Ok I am posting to save anyone the trouble I went through. This ant is not to be taken lightly. You cane end up with tens of thousands or more of these ants. You cant eliminate them by killing what appears to be a mound. They have colonies of 40+ queens, they travel 1/2 mile from nest, they mingle with other colonies and there have been reports of colonies with millions of ants covering square miles. I recently moved to Florida from up North and didnt know what i was getting into. My family and I moved into a home in Venice accross from a nature preserve and on a canal. we thought this would be a little slice of paradise. well until we opened the doors and saw the ants. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of ants on my property. The home was vacant for months giving these ants time to multiply like wild fire. Like anyone else I thought well heck I'll go to Home Depot and spray. We bombed the house, sprayed all base boards and floor. Then we cleaned everything. I layed down ant barrier around the house, spread TIACICIDE granules n the yard, used liquid TRIACICIDE in a pump sprayer for trails and nests. After a month of this battle I have them a bit under control but as soon as it rains or I stop they come back. They are relentless. I bought every bait Home depot sells, they seem to ignore baits. A few use it but not typicaly as you normaly see ants react to baits. So I gave in and hired a professional exterminator to examine the property. He confirmed its the caribbean crazy ant and is a MAJOR problem here in Florida. He said he has examined homes with millions of these ants. If left untreated they will over run your property. I will be starting regualr monthly treatments starting tomorrow. He said right now there is little research and he has been speaking with the areas Entimologist about these ants. Until they are upgraded above a "pest" status not much funding or time will be spent to research an effective way to kill them. He said right now all I can do is treat my home, yard and drive them off the property. If I stop treatment they will just return quickly. This I can confirm. I had spent over 100 dollars on spray and granuals may last trip to depot. I spread and sprayed and dumped it everywhere. Then it rained and about 3 days later I have them coming back everywhere. Hence me giving into a paid service coming out tomorrow. Adding up what I spent at depot VS the exterminator, he is cheaper. Plus I dont have to handle the chemicals. Also note those of you looking for nests to treat. I found they love to make nests in trees, especially the fibrous ball atop the palm trees. They like landscape timbers or logs, boards, any kind of structure in the sand. I even had them crawling out of the electrical conduit running down to my dock. I trimmed back all my bushes, weeded, really cleaned up the yard. All this helped but doesnt solve the problem. These ants are like nothing I have ever seen in my life. I feel for those of you in the same battle as I am. Those of you who dont have these ants consider yourself lucky. If you have a small infestation, act quickly before its a major issue. If you doubt what am saying google caibbean crazy ant and read for yourself.

Susan, We try so hard to peacefully co-exist with the wildlife, but every now and then they make it impossible. That bobcat has been keeping a low profile since the day it enountered our son in the garden. Maybe it has moved on elsewhere. Unfortunately, the coyotes babies will soon be large enough to roam, and then it gets really crazy for a while around and after sunset! We have friends and neighbors having HUGE problems with racoons killing and eating their cats and kittens, so I am feeling lucky that so far the coons have only eaten the corn. Of course, I put up all the cats inside at night. There are a LOT of racoons most years, and at least twice as many as usual this year. I think racoons are 'cute', but I HATE having them on the property. They are very destructive. Our birds have apparently taken care of the mosquito problem as we have fewer and fewer of them every day. We're having more ticks around the area, but partly that is because it has been too wet to mow lately. My guineas are so happily tick hunting that they don't want to come inside their coop at night. For ticks on a body, I have had luck coating them with any sort of oil....veggie oil, baby oil, orange oil, etc. I found a tick on me yesterday, but I had been going through the tall grass with the dogs, so I wasn't surprised. I check carefully for them every night. I have only had them on me three times, which is pretty good considering I am outside most of the day, every day. Dawn

