When I got the text from Husband saying “We have bats!!!!” I was not worried. I was amused. He tends to freak-out at anything furry with wings or legs or blood sucking fangs. Bats, I thought, are good. They eat mosquitos. Mosquitos are bad. I hate them more than I hate pickles and strawberries. And then I got home and went into the attic with him and had a look at the bats – and saw there were like, THIRTY OF THEM! THIRTY FREAKIN' BATS IN OUR ATTIC!!! It was a bit creepy and I will admit I did squeal - but inside where Husband couldn’t hear me and judge. The bats were in the attic and we never go in the attic so, no harm, no foul. Right? The next day, in broad daylight, I went up and snapped a few pictures. Proof to our friends and family we weren’t exaggerating. Apparently, I have a tendency to do that. And I took pictures, for my dear Mom who was weirdly excited about the bats. She wanted to find out what kind they were. And what kind were they? I have no idea. All I know was there was like, THIRTY OF THEM all tucked in the louvers of our gable, squeaking away and pooping all over the ground below! Little known fact – well actually, a fact I didn’t ever think about until now. Bats sleep upside down and when they have to poop, they swing themselves upright, poop and then flip back upside down to sleep. In our case, the poop slides down the louvers and onto the would-be deck below. I say would-be because we pulled down the one that was held up by two bolts a year and a half ago and have yet to build the new one. Anyway, last night, Husband noticed bat poop on the kitchen deck, below one of the other gables – we have three. Up into the attic we trouped to see if the bats had moved louvers and THE BATS WERE GONE! Like nowhere to be found! And even I bounced that flashlight beam about the attic spines (not sure that’s the right word) looking for them hanging about. One foot ready to run screaming if one of them was anywhere near me, but nothing. No bats at all. We had gone from THIRTY to none over night. You know how you’ll see a spider on a wall, bend down to get your shoe – or in my Mom’s case, something to “rescue it” with – and when you stand up it’s gone? Well, missing bats are like that, only every little noise or flutter of the breeze means they’ve infiltrated the house and are about to attack. My neck is killing me from all the flipping and twisting about to make sure I'm not about to be swooped on. I’m also starting to have phantom mosquito bites. I want them to come back and live in plain sight. The bat you can see is the bat you can love... On a side note, this guy has been hanging around the yard this week. Last night he had a stand off with Husband and his SUV. I tried to get a picture as proof but Wild Turkey shot me a look that said, “Back off, Lady.” and stalked off into the neighbor’s yard.
It is still not boring here.
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Most times, I wake up and I have no idea what I’m going to write about. I lie in bed, mulling, letting random thoughts bounce around my mushy brain until something clicks and forms a somewhat coherent idea. Most times, those ideas keep ping-ponging about as I let Tigger the Dog out and drink a glass of water. By the time I sit down at the computer, they are mostly clear and pecking away at the keyboard I go.
