Well, I now know what is causing this flea problem I have been battling since we moved in.  It seems when the furnace guys were here yesterday digging around in my scary, musty, completely ignored and locked away basement, they encountered MANY, MANY mice.  They called it an infestation.  I do encounter the occasional mouse up here in the house, but compared to how it was at the farm, I thought this was nothing.  it seems because of the cat, the mice secluded themselves to the basement and attic which is why I rarely see them.
I immediately hugged my cat and apologized for telling her she was so lazy and worthless, and went out and bought a ton of poison for the attic and scary basement.  I just hope my house doesn't smell like dead things if there is as many living in the walls as the workers let on.
On the other hand, I have never spent any time at all in that basement and the previous tenants were...weird.  As in, they maintained the house as cheaply and half-assed as possible.  Since we have moved in, Curtis has replaced all the plumbing (which leaked), new faucets and drains (also leaked), rewired several outlets and switches (no ground-fire hazard) as well as rewired the garage (fuse box complete with pennies behind every fuse--yet again FIRE HAZARD).  With the new furnace, we no longer need the chimney, so we will have that blocked off for the sake of insulation.  This is when we found that they had a huge chimney fire here and that chimney was being used with stove pipe instead of having the liner replaced.  It was packed with soot and rotten stove pipe.  Really, really dumb.   Its seems too, when they were burning wood (2 furnaces ago-when the chimney caught fire), they never cleaned up the wood chips ever...what I thought was a dirty floor was actually 2 inches of rotten wood chips, soot, mud.  I have a floor drain and 2 more inches of head space down there now!  Woah!

So, with all this work being done, and the mouse thing becoming known, I have been discovering an untouched part of my house.  The overuse of the scary stairs has proven hazardous when the stairs collapsed on one of the furnace guys (sorry furnace guy), so yesterday we were outside trying to figure out how to make stairs.
Having that finished, I am learning all about my basement, SCARY, DIRTY, MOIST, SMELLY, but...as we are cleaning it up, it is turning out to be a very valuable and usable storage space.  IF we can get it dry (it seems the more we clean, the better it gets), I can store my canning down there, maybe even have my kiln down there...maybe, it can be cleaned up enough to actually serve me as a bit of a crafting area.  For the more messy crafts like clay and glass and scroll saw...

Anyway, getting back to my original subject, kill the mice and I'll probably be free of the fleas and they won't come back.  Oh would that be nice or WHAT!?

I should answer the question that is probably on everyone's mind, why, if you are renting, are you fixing everything?  Well, because this is rent with the option to buy which kind of gets the landlord out of having to fix stuff.  I don't really mind, because we can do things ourselves and it costs us very little to fix something like a sink or an outlet.  Curtis was a journeyman electrician when we were in Virginia together and has wired several houses for people, so I am comfortable with his electrical knowledge.  The stuff is relatively cheap when you don;t have to pay for a guy.  The same thing goes for plumbing and other maintenance.  It's not hard and Curt is very able to do just about anything.  Anyway, we have been offered the house on a land contract and we are getting ready to draw up the papers.  I am really close to being a home owner again.  The payments and taxes are quite a bit more manageable than the farm and things should stay about the same payment wise as it is with rent.  I'm happy.  This house is really cute and has a lot of potential.  It was just overhauled by a weirdo previously, but its nothing that can't be fixed over time.

So, that's the story.  I'm extremely grossed out about the mice, but that is in the process of being remedied right now.  There is probably a very gruesome genocide going on right now I don't really care to think about.  Animal rights people should just look away.  I don't care to entertain any ideas of live catching 4 gazillion flea-infested mice and releasing them into the wild so they can turn around and come right back.  As far as I'm concerned, vermin have no rights when they enter my living space.  Die vermin.  Die.

Oh.  I scored a birdcage for 20 bucks that needs a ton of work.  It is really nice and big and on wheels.  It is missing a top and a lot of bars, so I have been welding and fixing on it.  As soon as its all done and painted, I am going to take before and after pictures.  It should be daggone awesome.  So far I have replaced all the missing bars and have built a new top for it.  Instead of making a new grate for the bottom, I am going to make scrolly bits around the bottom and will finish the top with scrollies too.  the whole thing will be painted black with a hammered texture...kind of powder coat-looking. More on that later.  My birds should be thrilled with it though.

Okay.  I need to get back to work.