Oh hi! I am once again waiting for the HVAC professionals to arrive at my home! My furnace worked for two days. Then we had a day of beautiful sunshiney 79-degree weather and the interior of my house transformed into a sauna, so I turned on the air conditioning. Which didn’t work. This morning, my husband thought to check whether the furnace would work… and it did not work either. We have neither heat nor air conditioning. I am very glad today’s forecast is for mild temps, but… What is happening?????
Sidebar, since I was already moaning to you last week about pest woes: We opened the windows to help cool the house last night, and when I got into bed I noticed that approximately ten zillion miniature flying critters had taken up residence inside my lampshade, on the wall around my lamp, and on the ceiling directly above my lamp. I suspect they were tiny moths or other light-loving insects. I examined the screen nearest my bed and discovered that there is a large rip in it. It was past one (I fell asleep at my desk while working), so I did not have any energy to do a single thing about the moths. I turned off my lamp and went to bed, hoping they wouldn’t swarm me while I slept. This morning, they were gone. Where… did they go? I closed the window with the broken screen, so they didn’t exit that way. They don’t seem to have congregated around any of the nightlights. But… where are they? On the scale of pest awfulness, a million tiny moths doesn’t really register… but I am still very concerned. Am I going to open a seldom-used closet one of these days and find a full-fledged moth hive, pulsing with winged bugs?
MOVING RAPIDLY AWAY FROM THAT HORRIFYING IMAGE. I am in desperate need of groceries, but I’m afraid to leave the house lest the HVAC person choose that moment to show up. (They are supposed to give me a 30-minute window, but, in my experience, it is more like, “Oh, hey, I’m five minutes away!”)
Let’s turn our thoughts away from the specter of replacing BOTH air conditioner and furnace and to the much more comforting prospect of food!
Dinners for the Week of April 15-April 21
- Taquito Enchiladas: I am pretty sure Sarah inspired this one, as I never in a million years would have thought to do this myself. But I am newly in possession of a bag of chicken taquitos from Costco and I really, really want to see if this easy delicious-sounding meal is as easy and delicious as I hope it will be.
- Whole-Roasted Cauliflower with Feta: I saw this on Instagram and cannot stop thinking about it. My husband will probably require some sort of meat accompaniment, so I am thinking chicken shawarma, maybe?
- Pasta Primavera: It’s that time of year again when I want ALL THE VEGGIES. I will sauté whatever I can find – asparagus! zucchini! broccoli! peas! – and add it to some protein pasta with a ton of lemon juice and parmesan. YUM.
- Sheet Pan Red Curry Chicken and Veggies: This recipe calls for butternut squash, which I will probably sub out for… something else. Broccoli and cauliflower? Green beans?
Carla is back in the throes of Multiple Extracurriculars, now that spring sports have begun, so we will also be eating some junk food this week – some sort of fast-food chicken or burger, we’ll see. I am not a big fan of eating fast food on the regular, but sometimes it is the best and easiest option. This season of eating fast food multiple times per week won’t last forever, so I will try to lean into it as best I can.
What are you eating this week, Internet?
I hate the thought of hidden bugs–the visible ones are bad enough. 😦 And the furnace–what a stressor! All your meals sound delicious to me, especially the cauliflower.
That is mysterious about the moths. I hope your HVAC woes are over soon, but it’s lucky it happened on a day when you don’t really need heating or cooling.
I’m making tofu with roasted broccoli and edamame tonight, a fake chicken and vegetable soup tomorrow, and cheddar-vegetable egg bites Wednesday and beyond that I don’t know.
Oooh those are some good meals. I just might make that cauliflower.
Speaking of weird bugs, we had a ladybug infestation. Ladybug. Infestation. I don’t know how this happened but around mid-February we had all these sickly looking ladybugs in the house. Best guess is that they had overwintered somehow and then came out of hibernation IN OUR HOUSE. It was distressing for me because I love ladybugs, and putting them outside would kill them, but also, they were all almost dead anyway. I would pick one up to go outside and it would have been on almost its last legs. I sure hope that doesn’t happen next year, I don’t think I can take so much ladybug carnage.
I’m going to choose to believe that those bugs/moths have a VERY short life span and expired while you were sleeping.
The HVAC/furnace issue is VERY frustrating and I hope that gets resolved quickly.
