7 Quick Takes Friday: A Veritable Hodgepodge

Larry's back from his business trip. He brought me a present - a tin of chocolates shaped (a little too much) like sardines, each wrapped in silver foil marked with scales and one staring eye. My less-than-positive reaction disappointed him. "It's funny," he insisted. He reminds me of a 6-year-old boy puzzled as to why the girl he likes didn't appreciate the worms he dug up for her.

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Larry brought me a pretty T-shirt, also. No pictures of dead fish on it, even...

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The stinkbug population seems to have diminished. Which made it easier for me to explain to Larry where 400 dollars of his hard-earned money went to...

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You folks are too nice - my Followers number shot up to 213. Thank you all. Now I can die happy.

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Brian's birthday is tomorrow, and I just realized I forgot to make a cake. What sort of mother would do that? "Gee, honey, I'm sorry - I was so busy blogging I never got around to it." Poor kid....

I could buy a cake. I've never done that before. We've always had the dairy-allergy issue, but now Theo is away at school. Hmmmm.....this could open up a whole new world for me....

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Baking for the kids used to be such fun. After 18 years, though? It loses its allure. Actually, after that amount of time, anything kitchen-related loses its allure. Including cleaning out the refrigerator, which explains why there haven't been any pictures of moldy food on this blog in a while. But never fear! With Auntie Kate arriving on Monday for a prolonged visit, I have no choice but to face the unface-able.

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Ugh - there is an outsized centipede crawling on the wall. Make that two...do you think Larry missed me enough not to mind my waking him up to take care of them?


More 7 Quick Takes at Conversion Diary - check them out! I like reading her, because she has scorpion issues. Makes my centipedes look rather tame, you know?

Wherein I Fail The Prairie Test

400 dollars, people - that's what it took. A nice young gentleman from the pest company visited to explain what they do about eradicating stinkbugs, and by the end of his spiel I would have signed over way more than that to have him fumigate my attic and spray my soffets.

Take that any way you want to. But, you know? There's something downright sexy about a guy saying, "We can take care of all these insects for you today, Ma'am." I almost swooned.

And then the guy he sent over gave me a patented box to catch my pantry moths in. These exterminators sure know how to make a gal feel special.

The AC is fixed, too. I'm sure the neighbors are beginning to talk: "Look at that, Larry away for 3 days and she has all sorts of men coming and going..." What can I say? I'm an easy mark. I bet next time Larry isn't going to leave the checkbook lying around while he is away. Foolish man.

When the dad's away, the wives will pay? Something like that....

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My Followers number has sneaked up to 196. If any of you read me regularly but haven't declared yourselves a Follower, would you mind helping me reach the nice round number of 200? It's not important, in the larger scheme of things, of course. But misery loves company; and if I have to have this horrible stinkbug smell on my hands (literally) from a traumatic incident with a still-live stinkbug in Rachel's room this evening (and yes, I completely terrified the girls with my screaming - I'm not proud of it), it makes me feel better to know that I have a full 200 people who will hear about my misfortune.

Ma Ingalls, I'm not. Anyone else remember where she calmly shakes the locusts out of her voluminous skirts? Gah.

I just made myself sick, looking up pictures of stinkbugs for this post. Forget it. I need a drink.

From Bad To Worse

Due to our stinkbug invasion (and the unseasonably hot weather), I shut all the windows and turned on the air conditioning. Which idea worked just fine until...well...it didn't. The AC, running continually for the past 3 hours, hasn't managed to get the house below 80 degrees.

Hmmm...I could open the windows, but then I would have to deal with the stinkbugs. Suffocation? Or death by vile entomological creatures? Now, there's a Hobbesian choice for you...

And don't think that just because I closed the windows, I eradicated the stinkbug problem. Oh, no - I merely got them down to not-quite-manageable numbers. I had to spend an hour this evening removing the creepy creatures from the bedrooms of my crying children.

I hates them (the bugs, not the children). Where's a flamethrower when I need one?