I'm sorry that the link I provided doesn't take credit cards - I suggest Googling for the item and finding another vendor that does if you don't have a Paypal account. May I offer another perspective on the Lyme Disease crisis? I know that many people really feel that a diagnosis of Lyme is a devastating, life-altering, health issue. I don't know them so I can't dispute their beliefs or health status, but I can state that I have had Lyme and been treated for it (twice) with a course of oral doxycycline, both times successfully and I do not have any long-term issues. My poor DH had neurological Lyme (positive spinal tap and Bell's palsy) and he was also successfully treated without long-term consequences, though in his case it required a PIC line and 30 days of very expensive IV antibiotics. In my rural, farming neighborhood, nearly everybody has had Lyme, at least once. We live in the upper Hudson Valley in a Lyme "hotspot". I find feeding ticks on me at least dozen or more times each year, despite fairly rigorous anti-tick behavioral precautions. (I use no sprays or insecticides on either myself or clothing.) I do keep doxy on hand to take prophylactically (single 200 mg dose) if I find a tick I don't know, for certain, has only been on me for a few hours. (That strategy has always worked well until the advent of Anaplasmosis which can be transmitted much earlier on. It is unknown how much time is needed for Anaplasmosis, unlike Lyme which needs a bite of 18-24 hours duration. In the case of the bite where I got Anaplasmosis, the tick could only have been on me less than 6 hours, and probably only biting me a good deal fewer hours.) If you live in a tick area you might consider discussing post-bite prevention antibiotics with your MD. (And as a side note unlike some drugs which can lose potency over time, doxy both loses potency and becomes toxic. So, please, don't use old doxycycline, ever.) Since I expect to encounter ticks, daily, I only rarely discover a tick that could possibly have been on me more than a few hours. (Example 21 bites last year, but only a single instance when I didn't know for sure that there was no way it could have been on more than 6 hours. And even though I took the preventive doxy for it, it was not a matter of having missed one after being out, just a failure to do a tick check prior to going out for the day.) Which brings me to my most important strategy suggestion: If you live in a tick area, or plan to go to one: do a thorough tick check BEFORE (or daily in the am in my case where I live in tick-hell) you go out. This gives you a tick-free starting point to age any subsequent bite. I also change out of my outdoor clothes after being in the woods or gardening as soon as I come inside. I never sit on the couch, or a bed, or on a rug in tick-exposed clothes - in fact I won't even sit down, except in the bathroom, in tick-exposed clothes. I wear tall boots (Wellies) for much of the year. I have separate outdoor coats for going out into tick areas and going to the grocery store. I routinely tuck all my layers in carefully: undervest into panties, turtleneck (with cuffs!) into pants, shirt into trousers, etc. I find only very thick socks will stop tiny nymph ticks, so I don't bother much tucking pant legs into socks. Working in my woodlot, I wear Carhardt bib overalls with slightly over-long legs that slop over my shoes. I never, ever, wear shorts, or sandals, or a skirt in a tick area unless I am prepared to be there for only a few minutes and then go in and strip down for a full tick check. My late Mother who was an ornithologist (wildlife biologist who specializes in birds), made for herself one-piece, zip-front overalls because she worked in very tick-infested areas of the world (with a whole different set of virulent tick-borne diseases.) I've been thinking of digging out her patterns and seeing if I can make myself some lightweight ones for summer this year as I anticipate being even more exposed than usual. I had to give up one of my most-cherished