Week 92- clothes moths, wet pants and killing woodlice

Having children is a grown-up thing to do. Obviously. But somehow it doesn’t feel grown-up all the time, especially if a lot of your day involves blowing raspberries on someone’s tummy.

That’s Nancy’s tummy, just to clear up any confusion. I don’t know how well it would go down at work.

Another thing that feels mega grown-up, is owning your own flat.

Especially when you’ve come from a lifetime of renting.

I miss having someone to ring up when things go wrong.

The washing machine breaks, so you ring up your letting agent and there’s a new one within a week.

The sinks making a funny noise, and, yippee, one call and someone comes to make it sound normal again.

There never really was any need to find out how to fix anything, as you were always a ring away from someone else sorting it out.

And then you get your own place.

And it’s a baptism of fire.

Or more honestly, a series of adjustments to just live with the things that go wrong.

There’s been a drip under the sink in the bathroom for the best part of a year now, and it’s getting worse. But instead of investigating properly, we’ve just found bigger and more absorbent things to clear the puddle of water up with.

In the beginning, one sheet of bog roll would do it.

More recently, it’s escalated to pairs of pants.

You go in the shower, come out, brush your teeth, and pool of water starts to appear. So you dry it with your undies you’ve taken off before getting it the shower, then put them in the wash box.

Job done.

We’ve also got some kind of biblical style plague of clothes moths that have recently taken up residence. Where do they come from? I’m hoping they work on the same principle as head lice and it’s actually because I’ve got an amazingly clean house.

Nancy, who’s eyesight is better than mine and Ben’s combined, has adopted the role of chief moth spotter. On locating one, she’ll stamp her feet enthusiastically, point and shout, ‘BUG, BUG, BUG!’ until one of us squashes it, then announces, ‘GOT IT!’

This is such a frequent event, that we’ve started walking around with big wadges of tissue in our pocket, ready to splat them at a moment’s notice.

The thing is, Nancy’s started to catch the bugs in the garden too, and comes running in proudly clutching a woodlouse that’s been held so tightly between her thumb and forefinger that it’s disintegrated.

It’s a tricky lesson to teach- kill the insects inside so you don’t feel like you're living in some kind of skeffy student den.

Live harmoniously with them outside.

I know I should find out how to sort these things out.

As well as learning how to put up a shelf, change a wheel and know why you can’t reheat rice.

Because, one day, I’m going to have to pass all this valuable information onto Nancy.

But for now, I’m going to continue to ignore it all.

Until things get too bad.

Then I’ll ring my dad.