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October 31, 2005
from our house to yours
Happy Halloween.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2005
only connect
I wake up when the clock says 4:48 and I tell myself that it's "really" an hour later, so I get up. What do I do with my bonus 60 minutes? What I usually do: read the paper, drink coffee, check e-mail, think about what to write. I wish I had someone to talk to. Or do I? Because during the day, when the sun is up and things are animate, I tend to resent having to make room for other people.
But when the rest of the world shuts down, in the middle of the night, early in the morning, that's when I get out of bed and wander the house wanting something I can't put my finger on except to say that it's something I don't have. I want someone to talk to. I want someone to be on the other end of this message. I want someone to have a cup of coffee with, someone who'll go down to the dock with me and watch the sun touch the tops of the trees, someone who'll say "good morning" and then--
And then? I don't know. Do I really want what I just wrote? Because after the sun comes up what would we do? Moo and Herself will be awake, and then there's grocery shopping and laundry and errands and the yard and homework and all the rest of the crap I distract myself with all day long. So ... and then?
And then go away, maybe. Perhaps I only want somebody to recognize me and say, "yep, you're still here. See you later." And I know it's selfish to want somebody else to make all the effort for me and then fade into the background, it's childish, but I think that's really what I'd like. My friend R. said "you want somebody who'll drink your bathwater." Uh huh. Drink my bathwater, clean the tub, and then go home. Like me or love me without wanting anything back, because there isn't a lot of me to go around any more. The dates who say "kiss me," the dates who say "you know you want to..."--well, no, no thank you. I think I'll just let you make all the effort, okay? And then please go away. But come back tomorrow.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 29, 2005
try again tomorrow
Tonight we turn the clocks back. I just realized, as I started typing this, that it's been a year exactly since I started keeping an online journal. Last year on Halloween weekend I asked The Husband, about whom I alternated between wanting to fling myself on and wanting to fling myself on with a sharp object, to help me set up a blog and he did, and here I am. Happy anniversary.
I went to bed last night at 8:45 just so the day would be over. When I woke up yesterday I felt fine but things just started going all to hell as soon as I got up and stuff that I would have shrugged off on any other day as mere annoyances brought me to my knees. I spent a lot of the day crying, in fact; which was alarming to me and to Herself, who assumed her father was involved somehow, but no.
Thinking that liquor could salvage my mood and wanting a decent margarita, I took Herself and her friend K.J. to dinner, where Herself acted like a five-year-old and K.J. ordered an adult meal that she didn't eat. When we got home at 8:00 there was a message from my friend B., "Can I come over?" Sure. Then the friend who was going to come today to pick up the furniture she told me she wanted (my downstairs couch and chair) called and said "I changed my mind, don't be mad." Don't be mad... except I already bought new furniture and it's been sitting in boxes in my library for a month because the old furniture hadn't been picked up. And I only bought the new furniture after she said she wanted the old furniture.
I got off the phone with my friend, sighing because although I'm the one with the problem I spent the entire phone call trying to make her feel better, and I went downstairs to where Herself was looking at TV. "What are you watching?" "Next Up." My stomach did a funny thing. The margarita was too sour. "What's that?" "A gay dating show."
I went upstairs, called B. and said, "Stay home," took two Ambien, got into bed, and went to sleep.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2005
life in the bush of ghosts
If You Are Reading This
by Lynn Levin, from Imaginarium
GIRL WITH DOG IN RAIN! Sweetheart, where are you now?
Saw you at 16th and Walnut with your chocolate lab under an awning.
It was raining parking lights and car horns. I was the guy double-
parked delivering a tray of bagels to a corporate meeting. Nice stuff, 5
flavors, cream cheese and chives, butter daisies. Our eyes met, do you
remember? I can't get you out of my mind. [Box 347]
OLD LADY AT QUIK MART. When I weighed your peppers, you
said I had my thumb on the scale, then you called over the manager
who yelled at me and docked my pay. You: Old bag in a tan overcoat,
muffler, purple pocketbook, evil eye. Me: Goatee, geek glasses, facial
hardware. Please give me the opportunity to stab you. [Box 1601]
CHAD, LET ME EXPLAIN. That guy you saw me with on R7
local on Columbus Day meant nothing to me. He's just a commuter.
Your silent treatment is unbearable! I'm beggin' you baby, come back!
