Without Water or Electricity and Killing Gnats in Hawaii

Sure, you don’t think about killing gnats in Hawaii when you come up with the idea to live part-time in Hawaii while still selling Sacramento real estate. Nope, you have visions of lounging at the beach when reality has you glued to your laptop most of the day. Not to mention, dealing with the slower pace of life and the Aloha one finds in Hawaii. When something breaks, it might not get fixed immediately. But it’s not for lack of trying.

I’ll get to the killing gnats in Hawaii part in a minute. On Friday, while in the midst of putting two homes into escrow, all of the power in our house went out. I immediately called Hawaii Electric. This being Hawaii, somebody answered the phone. This also being Hawaii, within minutes, an employee from the electric company showed up at our house. It took a while to get it fixed.

While on the phone with Hawaii Electric, I explained how workers were repairing a fire hydrant at the end of my street and they most likely knocked the power. The representative tried to be helpful by sharing in simple terms that water doesn’t have anything to do with electricity. But in the end, she was wrong. And the fire hydrant workers somehow managed to damage the electrical. Too coincidinky. Now I had no water and no electricity.

Did that faze me? Not really, I continued working on my lanai, processing the offers for the two homes that were going back into escrow. Yay for an iPad hotspot. Both of these listings were homes that had been in escrow previously, briefly, but the buyers flaked. To the buyer’s agents, the buyers were making a wise decision not to purchase and exercising due diligence. To this listing specialist, they failed to close, despite promises to close, thus they are flakey buyers. Buyers and their agents have little idea what turmoil they cause a seller when they flake.

True story, an agent called Saturday to ask: Is your seller motivated? Made me laugh. All sellers are motivated to sell, pretty much.  Without skipping a beat, I ignored his question and asked: Is your buyer planning to lowball? We all have our perspectives. Mine is to protect my seller’s interests. Of course, on Saturday, though, I was again without water and electricity.

Sunset over Cook pine trees and ocean in Kailua-Kona

The bigger issue, though, was the gnats. I googled ways for killing gnats in Hawaii but the advice from a Honolulu TV station was to keep the lights turned off. Gnats love a light source. I first noticed them Friday night. Hovering around the lamp in our living room. When I turned on the lights in the kitchen, they began swarming the stove and sink. Nothing like a girl on a mission.

My secret weapon for killing gnats in Hawaii is also my all-purpose solution in Sacramento for killing ants. You wanna know what it is? Windex. The ingredients in Windex are detergents, solvent, fragrance, ammonia and alcohol. Maybe the gnats drown, I dunno. Powerful stuff though. So, I pulled the table out and sprayed the crap out of the wall, floor and lamp. Then I sprayed the gnats on the ceiling and they dropped like, well, flies. After that, I began spraying the walls, wherever I saw them. I slapped most of them silly in the kitchen.

But when I sat down to watch TV (with all the lights off, btw), they gathered on the television screen. Why is a bug crawling on that kid’s ear? Oh, because it’s not a bug. It’s a lousy gnat. I grabbed a flyswatter and every minute or so I’d pop outta the chair and whack the screen. I killed so many gnats.

Next day, on Saturday, I decided to bag up a couple of the gnats and go to Lowe’s garden center. I was a little bit worried they could be subterranean termites. Did you know there are 3 basic kinds of gnats? You’ve got your fruit flies, drain gnats (yes, they live in the pipes under your sink) and fungus gnats, which hover in overly wet plant soil. I could not identify my gnat. Probably because the photos of gnats are really large while the gnats are very tiny. And I wear multi-focal contacts.

I asked a Lowe’s gardening clerk and random individuals I found in the store to identify my specimens. Conducted a survey. Everybody agreed the gnats were too small to be a termite and every single person identified the specimens as fruit flies. So, I bought several different types of products used for killing gnats and brought them home.

Armed and ready, was I.

All night I searched high and low for gnats. Could it be? Yes, I think so. They were all gone. My efforts at killing gnats Friday night worked. Now I bought all of that gnat bait for nothing. But, Eureka, the water and electricity are back on. It wasn’t such a big deal because I am in Hawaii. Nothing is a big deal when one is in Hawaii.