Sometimes, I’ll start something the night before and hope that by the time I wake up, I have more to say about it. Most times I do. This morning, I’m stuck. I watched Married At First Sight last night and thought it would be perfect post to babble about. This is what I had when I went to bed: A show where folks are set up with other folks, meet them for the first time at the wedding and then spend the next month living as a married couple trying to make it work. WTF TV is one step away from broadcasting an execution and I’m totally ashamed to admit I would watch. OH. MY. GOD!!! It was an absolute train wreck and I could not look away. And this morning, I can’t get past those "brilliant" sentences. I cannot get a single thought to stop running about the inside of my head and screaming “AHHHHHHHH!” at the top of it’s little tiny thought lungs. What’s bothering me isn’t the premise. Reality shows are pushing harder and harder to find something to attract the masses. I really have no doubt executions are next, what with the selfie births that are posted daily. Ew. And arranged marriages have been happening for years. From what I’ve heard, some are successful and actually lead to love. The way I figure it, when you take the ‘get out of jail free’ pass that is divorce, you are forced to work on what you have. And when you enter a marriage without all the romance novel expectations of fireworks and roes petals’ and deep smoldering looks that tell you everything, marriage is a somewhat easier path to travel. I’m saying this having no personal experience with an arranged marriage. I did marry Husband eight months after meeting him online but we ‘talked’ for a month before meeting and he’s a very honest and direct guy. I knew what I was getting with him because I knew him, deep smoldering looks and all. No, what bothers me about the show - and bother isn’t the right word - what fascinates me about the show is the absolute faith these folks have that this will work out. That four people and "science" can pick out the one they are meant to be with. That they are so sure, they are taking a giant leap in a very permanent way and getting married to a person they have never met. It’s like getting a tattoo of your partners name right across your forehead only here, THEY DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW THEIR PARTNERS NAME UNTIL THEY ARE ON THE ALTAR ABOUT TO GET MARRIED! Marriage is hard. Melding your lives together, trying to figure out when to give in on important things like, does the toilet paper go over or under, these things are land mines with a couple that know each other and love each other. Husband and I still fight way too often about my leaving cupboard doors open and his inability to put dishes away and we’ve been married for nine and half years. How these folks are going to make it nine days with cameras following their every move, I have no idea. But I will be watching it happen because I cannot look away. And I am hoping, wishing, praying they make it through. Because I think that someone that has that much faith in what might be deserves not to get crushed by reality. Especially not on film. I have begun to hate chipmunks with a passion I usually reserve for murderers and drunk drivers. At times it is all consuming; I plot ways to grab them by their stubby tails and swing them like a lasso about my head, releasing them into someone else’s wild. Other times, I find their antics amusing and cannot wait to tell Husband the sitcom like scenario that just played out in front of me.
I know they are useful. Owls eat them and I like Owls. I spend way too much time sitting in the window willing the Owls to come and grab one for dinner. But the garden is dotted with holes. The apartment like stone wall is a maze of tunnels and the suckers move in and out of there like… well, I have no idea what like. Really freakin’ fast – and then they pop up somewhere else like those dang whack-a-moles. Tigger the Dog is going mental. I’m not that far behind her. So I researched ways to get them to move out. I didn’t want to poison them. It’s a slow painful death and that’s just mean. Besides, I might accidently kill Owl. So, I looked for non-lethal ways like dropping mothballs and pepper in their tunnels but they didn’t work. The chipmunks just pushed the mothballs out of the hole and dug a new one next to the peppered one. The garden smelled like a grandma with a penchant for spicy food. And still we had chipmunks. Yesterday was a day of itchy chipmunk hate. I think they’ve multiplied by a million. They were everywhere. The plants, that I passively planted and pretend to care for, were dying, their roots disturbed by tunnels. I went online, looking for a chipmunk killer that would do the job for me. I was prepared to slip money to a stranger in a dark bar to make them go away. And then I came across the Chipper Dipper suggestion. The Chipper Dipper is a five-gallon bucket filled with water. A layer of sunflower seeds across the top and a board ramp leading up to the top with seeds teasing the way. Animal lovers judge away but read on. I’m not proud. I looked. I considered and then I built one. But I’m wimpy and pessimistic. And I didn’t really think it would work. And if it did, I didn’t want to actually kill a little bugger. Well, I did, but not really. I wanted them gone but not hurt. I was morally torn but still frustrated and pissed - so I built the Chipper Dipper, set it up in the garden and walked away. Hours later, Husband and I came out to see the rabbits chasing each other in the yard and watched Tigger the Dog chasing them. I wandered over to my bucket to see if anyone had been stupid enough to take the bait and low and behold, it had caught one! He was alive, in water up to his shoulders, wet and pissed. I squealed. I didn’t know what to do next. Tigger the Dog came over to check out the bucket, stuck her head in to see what was making all the noise and Chipmunk snapped at her. TTD yelped and jumped back. Husband tried to get TTD to go to him while I dumped the bucket over to let Chipmunk free. TTD faked like she was listening, waited till I tipped the bucket and then, when soggy Chipmunk took off –TTD followed. Fast. Because TTD thought she was suddenly playing a game of tag with her new friend and she was determined to win. It was a frantic scramble across the yard. TTD was close, almost tagged Chipmunk with her teeth but Chipmunk disappeared into the chipmunk apartment building that is our patio wall and was gone. TTD spent the next fifteen minutes trying to get him to come out and play again but Chipmunk stayed out of reach, cussing us out. We finally got our now adrenaline filled dog inside and left Chipmunk alone to tell his community about his traumatizing near death trip to get dinner. And just like that, my short career as a chipmunk murderer is over. Until one of those suckers ends up in the house. Then it’s game on! When we moved to America, we lived with Grandmother for about year. My lovely Grandmother and her hypnotizing TV. Brother and I were so captivated by everything on it, from the sitcoms to the commercials, that we never moved away from its shiny flickering screen. When we moved into our own house, my mother decided that we wouldn’t get a TV ever. We told her she was awful. We told her she was unfair. We told her she was the worst mother ever. And yet, she never gave in.