[Box 776]
PENN CENTER ELEVATORS FROM 16th TO 30th FLOOR. I
want to push your magic buttons. I want to draw Mona Lisas on your
beautiful skin. You: Backless red dress, black heels. Me: Bald guy, 35.
We rode up together, you got off at 19. I was too shy to talk to you.
Now full of regrets. How about sushi or tantric sex? [Box 1446]
GUY ON R7 LOCAL OCT. 10, EVENING COMMUTE. You sat
next to me and suddenly it was Valentine's Day. You liked my Offspring
button. I told you about med tech school. You let me take your pulse. It
was almost like holding hands. You: Hilfiger sweatshirt, laptop, got off
at Somerton. Me: Hip chick, red hair, Capri jeans. Let's pick up where
we left off. [Box 777]
YO! YOU THERE ON DEERPATH DR. I'm the telemarketer you
dissed. Wasn't selling you anything, SOB, just giving you a free estimate
on kitchen cabinets. I know your number and where you live. Call now
to apologize. [Box 961]
OFFICEMAX, FEASTERVILLE, YEAR AND A HALF AGO. You:
long black trenchcoat with three-piece suit. Me: Asian girl with black
jacket, wet curly hair, tight black pants, sunglasses on my head. You
stared at me a long time waiting at checkout. We looked at each other
as you walked out. Will renew until I find you. [Box 1674]
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2005
boo.
Suddenly it's fall. Turning, falling leaves, a chilly breeze from the north, cold rain; yesterday I turned on the heat for the first time. Moo and Herself are watching Scream 2 in the other room--some cable channel's nod to the first holiday of the season, broadcasting what passes for frightening nowadays, but it's all crap. "Face it, Mom," says Moo, "there are no scary monster movies. Nothing is scary." I know he's right when I find myself thinking about Halloween with nostalgia--Jamie Lee Curtis in the closet hiding from the boogeyman, I love that part. And I remember how cheated I felt when I first saw it in the theater, it was just so cheesy and bad; it was the same way I felt when I first saw Space Ghost as a kid and realized the old, thoughtful ways were being shunted aside to make room for dreck. Nothing is scary, and yet it just keeps on comin' at ya, like the plate of breakfast in Count Floyd's 3-D House of Pancakes.
Herself's best friend has decided to become a vegetarian. Apparently she came to the decision today during lunch at school, while eating a salad that had pepperoni in it; her conscience bothered her when she thought of "the little pigs" being turned into lunch meat. "Hey, I'd be sad if somebody turned Spike into chow," said Herself, "but I could never be vegetarian because I love cow too much, and sushi. Life just wouldn't be worth living if I couldn't eat that stuff."
What makes life worth living, anyway? Rain on a new roof, a quiet house, the birthday present I got from my sister--a mug with the characters from Nightmare Before Christmas on it--a glass of good cabernet, the day ending. Last night I went to dinner and ate so much I got a backache. Talked and drank and laughed, came home too late and woke up in the morning still full from the night before. What makes life worth living, anyway? A good scare:
The Shining
Session 9
The Innocents
The Haunting
The Sixth Sense
The Blair Witch Project
The Exorcist
Alien
Blue Velvet.
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
with apologies to Charles Dickens
Today we have a special guest writer; I hope he doesn't mind me putting his work on my blog, but he's really got a gift. Of some sort.
The story thus far: Our hero begins school, after his grandfather's untimely death and his parents' late conversion from Secular Christianity to Catholicism.
My conversion to Catholicism as you can guess was not easy. I still remember an episode in the first grade. I was going to St. Rita’s Catholic school. The nun, Sister Portia, was teaching us about Noah’s ark and going through the whole outlandish story, I raised my hand and waived until she finally called on me.
“What did Noah do with all the poop?” I asked very sincerely.
The whole class of seven year olds made a collective gasping sound. Sister Portia turned white and I still remember she seemed to stagger.
It wasn’t until I heard a giggle from the back of the room that I realized I had royally fucked up. Even as a seven year old I knew shit had sincerely hit the fan and I had offended someone.
Sister Portia’s eyebrows slowly came together, the blood rushed back to her face, turning it red, and she stomped to her desk. I remember how her habit flew and swirled in great swoops as she made long forceful strides. Without pausing she swept up the wooden ruler she kept on her desk. This she used to smack kids with and I knew it was heading my way.
