NO WHY

                                  Not even I can express my feelings as well as Joe Biden can.


Last night, I discovered that a colony of ants had made a nest in my box that held a large portion of family heirlooms. It was 11 pm when I found it, so I put it in the front room for the night and dealt with it this morning. Right as I was trying to empty the box on to some towels outside, it started to POUR down rain. AHRGH NO.

I was able to get everything out of the box and transferred the items to lidded plastic tubs on the covered back stair area, since it's supposed to continue to rain off and on today. I left the lids cracked and rigged up an umbrella over the boxes with the hopes that the remaining ants will move on on their own. I won't have a chance to even go back to look at everything until tomorrow afternoon after a furnace repair person comes (the first of four appointments I have to deal with because the owner of the house wants to have three different companies come out and look at it then decide from their bids who they want to replace it. For fuck's sake, just fix it. I don't have time for this drawn out shit. Or maybe you could just maintain it instead of letting it rust for years. That's a whole other post). Luckily I have a storage/ laundry shed I can keep the tubs in to keep them dry over night.

I think most things will be able to be salvaged. It seemed like the heart of the nest was in an old check box that had autograph books from the turn of the century in it, and one of those did get pretty damaged.  I'm very concerned about my great grandmother's wedding dress, which wasn't in good condition to begin with. I was able to rinse two petticoats and a combination underwear thing in the bath tub and hang to dry with good results, but they were in much better condition than the dress. Also, a box that my great grandfather made for her was rained on when I was trying to find something to cover it with, but the contents (INCLUDING THE ANTS IN THERE GODDAMN IT) which are tintypes and ambrotypes, seem to have escaped water damage. I think I will be able to just dump it out and brush off the ants.

I'm going to buy some smaller watertight tubs and archival paper to store everything in once I get a chance to clean it all up, and hopefully that will keep them safe from stuff like this in the future.

What a great way to start off the insanely hectic week that this week is going to be. Argh!