Ants, my engineer, and a humble toothpick comes into its own ;)

Hi there, everyone.We have now been back home for five days, and I’m almost back to normal. Some of you may remember that I was stressing that the ant armies might have taken over our house in the six months that we were away. I’m happy to report that they weren’t very evident when I sent hubby in first to check.  On the day we left in September, and just as it was time to get in the car to drive to the airport, I suddenly remembered the anti-ant spray which I’d bought, so hubby rushed back inside to spray all around the windows and doors and edges of the kitchen floor. (Now my blog friend, Kragenhai is sure to accuse me once more of being a slave driver, because I didn’t do the deed myself.)  Anyway, when we got back, there were very few live ants, and only tiny ones at that, but there were little piles of dead ones. They had been very  considerate, and had gone into one corner of the dining room and kitchen, to form two neat little heaps,  which were easily vacuumed up. If there are any ant huggers reading my blog, I do apologise if I have offended your sensibilities.  Such darling little critters , aren’t they?

Our 28-year-old air conditioner which wasn’t working on our arrival home, and which hubby fixed for about R120, is now running perfectly. One neighbour informed us that even after replacing theirs a few years ago they are still spending thousands on it as they have to keep calling in the repair men. Thanks goodness for a handy husband. He’s saved us a fortune over the years. My son used to call him “daddy-fix-it,” because there was nothing he couldn’t get working again.

I told you that we were going to buy a new dishwasher over the weekend, as ours had finally decided to die on us.. It still looks like new, but over the past year, it’s been getting the hiccups, and we had to keep on restarting it to get it to go. Well, on Thursday evening, hubby said, “Let me have one last try to see if I can fix it.”  He had the front off again, and a short while later, he muttered something about a relay and asked if I had a matchstick. “No, but we have plenty of toothpicks,” I replied.

 

 

“That will do,” he said. So out came the toothpicks and a couple of minutes later, he’d jammed a relay on the printed circuit board and now it’s working as good as new again. It’s great to be married to an engineer. They’re real problem solvers, and he has the patience of Job. He needs it, being married to me, because I’m technologically and mechanically challenged. It was a marriage made in Heaven. I do the cooking and ironing etc., and he just keeps everything running smoothly. A couple of years ago he fixed my sister’s AEG dishwasher for R5 , the cost of  a component, after she had been quoted over R2,000 by the repair company.

It’s cooled down nicely here, after an apparently hot and humid summer. We’re now into that wonderfully mild and temperate KZN autumn weather, which I enjoy immensely. We shall take a stroll up to the village this morning, and have a look at the holiday makers down here for the Easter break.

Have a great day, everyone. Chat again soon.