But she did do this for us, every weekend, she would walk down to the library with us and let us pick out as many books as we’d like. We’d wander home, hours later, our stacks of books balanced carefully in bags. Once home, we’d plant ourselves on the couch or chair or floor and disappear into a spooky forest or bloody murders scene or, in Brother’s case, useless facts about baseball players. It was a good time. When Mom was here a month ago, she reintroduced me to the library. For years now, I’ve been buying my books online to read on the Kindle. And buying books can get expensive and risky. You never know what you’re going to get and if it’ will be worth the price. Slowly, without really realizing it, I was weaning myself off the habit of reading at all. Buying books is like having dinner with a blind date; you have to stay and eat the meal no matter how much you hate him or what he says. Libraries are more like dating online, you can chat and see how you feel before making the commitment. Even once you decide to meet face to face, it’s just coffee and you can walk away whenever you feel you’ve seen enough, no harm, no foul. This is a long random babble to say this: thanks to Mom, my library addiction is up and running again. Only this time it’s gotten dangerous. I’m back to weekly visits with stacks of books coming home with me. Usually books by authors I’ve read before, usually caught by the title and then hooked by the blurb on the inside cover promising escape from reality in gruesome or unrealistically romantic ways. Last week, I found the first two books in a series written by a friend of a friend. “I’ll give it a try,” I thought. “It can’t be that bad. She’s on the NY best sellers list.” Yeah, right. I started reading Chelsea Cain's murder mystery series on Friday afternoon, sitting out by the fire pit in the shade of the trees. It’s good. It’s really, really good. SO good I got SO involved that I forgot to move when the sun moved and I sat there reading as the shade turned into the fiery sun… and I burned my boobs. Like such massive heat radiating off them, I probably could start a fire just by putting a match head right next to them. Like the spots where the straps from my tank top were are so white it looks like I'm wearing a shirt. Totally and completely scorched. Glowing. Which means this is a perfect time to go and have my six-month checkup mammogram on my right boob. Right?!? Because what is better treatment for your charred, over-cooked and tender boob? Squishing it between two large metal objects while you hold your arms in awkward positions. Better yet, have some woman you've just met do the squishing for you, moving your scorched lotion less skin back and forth until she gets it in just the right position to shoot it with evil x-ray rays. Stupid reading. Stupid Mom. Totally her fault. Today is the Fourth of July and last night I dreamt about ordering food and fancy cocktails from a wedding catering deli counter.
Which makes no sense because; no one I know is getting married. I've not seen a wedding on TV. The book I'm reading has had no weddings in it so far - ribs getting broken by a hammer and nail but no weddings. And when I did get married, all those years ago, there was no catering or fancy cocktail. They don’t have those in a drive-thru chapel. The brain is a bizarre and twisted thing. Anyway. Happy Fourth of July! May it be exactly what you want it to be – with or without the side of crazy. |
AuthorMy name is ej. I'm a girl. I say that because with the short hair and the short initials, folks aren't always sure. More brilliant insights to who I am in About me Archives
April 2019
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