match the address on file”! I call again and this time I’m given an email address and service number to request a name change, which I emailed that day. Response “it will take 24 hours to complete the change’. I wait (forget 😁) another couple of weeks and today I try to sign up again. Want to guess what the message said? If you guessed “The name doesn’t match the address on file” give yourself 10 points.

I beginning to have an existential crisis because these companies don’t seem to acknowledge my existence 😱. Add that the fact that electronics/computers also seem to think I’m invisible, is it a wonder I’m feeling non-existent?

Am I really here or is it all a dream/nightmare? Given the oddity of my dreams it is entirely possible 🤣🤣.

Anyone willing to trade places for just a few days, leave a comment and I would be more than happy to swap. I need a break from this nonsense.

Note: Please remember this is 98% tongue in cheek, 2% any actual crisis so please take it in the spirit it is intended 😊.

Why is everything in my life more challenging than it needs to be? So, the ants 🐜. Well, the good news is that I haven’t seen a live ant since Saturday morning – YAY ME! However, the number of ant carcasses I vacuumed up in the meantime is disturbing to say the least. 

What was more troubling was the pest guy spraying an ant directly and it didn’t drop dead immediately. In the words of the spray guy, “that’s a problem”. Yes, yes, it is 😳! But there are carcasses so at least the spray is working. The downside – the bodies keep reappearing in areas I’ve already vacuumed 🤦‍♀️.

On the good news front, a guy who is helping with some landscaping stopped by on Friday to check on the weed kill process. I told him about the ants and by coincidence, he used to do some kind of work with foundations and ant control and kindly shared particular knowledge with me so that I am armed with information when I speak with the builder – specifically that the fill dirt under the house is to be treated so that ant invasions don’t occur. Very useful information indeed 😏.

So this morning a call was placed to the builder and a message was left (doesn’t anyone answer the phone anymore?!? 😠) and as of 5:23 EDT I have yet to receive a return call. Another call will be placed tomorrow and everyday this week until I speak to someone (sounds almost badass until you remember I’m an introvert and this kind of stuff makes me ill 🤢). And if for some reason that doesn’t garner a response, I guess an in-person visit is in order. I may not like doing this kind of stuff, but I will do whatever it takes to get this resolved quickly!

As with all my stories, there is no short route to the solution/end. Instead, I will be giving you the scenic tour 🚐, so fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to (hopefully not) be a bumpy ride 😁.

As with most of my stories, to be continued…

Yep, Word flagged badass 😆. I’m going to have to up my game soon.