As for the junk food – you are in a season, you just have to roll with it.
Oh, I wish I had an excuse for eating fast food multiple times this week! But I’ll have to wait for Chipotle night (Friday.) Enjoy- fast food dinners are fun.
So, I THINK that moths will die overnight if they’re trapped inside. So I don’t think you have to worry about the hidden pulsing moth hive (GAAAAAHHH!) but the questions remains- where are they? Where are the moth bodies? You’ll probably never find them.
Good luck with the HVAC- that is a really annoying problem. But- I guess if it had to happen, this is a good time of year.
Yikes what are the odds that you get your furnace fixed and then the AC conks out? And then what are the odds that your AC conking out lead you to discover the rip in the screen and Mothagedon. Sigh.
The taquito enchiladas sound great. If possible, enjoy Fast Food Season – sometimes it’s the only way to stay sane.
Oh my goodness – Those moths! I’m not sure I could’ve gone to sleep and yes, I’d be wondering where they all went. We winter in Mexico and a few days before we came home, my husband called me into the bedroom. There was a very large creature on the bedroom wall. It was a moth and the wings span was at least 6 to 8 inches across. It was completely black & quite beautiful. I managed to trap it in a colander with a thin cutting board on top and release it off the balcony. I am just grateful it did not wake us up with wings flapping in the middle of the night when it came into the bedroom! That would’ve been a freak out. (We did find a screen that was barely attached to the frame. That’s how it got in)
Moths are *scary* to me, I have nightmares of them sitting on my face while I’m asleep; I’m so sorry you had to deal with an infestation.
I love the cauliflower and the pasta primavera options for this week, I’m going to add them to my list.
I’m excited about making hand pies tomorrow–it’s a bit more carb-y than our usual fare, but I’m taking food to a convalescing couple, so I think it needs to be hardy and filling.
Oh my what a lot of adulting you’ve had to do lately.
There is an episode of the the Lazy Genius podcast called “How to Fix Dinner When You Are Never Home”, which I think is brilliant and such a good framing of the kids activities vs. having to eat dinner conundrum. She talks about thinking in steps: WHEN are we going to eat dinner, then WHERE are we going to eat dinner, then finally WHAT is dinner.
I am working 5 out of 7 nights this week, so my Husband is taking on most of dinners. I made a bean and barley soup in the instant pot last night and that was the sum total of my dinnering. BUT there is enough soup for leftovers in the coming weeks, so that’s kind of a win.
I live in terror of our HVAC going out. I hope yours is better now and that it was something simple (this happened to us once, something was loose and our handyman was able to fix it in about 10 minutes.)
I had to go lie down a bit after the moth story, to keep from fainting. I was happy to read the comment about them dying if inside overnight, I didn’t want you to open a cupboard or closet and find that they had multiplied and eaten all of your clothes.
I’m intrigued by the cauliflower recipe. I don’t see it mention feta. Is that your addition? Good luck with the fast food. I hope it’s tasty at least. I hate when I decide to succumb to a craving for fast food, and then it isn’t even good. If I’m going to feel guilty, I need it to be worthwhile.
Oh no. A moth infestation. That is so awful. I have no advice. Other than, I have pantry moths and I buy little sticky traps for them. Not sure if there are.different types of moths and if these traps work for all moths.
No clue what is for dinner. I was in Texas over the weekend. Returned Mon early am. I go BACK to Texas Thurs night bc curly plays basketball there. There is hardly enough time to catch up on everything that I did not do last weekend, let alone plan meals.
So sorry about the tiny bugs! Eek. We’re also in a “fast food season” of life, lol.
We attempted to eat a new-to-us version of Red Beans & Rice this week, made with brown rice. https://www.bluezones.com/recipe/red-beans-and-rice/
It did not turn out; the rice was not tender. So sad, because the flavors were actually very good. Does anyone have tips about brown rice?? I used MORE water than the recipe called for, and cooked it MUCH longer than instructed (because the rice still wasn’t getting soft)…. I think I’m a competent cook but brown rice trips me up every time.
I am Dog-Nursing, so except for the times when Wonderful Friends bring me food, I have been making mashed potatoes or scrambled eggs FOR THE DOG to get her to eat so she can have her meds and then eating the leftovers. That seems like, as my daughter would say, some White People Bullshit, and yet here we are. I haven’t even used the air fryer!