daily activities: walking out in the early morning with my cup of OJ to see what had come up overnight in my garden because I usually did this in my long nightgown. Ticks just adore hopping on to flannel and then hiding in the seams only to come crawling out the next night in my bed! Notwithstanding my fairly elaborate anti-tick strategies, I want to point out that a tick bite, even a diagnosis of Lyme disease, is not necessarily an enormous health crisis. True, some people seem to find themselves engaged in protracted issues, but most people do not. There is a substantial, and thriving, cottage industry promoting long-term Lyme disease problems. Ordinary, straight forward, evidence-based, medical care in most cases is more than sufficient. Don't assume that just because you've heard of Lyme horror stories that long-term problems will inevitably happen to you. And in the case of Anaplasmosis, what I am recovering from just now, there is NO known case of long-term, or chronic, infections. In researching it after I got out of the hospital, I found many of the so-called "Lyme-Aware" websites lumping all tick-borne diseases into the chronic-crisis viewpoint. But deep research into the medical literature at a medical library refutes this. One person who I encountered recently in my effort to get the word out about the presence of Anaplasmosis (someone really promoting the whole chronic-Lyme thing) told me that my high post-disease Anaplasmosis antibody level was "proof" of the disease remained lurking, insufficiently treated, in my body. Um, no, the antibodies show my own system's response to the infection and its state of being able, now, to better defend against it in the future. This is how vaccines work! I suggest taking a good deal of the chronic Lyme online information with a healthy dose of skepticism. Your own primary care doc can take care of you quite well in the case of Lyme. You don't necessarily need to be treated by a so-called Lyme-Literate physician. Do daily tick checks (at least 2X day); decide on some family strategies for minimizing the risk of bringing ticks in on clothing to drop off in the house; consider getting a script for prophylactic doxycycline for tick bites of unknown length; put Frontline on your pets if they go out; get any tick off completely and promptly and without squashing it while doing so; clean the bite with hydrogen peroxide or Betadine; lay in a supply of Benadryl topical cream if you, like me, get very itchy on the third day after a bite; take the 14 or more likely, 30-day, course of treatment if you develop any a tick-borne illness and don't make yourself too crazy over the highly-promoted, but remote, potential of long-term illness. It's not inevitable, nor even, likely. Please note: I am not saying that some people don't develop long-term illness from tick-bites, just pointing out that there is considerable hype, and a lot of misinformation, out there related to Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses. I urge you to keep in mind that most people do not have any serious problems. And I really don't want to dispute Alisande, someone who I respect a great deal. But I don't agree that the treatment protocols are confused. In the case of Lyme and Anaplasmosis, (the only two I have personal experience with)they are pretty straight forward. When my husband was diagnosed with neurological Lyme (a stage worse than "simple" Lyme), I checked out various so-called Lyme-Literate medical practices. Some were so obviously doing "wallet-biopsies" on prospective patients that my alarm bells went off. As Alisande says most won't take conventional insurance or Medicare, require significant up-front cash payments and there's substantial uncertainty whether their treatments are any more effective than standard care. We opted for standard care and even at that advanced stage, it was a complete cure for him. What is very effective against the risk of of all tick-borne diseases is: personal vigilance (daily, careful tick checks); prophylaxis of some bites; and recognition and prompt treatment of any illness. In the case of three of the four possible tick-borne diseases in the NE (Lyme, Anaplasmosis, Erlichiosis and Babeseosis) doxycyline treatments of varying lengths are the cure for the early-stage disease. Only Babesiosis requires different antibiotic regimen. HTH, L.

