This Old House
Wanna know just how old our house is? Well, I don’t have an exact date for you, but I’ll bet we still have the original windows.
In this house are seventeen windows, not counting the five that have been removed. One window, the bathroom one, is relatively new. It looks new, it’s made of a plastic-like substance… probably plastic and opens and closes easily. Three in the lower room seem fairly new, though not as new or as nice as the bathroom one. The others are wood with “old fashioned” storm windows and screens. If you want to open one and be able to stick your arm fully outside, you have to open the window, then the screen, then the storm window. Anyway, most of these are now broken. Steve didn’t believe me but I konow I’m right. I’m a firm believer that each window has something wrong with it. Either it’s cracked, won’t open (ie painted shut) or the storm window is broken, or the screen is broken, etc. Heck, there’s one window in the lower room that’s an absolute embarrassment, it’s pretty much a hole in the wall with plastic over it. I guess it was the next window the last homeowner here was going to replace, but then he had to sell us this wonderful house. /sarcasm.
Anyway, as you can guess, I’m also a firm believer that we are in need of NEW windows! Steve says it’s not a priority, that we need a new roof first and he’s probably right, but either way, we’re not at a point where we can afford anything.
SO. Today.
There’s a window that’s kind of at the top of the stairs that until recently was in better condition than some of the others. I liked to open it and put a fan in there to get the air to flow through the house through the windows that are open on the main floor. Just about a half an hour ago, I went up to open the window. It was kinda stuck, which really isn’t that much of an issue, but when I tried again, and it came open, the glass in the lower pane just shattered.
So here I am, with my first ever broken window (let’s not get into how many my brother has broken over the years) and it’s open but still not open enough to stick the fan in. So, the brainiack I am, I figure I’ll just open the busted pane the rest of the way and stick the fan in. And that’s when I notice that the storm window is also broken. And that is apparently how the wasps got in. There they were, four that I could see, all hanging on this white ball like thing that’s about an inch to an inch and a half in diameter. I guess it’s an egg sack or something? Thankfully, it’s cool out today - hence my wanting the window open in the first place - and they were’t active.
I shut the window and called Steve. Nope, we don’t have any wasp-killer-spray. Blah.
So out come the trash bags. I opened up two and taped them over the window so at least the wasps won’t be encouraged to come into the house more. (Elijah is terrified of bugs, especially now that he was stung by a wasp in July.) So it now looks SO much nicer than it did before up there. (More sarcasm.)
I just wish some nice person would come by and say, “Oh I LOVE your candles, I’ll take everything you’ve got in stock plus all your supplies.”
Right.