GOD why can’t people just do their jobs right and show up when they say they will (or call to explain why they’re not) and why can’t things just WORK.
I loathe when I get in bed in the spring and summer and the only light is my ipad while I’m reading which means even if there is ONE flying thing, it will be right there. The Many Bugs appearing and then disappearing thing happened at our friends’ cottage once, and it is weird. Did someone stake them and turn them to dust like tiny vampires?
HVAC is not my favorite topic of late. We had to buy a new AC unit last week. Ours went kerplunk and just like that we are much poorer. Your bug situation is weird. Like you need someone else to say that, but it is!
Suzanne! This house! (I mean, all houses – I feel like our house was 5 years of constant nightmare and only now feels even quasi-reliable…though roofing shingles keep coming off in EVERY WIND STORM) Ahhhhh. I am screaming into the void on your behalf. I hate, hate, hate waiting for service people. And at least 50% of the time I feel like I get a call they can no longer make it, even though I have REARRANGED MY DAY.
Uh oh. I am getting angsty on your behalf, but I just want these problems solved for you, my friend.
Eating this week.
M: Butternut squash and carrot soup w/ homemade bread.
T: Homemade Mac n’ Cheese + peas
W: Homemade sushi + chocolate chip cookies
Tonight (T): LEFTOVERS. And all the people said AMEN.
F: Anyone’s guess. Something from a box, I hope. We have a string of late nights and I’m over prepping food. Actually, my husband is out with friends Saturday night, so tomorrow will be our at-home date night for the week. Likely an egg and smoked salmon sandwich. The kids will probably have a hodge podge of nuts, fruit, cheese, toast, crackers etc? They will eat, of that I am certain…
You are not going to like what I’m about to share with you, my friend. I live in a building that was built to be LEED certified. This is a system that provides a framework for healthy and efficient environmentally friendly buildings. As far as I can tell, the consequences of this LEED certification are the following:
So, that’s a thing that’s happening in daily life. I don’t know where the moths went, but I hope for your sake that it was straight down the toilet.
I wonder if you can draw the moths out by turning off all of the lights but one? I used to get ants inside when it rained which was a huge pain, but luckily I sprayed around the house and that did the trick. I was dreading having ants everywhere, as we had a lot of ants when I was a kid and I have a horrible memory of eating a few in my cereal once. Gross.
Why does the HVAC always go out when it’s way too hot or way too cold? It’s so frustrating! I’m shuddering about the moths! I hate them! I really have an aversion to all bugs, especially spiders. I was on a pancake kick all week. Yummy!
Ugh, I am sorry about your HVAC… that is ridiculous and I hope you can get it fixed soon.
About the tiny bugs…. I am telling you, insects find the weirdest ways into and out of homes (or so it seems). We haven’t had a whole invasion like that but sometimes I find a (single) ant or a caterpillar or spider in the remotest corner of our duplex and just wonder… how did they get there without me noticing them before and did they really travel all the way up the stairs? It’s a big mystery. I hope the bugs just found a way out and never come back.
Ugh the moths! Where in the world did they go? Let’s just keep that thought out of our mind and pretend they can actually disappear completely into thin air.
Ugh. Meals. I have barely cooked lately since my schedule has been nutty. We did grill some tuna steaks tonight which we ate with asparagus and an Asian rice dish. But I leave for ND for the funeral in the morning and won’t be back until Sunday afternoon so I will have to scramble to do meal prep this week and I just get tired thinking about it!! I think I will make turkey wild rice soup on Sunday but I need to come up with something else!
I am sorry to read that you are still struggling with the furnace. What a nightmare. Hope it will get solved soon. On the positive side it is at least already spring so you have a couple of month to figure it out before winter hits again. But I am sure you can use your time more effectively….
In our old apartment we had summer with huge moth. Like half a hand big. They were always coming in when we opened the windows at night to leave out the summer heat and there wasn’t really much we could do. At time we had like around 20 in the house. We ended up just trying to get them out of the bedroom but sometimes I just jumped when they appeared out of no where. They were really ugly and at the same time so pretty.
No heat or a/c? What in the world. I hope he showed up, fixed the issue AND you were able to get groceries!
Moths. Hmmmm…..I wish I could tell you where they might have went, but I only work with butterflies.
I remember those busy days with kids in sports. Wishing you all the best my busy friend!