I remember crying and feeling the pain of having my ear twisted as she dragged me to the front of the class. She then made me face the class and told me to hold out my hands, which I did, and she asked me, in a rage, “Who do you think you are Mr. Rose?”
I couldn’t speak, I was horrified. I was gasping for air. She grabbed my hair and yanked on it until I screamed.
“Who do you think you ARE Mr. Rose?” she was nearly screaming, her vocal chords seemed to be on the very edge of control.
“You will not make light of the word of GOD!!! Do you understand?” She was hysterical with anger.
I felt my whole body quivering in fear, my breathing was shallow and tears pooled in my eyes. I felt my lower lip losing control and beginning to quiver.
I started to say yes, but before I could she told me to hold out my hands.
I did just as I was told and in a flash she slapped my knuckles with one hard blow from the ruler. I screamed. A searing burning sensation shot up from my knuckles and through my arms.
I yanked my hands back and instinctively they went behind my back as if they were of their own accord. Fleeing for survival.
“Put your hands OUT!!!” Sister Portia screamed again at me. Her voice was piercing and I could tell from the look on the other children’s faces that fear had infiltrated our sun lit class room and a the darkness of evil was now upon one of God’s Servants.
The whole class just watched silently and I started to pee myself.
Then again, as quickly as before, SMACK! And my hands stung and burned. Again, without thinking my hands went behind my back protectively. My knuckles were roaring in hurt.
Sister Portia then asked me what lesson I might be learning.
II remember turning my hands over and sticking them out.
“Turn the other cheek?” I cried.
She went silent. I could tell I had done something wrong again. She knelt next to me and through clenched teeth she hissed “You are really pissing me off, you know that?”
I then told her I was sorry between gulps of air and uncontrollable spasms.
She made me stay inside and clean up while the kids played on the asphalt that St. Rita’s called a “play ground”.
Sister Portia told me, later, that I was her favorite student and that even though I may be on edge of retardation, she felt I would be a good catholic and I would probably live past the age of thirty.
When I turned eight, I refused to go to Catholic school. My mom was upset for about a week, my dad didn’t care, but to this day I fantasize about fucking nuns.
Copyright 2005 by AJR
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2005
tender is the night
I had every intention of breaking up with my therapist today.
I've been seeing her for a little more than year and when we started I was a complete wreck, I mean complete. Holy shit. Mostly all I did for a very many sessions was cry and say over and over in one way or another, "I can't believe this is happening to me." And she would hand me her box of tissues and assure me, calmly, that it was happening, and yes, my life sucked balls. I'm sure she got tired of it--in fact I know she did--and eventually I did, too.
Eventually I stopped needing the box of kleenex and the affirmation of my life's basic suckiness, stopped saving things up to tell her, stopped thinking "what would W. tell me to do?" Eventually the tears dried up and my brain started working again and I started having my own ideas and didn't need to go every week--which was fine since I couldn't afford to go every week; I was down to once or twice a month, and I'd forget what I wanted to talk about when I saw her anyway. During my last session I found myself thinking "Shit, this is like talking to a girlfriend, except I'm paying for it."
So today was supposed to be it, the last time. Except that I couldn't do it. Couldn't say "It's not you, it's me" because now she's got a new office, she moved to a brand-new, huge office suite in a new building, and her office has bright, fresh paint and a big bathroom and a kitchen and new furniture and gorgeous bookshelves and prints on the wall and I started thinking during today's session, while I forgot to tell her the most important things and asked her questions I already knew the answers to, "I can't quit; what if she needs my problems to help her pay for all this stuff?" Who knows how many square feet my neurotic inability to cope paid for?
I thought "Well, I'll just see her once more, and that's it." I thought "Maybe I should get her a replacement me; who do I know who needs therapy?" Only everybody. I thought "After I go on that first date I'll see her just once more, in case I need to talk." I thought "I wonder how much the carpeting cost?"
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
condemned to repeat it
I spend a weird afternoon in frustrating, cryptic e-mail correspondence and then spend the evening trying to make my children happy, and anybody who's a parent knows how frustrating and cryptic a journey that can be as well.