The painter just did an incredible job on the cabinets. I can't tell you how thrilled we are. And she had never even done a glazed cabinet before- but lots of faux work. The original painter I hired had a family "event" (ugly divorce) which of course I knew nothing about, and sold his company without telling me. The guy who bought his company called me one day asking if I was ready to schedule my work and of course I didn't even know who he was - he explained the story and came and looked at the job and said he never would have bid glazing cabinets because he didn't know anything about it. This was on Day 5 when the ceiling was laying on the floor. The KD called someone, she pulled in my driveway in 90 minutes, said she was willing to give it a try and I said - with one look heavenward.. ok lets do it. The process on these 27 yr old dark stained oak cabs was *Take doors off and clean with TSP from Home Depot or other degreaser - I also used an interesting 'green' cleaning product from Trader Joes that sells for $3.00 a giant spray bottle and has cedarwood oil, sage oil and grain alcohol in it - that stuff will really clean up grease and dirt - took wallpaper down, cleaned stove tops..... *Sand door fronts to smooth any roughness from the old stain but did not try to smoothe away the oak grain *1 coat of Primer - Gripper by Glidden *2 coats of acrylic latex paint on doors and boxes - the color is Sandy Brown from the old Pottery Barn line which is a chamois color, but it was mixed into Behr Primer and Paint all in One. *1 coat glaze hand applied with artists brush to the crevices where the routing is, and wiped away, then a wash of glaze that was dry brushed into the surface of the door I watched her do a cabinet side and she dry brushed the glaze onto almost dry base paint *That had to dry for 72 hrs because the glaze needed that curing time to harden. Glaze has to have time to cure, and also needs to be covered because it apparently will re-wet. Be sure to follow mfrs instructions. *Then the entire door was polyurethaned with a satin poly *The cabinets are middle of the road Merillat and have wood fronts, but vinyl covered sides. They were degreased and scuffed with those bars of sandpaper, and then painted the same as the doors. I did not do the interiors as I have had paints remain sticky if you pick the wrong paint for the job. These cabs are not sticky on the outside but I wasn't taking chances. They are in good condition and there wasn't any aesthetic reason to paint the interior. We only painted the face of the wood frames of the cabinets but nothing inside that. Ditto poly for the cabinets. *The poly takes minutes to dry but 30 days to cure so I was extra gentle with the boxes and doors. I am having them back in August to touch up all the paint, and to put a 2nd coat of polyurethane on the cabinets. She showed me doors of her own that she had done faux finishes on and how the depth of the paint job is subtly changed by adding more thin coats of poly My sister is now having her kitchen done by them in the same process - different color, and I think they have already sold 3 jobs to people who saw my cabinets at her house. If you look at the back inside of the doors you can see a little bit of grain, but with the 2nd coat of paint, and the dry brushed glaze to add texture, you cannot see any grain at all on the cabinet door fronts. But she painted a couple trial doors in sections with different versions of the above as we worked on the glaze color etc, so we knew going into it what the door fronts were supposed to look like. I had decided to live with painting my old cabs for a while and spend more money on other things in the kitchen and I am really pleased with my decision. I spent 12% of the price of new cabs from a midlevel line and about 4% of the quote for custom cabs. I got 5 painter quotes over time as I was researching this and they ranged from $1800 to $5500 just FYI - it paid to keep asking to find the combination of quality and price. Some of those were for paint alone, no glaze. If I was really going to go the whole route and gut the kitchen I would remove walls and re work the whole functional area of the laundry and bath, and add a shower and storage. I also would turn the sink to the outside wall and put in a new, bigger window above it. That would have meant re-designing the entire area of laundry, bath, kitchen and probably taking up some of our garage storage area. Given my experience level with remodeling (low), my budget considerations, and the economy for resale in our area, I am just too conservative to do that right now. Also - I know this will be like lighting a flame thrower on this forum but I had to draw the line somewhere and after all, cabinets are just boxes to put dishes in. I have other interests and I already knew my priorities were to clean and modernize the space, easy maintenance, and I wanted to be proud to have people come over so I could enjoy my friends and not feel embarrassed about my worn out kitchen. Since I have gotten sensitized to cabinetry and paying attention, I am surprised at the number of high end newer homes that have foiled white cabinets that basically look like crap with the rub marks and mdf chipping. I think new home buyers are really getting ripped off without knowing it - it all looks so pristine when its new. You know Sherwin Williams has colorists that will come to your house to advise you on colors? they charge $75 in advance to come out for an hour or so, but then give you $75 gift certificate to spend at their store. I had one come over and we had a blast together - envisioned the entire house in grays - haha. Spent her $ on our deck stain so it was a good thing for me. She told me that she had painted 3 sets of kitchen cabinets white in renovated homes and to expect the paint to stay whole for about 5-7 yrs. But she didn't polyurethane so I don't know how that will effect it all. I thought this choice suited my needs at this time. Someday I think it would be really cool to have an ultra modern kitchen with blond and stained red wood cabs and surgical stainless countertops with all the appliances built in - but not this time around. I am so running on.. hope that answered you Q about the paint