Moving to a rented house
Relocation.
It’s been a week since we moved to our new residence and we’re almost done with our moving. I say “almost” because several boxes are not sorted, and not every thing has found its permanent place.
We rented a house on April 14, and agreed with the management of the apartment that we would finally leave on the 18th, because we still had to wash it, clean it and rent out the living space in order to return the money ($200), which we took for the apartment as a deposit for cleaning.
There seemed to be plenty of time, and so my kids weren’t in a rush to pack their things, although I had already started spurring on “Let’s pack” a week in advance. And they told me that in four days from 14 to 18 we will transport something with our cars, and to transport large things we will order a truck for Saturday, and that they do not intend to live on boxes for a week. Things were transported directly on hangers, putting huge plastic bags on a bunch of things at once, then immediately hung them in a closet — this is a built-in wardrobe (there are no wardrobes and walls here).
Scorpions are nocturnal inhabitants, during the day they do not crawl, but at night they crawl out and hunt.
But, as always, everything goes smoothly only on paper… When on April 13 my children went to a meeting with realtors to get the keys, it turned out that the house was poorly prepared, in some places the walls were peeled off from the move of the former tenants, some ‑Where poorly washed and a number of minor flaws. The fact is that the owner of the house lives in another state and communication took place at the level of his and our realtors. The owner was informed of the flaws and hired people to repaint the walls and fix them. Another day was lost waiting for the gasman, who was supposed to come to connect the gas for hot water.
As a result, on Saturday, April 16, when my son-in-law and a friend went for a pre-ordered truck, we continued to pack the rest of our things in an emergency manner. We were given a truck larger than what we ordered. My son-in-law had never driven such big trucks at that time, it’s good that a friend had experience driving big trucks on the highway. In short, they loaded, drove, then unloaded everything. Everything went well, only very tired. Even unloading things was faster and easier than loading from the second floor of the apartment. Then in the evening they collected beds until late.
About the house.
The house is one-story, small by local standards, only about 1600 sq. feet (approximately 150 sq. m.). Includes a garage for two cars, two small bedrooms with built-in wardrobes, and one toilet and bathroom — these are rooms for me and my grandson. Onelarge master bedroom is a bedroom with a toilet, a bathroom and a large dressing room for the owners. And another largest room, as it were, is divided into two zones — a kitchen area and a dining area. There are also two small built-in kitchen cabinets and a laundry room. Household appliances include a dishwasher, an electric stove, a large two-door refrigerator, a microwave oven, a washing machine and a tumble dryer. Here, all houses are already rented with this set of appliances and with a built-in kitchen. From the largest room exit to the backyard.
Actually 150 sq. m for the house is not very much. This is taking into account the garage, the area ofwhich is 40 square meters. m. The rooms themselves are small: the bedroom of my children is about 15, my grandson –12, mine – 9. Only the kitchen with a dining room is large — about 40 square meters. m. The figures are very approximate, because here the area is measured in square feet, not meters.
The back yard is not included in the area of the house and is about 80 sq. m. The yard, however, is small and all overgrown with flowering huge bushes, which we still have to cut and bring into a divine form.
Of course, it’s great to live on the base floor, but there are difficulties. In Arizona, houses are built without basements and deep foundations. Stepped over the threshold, and you’re already on the ground, but all living creatures are found on the ground. That is why my children lived in an apartment on the second floor. In the house, two days before the move, daughter killed a scorpion. He crawled out from under the stove when the children brought clothes in the evening and turned on the light. A month before our move, the children bought a special ultraviolet flashlight, in the beam of which the scorpions glow with a greenish light, like phosphorus. Now, after dark, we go out into the yard to hunt with this flashlight and have already killed four scorpions in the yard.
Scorpions are nocturnal inhabitants, during the day they do not crawl, but at night they crawl out and hunt midges, spiders and other insects. It seems even useful arthropods, if their bites were not very painful. I used to think that they were all poisonous, but it turns out that there are 1750 species of them, and only 50 of them are poisonous to humans. Arizona is one of the habitats where poisonous scorpion species are most often found. It is believed that if the claws are small and the sting on the tail is large, then this is a highly poisonous scorpion, and vice versa, large claws and a small sting are slightly poisonous. And also, the smaller the scorpion, the more painfully it bites. can’t control the amount of venom administered to the victim.
Those scorpions that we saw with us were small, 5 – 6 cm and with small claws. The main danger is that in some people (especially children and the elderly) their bite can cause an allergic reaction in the respiratory tract. When the children told their friends about the scorpions, we were told to throw out our black light and live in peace. Here they treat scorpions the way we treat cockroaches in Russia — as an unpleasant reality. There were even those who were bitten by scorpions.
It turns out that they periodically appear in everyone’s houses here, especially in those houses that are located near the desert or in the mountains, people just call exterminators who spray everything with some kind of solution from some algae. This solution is safe for pets, but it affects the insects that scorpions feed on, and as soon as the food is gone, so are the scorpions. In the apartment, how many children lived there, they did not see a single scorpion because the poisoner came there periodically. Well, nontheless, I think, and we will deal with this problem.