By the way, it's not just them; I can't seem to figure anybody out: not my kids, not men in general, not me in particular, and I spend a lot of time feeling like a person in the background a photograph of somebody else--I'm at the corner of the image, or maybe a little bit left of center ... I'm the out-of-focus one even though the images around me are perfectly clear.
The traffic is terrible on the way home. Herself and Moo are sniping at each other when I walk in the front door. The cat litter needs changing. I make dinner; it's the wrong dinner and Herself says "Well, I guess I just won't eat tonight." I ask Moo to fold the clothes and he announces that he will only fold his, thank you very much. Since all the food in the house is food nobody will eat, I go out to the grocery store after the kitchen is clean. I stop at the Girl Scout leader's house to pay for an upcoming horseback-riding field trip. She isn't home but her husband is; he's on the phone but doesn't hang up and with the easy charm and hospitality so common to where I live, doesn't invite me in but keeps me on the front porch and lets me teeter gracelessly on one leg while I write a check using my thigh as a writing desk. To whom should I make it out? "I dunno; she'll figure it out." She, I assume, is his wife, the girl scout leader and the mother of his children. "Great!" he says heartily after I hand him the check, then he shuts the door in my face.
When I get back home the cat litter still needs changing and Herself and Moo are still at it. I pour myself the end of the bottle of champagne I opened on my birthday. It's flat but so what. Here's to me.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 17, 2005
Oh sailor why'd you do it
"I'm not going to eat this," says Herself, glaring down at the turkey burger on her plate. "It smells like silverware." I have no idea what that means, but the gist of it is that she only eats broccoli and steak fries for dinner, whatever, and then after dinner I go to work for the evening.
I'm home now and she is reading Harry Potter to me, pausing if she comes to a part she doesn't understand or a word she needs help with. Just now I was reading an e-mail and didn't realize she had stopped until she cleared her throat. "I've been sitting here wondering how long it would take you to notice," she said.
I didn't notice because I was reading one of the trillion e-mails I've gotten over the past couple of weeks from somebody I really like and who makes me laugh and who is pretty smart and interesting and who actually knows who David Lindley is and who is, unfortunately for me, dating somebody else. We can be friends, but if we are friends I need to not like it so much when I hear from him. Or I guess I can like it all right, I just need to not expect it to turn into real friendship, since we will probably never meet. And that begs the question Just What Is The Point, Anyway?
Exactly. There isn't one.
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2005
Gravity is the receiver on the hook
It's Sunday and the day after my birthday. Herself is asleep on the couch in the other room; Moo is slouched completely down in his chair in front of his computer, still in his pajamas. The house is almost completely quiet and outside the sun is dazzling the water. I think "go outside and enjoy the day," but I don't. I don't go down to the dock to bail the sailboat and sit in the sun, I don't take the paper out onto the deck to read, I don't take the dog for a walk, I don't sweep the front steps.
Instead I spend the afternoon hanging out in the house, the TV is on, the sun shines through the windows and I watch some old Six Feet Under episodes, drink champagne and talk to DrAR on the phone. For once I have no sad stories to tell him, Happy Birthday. In the late afternoon Moo and Herself and my friend D. and I go out for dinner at Macaroni Grill. We are all very hungry and the meal goes quickly. Happy and full, we drive home and past a church where an illuminated sign on the front lawn reads "I Cannot Come."
Well, I guess that is something people might want to pray over.
Posted by JudyLa at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
my verse is extra spooky
I knew that to keep in touch
Would do me deep in dutch
'Cause it isn't the rush of remembering
It's just mush
And that signature thing
Is only growing harrowing
I should have no trouble now
To keep from following
So why did I kiss him so hard
Late last friday night
And keep on letting him change all my plans
I'm either so sick in the head
I need to be bled dry to quit
Or I just really used to love him
I sure hope that's it.
Fiona Apple, Tymps
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2005
oh.
"What's the matter?" says Moo as I look at my phone to see who's calling me, and sigh. It's Saturday afternoon and we are in Target to buy jeans for his sister. Outside the rain is falling--no, "falling" is too mild a word ... outside the rain comes straight down, like a curtain, unbroken; if it were solid you could climb it right up to the clouds. The parking lot is flooded; Moo and I are soaked through. It's cold in Target.
"I guess I need to tell somebody I'm not interested in him, and I'm trying to figure out how to do it and be nice. He keeps calling and I keep not talking to him."
