More moving stuff, eh.
February 03, 2005 
10:57 am
I'm sensitive to tobacco smoke. Severely. Staying at my in-laws' place (my father-in-law smokes like the proverbial chimney) is enough to make me ill for a week afterwards. Within a few minutes, my eyelids swell, my eyes turn red and start to water, my sinuses clog, and my throat closes up. After a few hours I start to cough incessantly, get migraines, and therefore turn into one crabby bitch.
This even extends to hotel rooms, etc, that have previously been "smoking" rooms but are now non-smoking. The smoke and the nicotine are in the carpets, the drapes, and the paint. More than once I've gone bleary-eyed and hacking to the customer service desk after a night of misery to demand a change of rooms.
Take that all in mind, and then read this: the NEW apartment complex just replaced all of the carpeting in our apartment (and the padding beneath it), free of charge, because the previous tenants were smokers. They "didn't want [my] allergies to act up."
...!!!!!!!
They replaced the carpet. Free. Because they knew I was allergic.
I fall more and more in love with this place every day.
Our current apartment... well, let's just say I'm glad we're moving. Rabidly glad.
We've had ants the last couple weeks. Just a few here and there, but definitely enough to be annoying. Mystifying as well, since Jay is anal about not keeping dishes in the sink, and I'm anal about food being packaged properly against bugs (comes from living in Florida, land o' the big bugs). So why did we have ants and where the hell were they coming from??
Well, we found out. At least, we found out where they were coming from. We walked into the apartment after work a couple mornings ago and found THOUSANDS OF ANTS all over the damn apartment, marching in a line an inch wide. They were in the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, AND the bathroom. In the bathroom they went past the litter box and behind the toilet, up the side of the tub and around the lip, past the spigot, and.... disappeared. The nasty little buggers had a NEST in the wall behind our BATHTUB.
Ewwwwwww!!!!
Maintenance came and sealed up the holes, and did some pest control spraying, but six hours later the ants were back. This time they found a hole directly under the spigot where it separated from the tile and were just starting their invasion. We went to WalMart and bought some caulking to seal them in.
Now here's where my hatred and loathing for this place comes in: they aren't going to do a damn thing. The ants are gone, so they don't care that they're really eating their way through the wall between the tub and the closet. Eventually they will make their way through and the next resident is going to come home to a closet full of ants crawling all over their clothing.
We thought they'd rip out the tub, but nope. Too much time, too much effort.
I am SO GLAD we're moving.
I know you guys are probably tired of reading more entries about moving, but I can't help it. I'm just so excited! We're getting a big enough tax return that we'll be able to buy a sleeper sofa for the living room and a dining room table. Hooray!
I've decided to base my palette for the paints around an oriental rug that J has. I just hope it won't be too dark or masculine... I want it to look classy. So far my palette includes cafe-au-lait for the "plain" walls (ie living room, hallway), cranberry for the dining room (it's an extension of the living room and needs to stand out a little bit), grapey-plum for the bedroom & guest bath, and a midnight blue for the master bath. I'm accenting the dark bathrooms with bright accessories and lots of candles, and since the dining room is attached to the living room, I'm thinking of a cranberry-colored sofa to tie it in.
I still have no clue what to paint the office. Needs to be something in that palette, without being dark or relaxing. Maybe green.
And, maybe I'll change my mind all over again between now and next week. :)