Ants are still coming in, too. It's an entomological mosh pit in here. We're the party house of the insect world.

Are mosh pits still happening? Or was that reference just too 90's?

I'm losin' it, people. Totally. Tomorrow I am calling the pest guy and the air conditioning guy. I will throw money at them in an attempt to make all these problems go away. And Larry will not dare to leave me home alone again.

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Speaking of the 90's, Larry and I missed all of Seinfeld. (Sorry, Suzy). If we were to rent them from Netflix, which seasons are the best ones to go with?


[Photo credit: Hixon Heating and Air]

Yarn Therapy

Larry's away. I'm not. He left the car at the garage for an inspection while he's gone. The mechanic just called and essentially - after saying incomprehensible things about belts, freon, and main engine mounts (?!) - got me to agree to spend all our money on tuning up our 6-year-old Honda Odyssey.

Something about the engine not falling out on the road....sounded sort of urgent to me...oh, yeah, and something about the radiator...that's important, too, right?

So! Without even going to IKEA, I managed to spend over a thousand dollars today. And the kicker? Larry doesn't know about it yet. Gosh, I wonder if he bothers to read my blog while he's away? Hi, honey! Enjoy your trip!

Meanwhile, we are being inundated with creepy crawlies here. The sugar ants woke up and said, "Hey! Let's go back to that house we always invade this time of year!" The stink bugs are supposed to be staying outside now that the weather is warm, but they didn't get the memo. There are a couple of unidentified creatures with wings that I've had to get rid of (I drowned one with Tilex in the bathroom last night - hasta la vista, baby!). The centipedes are beginning to show up in force.

By the way, this thing here? As seen on TV? Doesn't work. I want my money back.

[Photo credit: Taylor Gifts]

I haven't even regaled you with tales of our pantry moth infestation, have I? Maybe because I don't want to relive the experience of Theo's finding larval grubs at the bottom of the raisin container he was snacking from. Stoic that he is, he didn't puke, even though there were raisins in his mouth at the time. If it had been me, I think I would have had to have been physically restrained from ripping out my own tongue. After vomiting up my tonsils, that is...

We refrigerate everything now - as if the refrigerator wasn't overcrowded enough.

Let's recap - unplanned motor vehicle expenditures, spousal abandonment, and insect invasions...hmmm...I need something to take the edge off...something...


Tell me - how much hand-painted sock yarn does this sort of situation require? And do you think I should order several balls of each shade of Swish? I mean, "Swish" is such a cute name for a yarn, you can't knit just one.

I think I need some larger-size circulars, too. Oh, and cotton - look at those fun colors! Lucky for me, I have a baby grand-nephew on his way...

Ah, living well is the best revenge...

The Age of Innocence

There is a bevy of little girls in my neighborhood, all near Rachel's age. They trooped into my house yesterday afternoon, sweetly alike with their pigtail braids and their hair ribbons. Clutching their American Girl dolls (well, all except Rachel, who has repeatedly refused my offer of an American Girl knock-off), they headed down to the playroom, little Susie trailing in their wake with her cheap-o baby doll. I continued with my housework/blogging, reveling in the fact that Rachel was finally playing with dolls (albeit not her own). It had distressed me to see her former lack of interest in this little-girl pursuit, particularly as I remember so many happy hours of my own youth spent playing Barbies with my friends.

Just forget about the swingin' Barbie country camper thing, okay?

Where was I? Oh, yes - Downstairs later to do some laundry, I paused briefly in the doorway of the playroom. The girls were all sitting in a circle with their dollies. "Tea party?" I chirped as I glanced inside, and then I stopped. Did a doubletake, as it were...

Each doll (including Susie's innocent little babe-in-arms) had a pile of poker chips in front of her. Rachel was dealing. It was a veritable American Girls gambling den.

You can find all the accessories in the upcoming catalog, I'm sure - visors, cigars, maybe even a mini-print of that picture with the doggies playing pool. The merchandising possibilities are legion. Any suggestions?


[Photo Credit: What American Girl Doll]