"Why do you have to be nice? Just tell him you aren't interested."
Weirdly, it never occurred to me that I'd ever be in this situation, and it throws me. "Because I feel bad that I don't like him since there's nothing actually wrong with him," I say, sounding completely lame even to myself. "I just..."
"Give me the phone," Moo says. "I don't have to be nice. I'll tell him you don't want to see him again, and then I'll say 'and stop calling my mom.' " He says all of this in a slightly impatient, reasonable tone of voice.
I'm embarrassed to say that I actually consider this option for a moment. Dating advice from my 14-year-old child, who has yet to go on even a first date. I can see that I'm going to have to grow a spine. "Grow a spine, Mom," says Moo.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2005
things you can count on
from a Dean Koontz novel:
Everything starts happening right away, often right in the first paragraph--no foreplay, no stage setting, no explanation. (It's like Koontz says to his readers You want to learn how to swim? Jump off the dock.) A girl wakes up and there's a spider-eating serial killer dispatching the family she is visiting. A woman goes out for a jog along the beach and is killed by half-human beasts. An insomniac goes downstairs to make herself some warm milk and realizes that aliens are taking over the planet.
And
At least once in each book, a car window shatters into "gummy" fragments of glass. Rain is described as "sussurant."
And
Dogs are psychic, mystical beings with one paw on the pulse of humanity and the other paw on God's throne. Government is evil; intelligence organizations are run by sociopaths; organized religion is questionable; alien life forms have it in for us, whether they are fauna or flora; Hell exists; scientists, often in league with the government or intelligence agencies, are Wrong About Everything; parents are either clueless, well-meaning-but-weak individuals or they are psychotic alcoholics, drug abusers, child haters, but children are always infinitely wise and persevering.
And
Once the action begins, unfortunately, the characters never shut up. Any situation, from driving a car to facing down an alien life form to being menaced by a killer, involves pages and pages of internal musings about what's happening. This is Koontz's preferred method of fleshing out two seconds of action into a half-hour of discussion. He must have been a philosophy major.
And
He never met an adjective, "as if" sentence or metaphor he didn't fall in love with and use over and over.
And
All climactic action happens in the rain, no matter where the story is set. When I listen to a Dean Koontz novel I like to imagine parallel worlds roiling with menacing clouds, water falling from the sky, thunder, lightning, with children and women and supernatural dogs battling death and evil, all at the same time.
And
Reading Dean Koontz is my guilty secret pleasure (or was a secret). I love his books even when they drive me crazy--once I skipped fully half the tapes in the set because I couldn't stand to hear any more internal dialogues. But mostly I like his peculiar author's tics and twitches; they soothe me because I always know what to expect. Horrible, disgusting, evil things happen to his characters, mostly perpetrated by horrible, disgusting, evil beings, human or otherwise ... but somehow he finds a way to lead the characters he loves--the young women, the dogs, the kids--out of the rain and into the sunshine. They are bruised by the most hideous circumstances but not sundered. And the stories are great.
I recommend for the uninitiated these Dean Koontz novels:
Midnight (mad scientist turns men into ravening super-human beasts)
Intensity (evil-beyond-evil serial murderer with a really cool name [Edgler Forman Vess] versus spunky 20-something girl)
Dark Rivers of the Heart (with a subplot Koontz himself described as "psychos in love")
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2005
something in the way
I am listening to and trying and failing to like a cd called Beatles ReGrooved. I admit I am a Beatles snob. That is to say I like my Beatles music performed by The Beatles, not by George Martin, not by Frank Sinatra, not by The Muppets, not by Rufus Wainwright, not by Muzak.
Years ago I watched a show on PBS in which Leonard Bernstein lectured on Beethoven. Bernstein said that the hallmark of Beethoven's genius was that when you listen to his music, you can't imagine one note being different--it's absolutely perfect as written. I guess that's how I feel about The Beatles: I can't imagine anything they wrote or sang being sung differently by anyone else. It's all fine the way it is, thank you, and I don't need it tarted up or plained down or synthesized to remind me how important it is, and was, to my life. I remember as a teenager feeling personally offended by my father's record of the Boston Pops renditions of Beatles songs. As if they were nothing more than tuneful. As if it wasn't the most important music ever written. (You get the idea.)
