Return of the Yellow Jackets

Perhaps I have written about the yellow jackets here before. They moved onto the deck over the summer. On a work-at-home 80 degree day I noticed outside the deck window. This is how I know they were entering and exiting through a seam on the door framing, to go who knows how far deep into the walls of my house. Yadda Yadda traps and spray.. they were dead and the crack was sealed and the trap full of dead bodies -- their little heads on little pikes I made especially for this purpose to deter others.

Yesterday one appeared inside.
By mid-October in NE, certain creatures are expected to have gone back to their winter lairs until the sun comes back: the buskers, the Red Sox, and the yellow jackets.

This is how I know you should not use wasp spray indoors, because it comes out like a firehose, and blew back the sheers before it even dripped on the one yellow jacket I was trying to kill. But I hadn't used it before. I had had a vision of being on my deck with no means of escape except the sliding door they lived under, which would have to be kept closed to keep them from escaping inside.

I'd been meaning to wash the sheers anyway.
This is how I know you should dry-clean your sheers instead of washing them.

But it's a gentle cycle, and a front-loader. Minimal stress to the fabric, and I've seen what goes on at the dry cleaner. And I'm thinking, this is one of those Great Moments in Homeownership, where not only do I have sheers, but I am actually going to clean them. I wouldn't have taken them to a laundromat any more than I would send them to the cleaners.

This is how I know that there is not enough fabric in a load of eight sheer panels, or enough water in a front loading gentle cycle to justify the amount of Woolite I used. This is also how I know that even though yours is a privately owned washer, and not really locked when it is running, and you can stop it whenever you want... you really shouldn't open that door.

So one spin cycle later and the water is drained and the floor is mopped (as my own husband, I chose to use the bath towel that was in the laundry anyway), but the machine is full of suds, and so are the curtains. I unsheathed them from layers of puffy bubbles into the bathtub while running the wash cycle again without anything in it. I recalled that as a apartment dweller, I belonged to a gym that had a swimsuit spinner that would take care of this easily, and imagined myself sneaking down there with a dripping gym bag. How many panels would I get through before someone came out of the locker room? And this is how I know you can't tumble dry anything that wet. And that wicker laundry hampers don't hold water. But that the Kenmore is still a very efficient machine.

Another wash for the curtains, again without soap, and they were not actually this dirty.
Now they are drying on racks. Stupid yellow jackets.