(Totally stole it from my sister. I think is bad karma to steal mantras?)
Anyhow. It is working, I guess, cuz I am.
Fine.
With June.
Kids have been home a week now. And it feels like a party, all day, every day. Maybe like a frat party. Because there's fun and friends and lots of pool frivolities, certainly, but also fighting sometimes, and drinks flowing like water (because actually is water, and also some lemonade. Is 100 degrees.), and then the house gets really, really wrecked and nobody wants to clean it. Sometimes people pee in the bushes if they can't get to the toilet (most of these people are toddlers), somebody always throws up on me (the baby, mostly), and then we all try to sleep it off in the morning. That's my favorite part. The kids aren't wholly on board with the sleeping part, yet.
I'm super tired. And I never get a moment of peace. You can't normally expect to, at a frat party. Okay, fine, I don't really know anything about frat parties. I went to the University of Arizona for two years, and never attended one. But I heard some stories, people.
(Boy, I don't sound very cool right now. And I wasn't. Instead of the frat parties, I went to Institute dances where they played a lot of Footloose music. And it was the 90s.)
Tonight we went scorpion hunting. We bought a big black light at Walgreens, and sure enough, Jane found one of Hell's own arachnids out by the living room window, fluorescing green and creepy like a Halloween glow stick. She smashed it with Ross' shoe, and she collected her 50 cents. My Mom (who lives just a couple houses down the canal) got stung on Friday, and her finger is still numb, so we are all pretty jumpy. But so far we've been lucky, I guess.
If you think it is lucky that we had a three inch hairy spider on the front porch last night. It was big. And so hairy, he coulda used a haircut, or a side part. It looked like a tarantula. For all I know, it WAS a tarantula. Seriously, I'm not cut out for dealing with desert fauna. Jane squealed and told me I should spray it with hairspray, so I did. That just made it mad. (Perhaps he thought I was attempting to style his very long gray hairs on his enormous bulbous abdomen?) I'm getting the heeby-jeeby-shudders right now, reliving it.
Only thing worse than hairy spiders and scorpions? SNAKES.
My Dad ran into a rattlesnake last week while he was hiking. He was alone and listening to his ipod, so he didn't hear it rattling and striking at him 'til he was nearly upon it. Then he stopped to take photos. Brilliant. He's also seen a giant desert tortoise and a couple of mountain lions this spring. Not bobcats. Mountain lions. Huge. He's lived in Arizona most of his life and never seen one before. And two together is especially rare, cuz they are lone hunters and only seek each other out to mate. So, who knows what he interrupted?
Wink wink.
And that is all I have to say tonight. Just: I'm fine with June, but not with all these critters.
What are you doing this month? You got yourself a mantra?
What kinds of nasty insects/amphibians/reptiles/bugs that look eerily like tiny lobsters but not in a way that makes you want to dip them in clarified butter do you have at your house?
12 comments:
Oh yeah...THAT'S why I don't want to move to Arizona!!!
We do have some pretty nasty spiders here, but the worst are the Japanese Mosquitoes. Our wussy American blood is considered a delicacy round these parts and the buggers leave HUGE welts when they bite!!!
The word 'abdomen' makes me feel nauseous. Seriously. Boke.
Hmmm. Up here we get thick carpets of Box Elder bugs that coat doors and windows in a inches-deep mass of orange and black. They don't bite or sting, though. They just have poisonous guts.
Holy frijole. Mountain lions, scorpions, and snakes! Oh my! (#2 loves Wizard of Oz right now.) I don't know that I could do Phoenix in the summer. The other 8 months of the year I could handle with ease.
It snowed about a week ago so our critters are still in hiding, I'd imagine. However, a bird flew into our sun room somehow a few days ago. I figured it would just fly back out the way it came in. It didn't. Ben said that he would borrow a ladder and take out a screen in a sun room window so it could fly out. He didn't. I was hoping it would survive until we could get it out. It didn't. I blame Ben for the corpse sitting 10 feet from me right now.
Holy cow! You are cracking me up lady! I mean, the frat party analogy, the spider with the side part, the frisky mountain lions. Too much!
My mantra---I'll deal with cold Utah weather if it means I don't have to search for poisonous insects with a black light. Too scary!
Loved the hairspray and angry spider bit :) I'm in the OC and live in a rural spot. We get HUGE horse flies and spiders. We also have a mouse stuck under the sink. Never seen a snake in the yard, but I expect to anyday, and we get dead rodents and small bunnies in the pool once or twice a year. The idea of scorpions in shoes and things in the house really freaks me out!
We had to scorpion hunt a few years ago. Haven't seen any since (knock on wood). That black hairy spider is lucky - will never need a comb over. Perhaps a faux hawk would be a nice do for that little guy.
My mantra isn't necessarily a mantra. It's just this: Let Mommy sleep. I'd happily lend it to you if you need it.
Enjoy the frat party. Do you have a couch on your front lawn?
Hmmm... well at our house, we have Coco's sister here.. and it "seems" like Coco's sister Brownie has been on the prowl. (Brownie came for a visit since she was being beat up by a mom cat in Gilbert on a daily basis).David and I are watching the calendar and wondering what could have mated with this little weiny dog who is looking quite chunky, and has all of the signs of impending motherhood. I am watching her and feeding her extra calories and reading everything I can about whelping. Stay tuned.
I'm totally cool with snakes (haven't seen rattlers around here but we do run into coral snakes and something else poisonous that I can't remember.)
There are scorpions in my neighborhood but they like to hang out at the newer houses (yay!). I love the black light idea. We have one left over from an incontinent dog.
Haven't seen any tarantulas, but I'm guessing we have those too. Ignorance is bliss.
June is a breeze compared to the furnace of July and August, so I like it.
Love your frat party talk. The insects and the snakes, I don't love those at all. I was introduced to ticks this year via the dog. We used my nice tweezers to pull them off, sprayed down the yard and avoided the walks in the brush. Snakes--my mom was bit by a baby rattler, very scary.
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