When Nature Confuses

2004-04-18

I'm not sure what to make of Nature today. Here are the facts.

1) The black ants that make an annual spring/summer pilgrimage to our kitchen are not being at all deterred by the 9 ant traps in the kitchen or the spraying Francisco did yesterday. I have resorted to smashing them with my paper towel-clad fist, which is groce, but they have driven me to it.

2) 40 minutes ago I walked into my bedroom to find a blue tailed skink sunning itself on the carpet next to the window--how it got into the house I have no idea. After Esther utterly failed to do her catly duty and catch the thing, it scurried under the bed and is still there, as far as I know. This is not something I am allowing myself to think about right now, and I am specifically not thinking about maybe having to sleep tonight with a lizard in the bedroom. I think I need to bring Lucy in for the lizard assassination job--she's much more vicious than Esther. My preference would be to catch it and put it back outside, but those things are Fast, and I have no clue how to catch it.

3) 30 minutes ago I went to take a shower and had to first remove a cricket from the tub, which was unpleasant because I was already naked and crickets hop. It didn't hop on me, but I was in horror that it would; hence the unpleasant

4) [The Clincher] 20 minutes ago, while enjoying a warm shower, I felt a little itchy sensation on my left hip and looked down to see a tick happily sucking my blood. It was at this point that I let out a wail and said, a la Patsy on Absolutely Fabulous, "I'M NOT HAPPY, EDDIE!" I showered in record time and got out to deal with The Tick.

I was going to try and pull it off with tweezers, but I decided to try and suffocate it off first. We do not have vaseline (which I think is the tick suffocation product of choice) but I found some baby oil and droozled it onto The Tick. And then I droozled more, and a little more, and The Tick seemed unaffected. I wiped at it a bit with a tissue, but it didn't move. I got the tweezers (unwillingly--I'm squeamish about trying to remove ticks with tweezers, because they're easy to squish and then their guts go out their mouths and into the bite; sad but true) and tried to grip it, but it was all baby oiled up and slippery. I wiped it some more with a tissue and once again tried to grip it. At this point some small miracle happened, because The Tick let go and crawled onto the tweezers. I dipped the tweezers into the toilet (yes, Groce, but it's what my brain told me to do at the time, and who was I to argue?) and then flushed The Tick down the toilet. Problem solved. After I got dressed I had the Boy strip to underpants so I could check him for bloodsuckers, and he had none. Francisco is at a big Sunday Shootenanny today, so he'll have to wait until tonight to be checked, and perhaps by then we will have experienced a plague of frogs and swarm of locusts. I don't know where the tick came from, exactly, because we went on a hike yesterday morning, but I showered yesterday afternoon and the Tick wasn't on me then. So who knows.

I have a lot to do today, and the next thing on the agenda is to go buy more dry cat food, because the cats are totally out, and though we gave them double helpings of canned food this morning, they are still eyeing their empty bowl nervously. I will also buy cheese, because I want to make macaroni and cheese for dinner--we found gluten-free macaroni last weekend and I want to see if it sucks or not. I can tell you the rice crackers I've been eating have the same flavor and consistency of roofing shingles, and they stick in my teeth, yet I continue to eat them. Apparently I am stupid, or just extra desperate for something to put cheese on.

Last week I started a batch of caraway aquavit--it steeps for two weeks--and later today I'm going to make a batch of orange peel/fennel/anise/caraway aquavit, which steeps only 3 days. This is the kind I made last time and we're almost out of it. If I can find cloudberries this summer, I'm going to make cloudberry aquavit, because I think that would be about the best summer drink ever with seltzer water and ice.

I need to get moving; I've crossed way too little off my list for today so far. I'm going to brush my teeth and go on my errand and enjoy the first summery heat of the season. 85 degrees today! I need that cloudberry aquavit Now.

Love,

E |

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