Muchas Pulgas

My house has fleeeeeas...
My house has fleeeeeas...

Yes, this is a stupid song. Do you remember it? Usually, it is a "dog" that has fleas but for me, it is my house.

Last week, our air conditioner went out. When we called the friendly folks at American Home Shield (our warranty folks), they said they would send someone out right away (read: two days from now).

The man came in and said just two words, "Bad news". When your A/C guy says "bad news", you KNOW it means, bad news!

So our A/C compressor was out. The friendly folks at American Home Shield said that they would only pay the cost of the part but it would cost us $500 additional dollars to bring our unit up to "code". I don't know about you folks but I would like to know who is ALWAYS changing those codes? I mean, we had to pay $1,100! to have our water heater replaced because of CODES! And Home Shield bought the water heater! Don't get me wrong, I know that they do that so people don't have craphole houses with craphole crap in them but honestly, we have a nice house and does it really take $700 to make sure that our new water heater is exactly 18 inches off the ground instead of the 15 inches it was before? But I digress...

Back to the friendly folks at American Home Shield who only cover the cost of the part. Our A/C guy said, oh by the way, your unit is over 20 years old and instead of just replacing the compressor, you really, really, really need to replace the whole unit. Oh, and the friendly folks at American Home Shield will only pay $500 of it to replace your part that is broken. So, $3200 and five days later, we have A/C.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it is almost 100 degrees in Dallas right now. Yeah, poor Eva would wake up from her nap soaking wet, we had fans blowing everywhere but did nothing to cool the temperatures. Just one big sweaty house for a WEEK!

What does this have to do with the fleas, you ask. Well, last Thursday night, Jon came home from work, took off his socks and low and behold, he was eaten alive by fleas. After further investigation, we found more of them in the house.

Friday, we were heading to VA for the weekend. Oh, we'll take care of it when we return.

Monday morning, we returned home to find our nanny running out of the house. "Muchas pulgas! Muchas pulgas! " Crap. I know enough spanish to know that ain't good.

Jon and I left the kids in the car, ran into the house to grab whatever we could for tomorrow and headed to Jon's sister's house.

We were in the house for minutes and were covered in fleas. We ripped off our clothes and threw them in the washing machine and drove to Jon's sister's house in our skivvies. I felt like we were in some weird game show where we had 30 seconds to try to grab everything we could in our house before we lose $100,000. Dress for work? check. Jack's school uniform? check. Shoes for work? crap. It's not worth it, Kristi, stay away from the fleas. Just turn and walk away. You can wear your flip flops to work, no one will notice.

"Mommy, why are you driving in your underwear?" Jack asked. "Muchas pulgas", I replied.

How the heck did we get fleas? Well, it turns out that when our friend the possum came to visit us, he probably had fleas. Apparently, and I know WAY too much about fleas now, by the way, the eggs can lay dormant for up to 200 days. Once it gets too warm in your house, they hatch, then they mate like bunny rabbits or fleas, as it were. Then, those little blood suckers wait and wait for a host to come so they can pounce.

Damn you, you fleas, you will not beat me! I will reclaim my house! Just in a few days when you are all dead.