The Husband likes the cd quite a lot and said something kind of poetic about it: that the new arrangements open up the music, expand the songs to encompass meanings that they didn't before. He gave me a copy of it so I could hear for myself. And while I really like that he said that, and how he said it, and how it made me think, and that he burned me a copy thinking I would like it, when ReGrooved's insipid version of "Two of Us" began playing the other morning on my way to work, I ejected that cd and put in Luce instead. I think the artists of Beatles ReGrooved should go pick on Green Day.
Posted by JudyLa at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2005
where the party at
Before the bus gets to the bottom of the hill and we kiss good-bye for the day and I walk back home, Herself says to me "Now, you know what to do in case someone tries to take you."
She's serious.
"Yes," I say, "Run away. And fight, if they try to grab me."
"Kick them in the balls, Mom," she says, cupping her hands in front of an imaginary wounded groin. "That'll stop 'em."
"Okay."
The bus stops in front of us; the doors open. She gets on; the doors close and the bus drives away. I walk home, unmolested.
Posted by JudyLa at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2005
the sky is falling
The men are here early in the morning and they are here when I get home from work. They are putting a new roof on the house, and this afternoon Spike sat in the living room, nose pointed straight up at the ceiling, where all the noise emanates from. He watched it, waiting. There was plaster all over the floor, there is wood covering the front lawn, it's like we're in an ant hill and can feel humanity walking over us, or like we're in a fish bowl--there's someone at every window.
The old shingles come off and pretty new cedar shake shingles go on. We have needed a new roof for years and water marks had started to drift down the bedroom wall where it leaks when it rains. But fortunately it's been dry as a bone for months. I am so happy to have a new roof, and when it is finished I am going to paint the walls of my bedroom whatever color I like and I am going to lie awake and listen to the rain on the roof--when we have some--and I will think only poetic, romantic thoughts instead of about the rotten wood over my bed between me and the sky, and then I'll go back to sleep.
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2005
now it's time to say good night
I went into the city tonight--last night--to see a play with my friend A., who is fun to go out and see plays with. I enjoyed myself but the play itself was about an hour too long. We could have skipped the third act.
Anyway now it's almost 1:00 a.m. and here I am, with my glass of wine and Jack sleeping at my feet. Herself and Moo are in the next room watching anime something or other, and isn't it time for bed for somebody at least? Me, I guess, since I'm the oldest.
I listened to this on the way home:
I had a dream
It was a good dream
You were there and so was I
We were so happy I did not want to open up my eyes.
And we were driving down a road
it was a long one
there were signs all over saying
the signs said
"welcome to your life."
I looked over and you were smiling
You had a great big smile going
Then you turned to me, you turned and you said,
"all your life I've got your back."
And if you want to try
We'll make it you and I.
We'll never be alone.
I like driving by myself late in the evening on the way home thinking about a glass of wine and then bed, listening to a song that makes me smile, having been to a play that I didn't especially care for but I was out on a Saturday night on an almost-warm evening in October, the streets full of people and the moon a sliver.
LUCE, Buy a Dog
Posted by JudyLa at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2005
candy corn
Everywhere in the house I find cricket carcasses. Spike is proving to be a fine hunter, at least in the insect world. This is the time of year where suddenly crickets seem to be taking over, and perhaps because we are on a lake we have in our house a considerable number of a certain kind of mutant cricket called a camel cricket. Camel crickets have huge, jointed legs, so they are able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, and long, fine antennae. The big ones are about an inch long, and creep me out like mad. They are the perfect Halloween bug--forget spiders, who at least serve a purpose, but even they stay away from camel crickets. Last fall I tried feeding one to Argo, who refused to even come out of his little fake-cave shelter until I took the thing out again.
The other day when I got home from work I discovered the kitchen was overrun with ants--tiny "sugar" ants all over the counters. "They're looking for water," I told Herself, who replied, "Well give them some!" Yes, just put down a saucer of water for them, then gather them up when they come to drink and redistribute them into the yard. A nice thought, though that's not what happened.
The days have been dry and sun filled and it's cool at night now. Good sleeping weather. October is my favorite, favorite, favorite month of the year. I was born in October, married in October, my favorite holiday is in October. It's a scary time, and that's okay. In two weeks I will be fifty. Fifty!
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)