Archive for the 'Country Livin’ & City Life' Category

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This is just about goodbye.

Published on July 19, 2005 in Country Livin' & City Life. 1 Comment

Well, I am hoping that I can get the last of everything tonight when I go back out to the house. It is really sad to leave. It isn’t that I don’t want to live with my sister. So far the past two days have been nice. It has been nice getting into bed without checking to make sure there aren’t spiders under the pillows or between the sheets. It is nice to sleep with a light blanket on because the house is air conditioned. It is nice to pull out the scrabble board every once in a while and play a game.

But I don’t want to leave Z. He is a fantastic roommate. On Saturday night, Winemonkey and I took a load of crap over to Sheesha’s house to unload. When we got back, at 9:30 mind you, Z was pulling dinner off the grill. I grabbed some plates and made some gin and tonics. We sat outside until 11:45 that night, eating dinner and talking. I found out that he plays the cello. And that he has TWO rooms at the back of the house, not just one and each of them has a walk-in closet. And that he air conditions his “office” so that his computer doesn’t act up. I don’t know that I have ever been this sad about leaving a place. For the first time, it isn’t just because of the hassle with moving.

Hopefully he will be home tonight and we can eat dinner together before or after I load my car up with my remaining belongings. Say goodbye to the bug and spider stories. Say goodbye to the country.

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The mouse

Published on July 1, 2005 in Country Livin' & City Life. Closed

As mentioned in the last spider post, I want you all to get your fill of my country livin’ before it expires. Which brings me to the mouse.

A few nights ago I went into my roommate’s bedroom. I heard some movement under her desk so I asked her if her dog was under there and she said, “No. It is probably a mouse. I have one dead in a trap in my room. I should probably get rid of it.” With that she disappeared into the bowels of her room and retreived a mouse trap. With a mouse. In the trap. The little guy had been crushed to death when the trap snapped on his abdomen.

Now, I used to have pet mice and hamsters. And I looked at this little guy and I felt bad for him. He was small and cute and if he weren’t dead I would have run the risk of rabies to hold him and pet him. But, as my roommate’s fingertip assessed, he was stiff as a board and deader than Wesley in the Princess Bride (who was only mostly dead… yeah that might have been lame… but shut up). And the ceremonious burial?

The trash can outside.

Then I mentioned that I haven’t ever heard mice in my room. Her reasoning is that when the house settled, her walls came up off the ground and mine went further down in. It doesn’t explain why I have more spiders, but it does explain the cracked walls.

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A different breed of spider

Published on June 29, 2005 in Country Livin' & City Life. 2 Comments

Well, seeing as the country living is coming to an end at the end of July, I should amuse you with the stories while I can.

I caught a spider this morning and it made me think of Hed (I think of her because she was the one who told me the difference between brown recluse and garden spiders making her the spider expert, whether she likes it or not). The spiders move too fast for me to get out my camera and take a picture of them. This one had a tiny little body but long spiney legs. A daddy long legs to be exact, but I just don’t remember them being so spiney when I was a kid… anway. I woke up and it was on the very bottom right hand corner of my bedspread. I went to pick him up by one of this legs and carry him outside, but he fell under my bed. All I kept thinking about was how he could have been crawling all over me all night long! Ewwww… (this is the part where being insensitive to earthquakes comes in… apparently I am insensitive to crawly things crawling on me…) . I finally caught him by smashing one of his legs (I know… I am totally not humane, my theory is that if I can’t humanely catch them on the first try, they must have a death wish). Then he was engulfed in a case of tissue and squished before placing him into his casket along with the other trash.

And that my friends, was the death of the spider. Winemonkey used to call me his bug assassin. But he called me it in spanish.

p.s. If you don’t like spiders I recommend NEVER doing a google image search for spiders.

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The popping of tiny beetles.

Published on May 27, 2005 in Country Livin' & City Life. 1 Comment

Last weekend, one of my roommates fumigated the house. And he killed A LOT OF FLEAS. Thank you.

But last night, while cleaning my room, I picked up approximately 15 dead earwigs that didn’t make it through the fall out. I hate earwigs. I usually call them “pincher butt” bugs. I also found the following:

  1. Another one of those wolf spiders that was only about the size of a quarter (including his legs).
  2. One weird, mostly dead, unidentifiable brown spider (not a brown recluse).
  3. One completely dead, unidentifiable brown spider (possibly a brown recluse, too dead and curled up to tell).
  4. 15,000 little stink beetles that you have to squeeze pretty hard in order to terminate their life.

For those who think I am brave, know that it is only a front so that my country roommates, who are already hardened to the onslaught of insects, can’t see through my strong facade that I am indeed, a SISSY.

Plus Winemonkey hates when I ask him to kill bugs for me and again, I don’t want him to think I am some wimpy girl. So I suck it up and do it myself.

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Caught in your web, Return of the Spider.

Published on May 25, 2005 in Country Livin' & City Life and reader input. 2 Comments

So not so long ago, I had a GIANT spider web in my car. When I told my roommate about it, he wanted to make sure it wasn’t a black widow. You know, one of the common poisonous spiders in CA. He checked the car and felt the web and assured me it wasn’t a black widow. So I felt safe and didn’t worry about it any more.

Yesterday morning I found the culprit. I was driving down my street and when I came to the stop sign, I looked out my windshield (as is appropriate when looking for traffic). And there, on my dash mat, is a BIG BROWN HAIRY SPIDER. Much like the one that was on the outside of my sister’s car (see linked entry). But this one was INSIDE my car. His body was about the size of a quarter and with his legs he spanned about the circumference of a silver dollar. He was pretty big. So I pull over. And as soon as I throw my parking brake on, he crawls down into my defroster vent. So I think, “Alright. You can’t get to him now. Just get a move on or you are going to be late.”

So I start driving and I start getting creeped out because I know that he is in my car. So I turn on the defrosters, set it to the coldest temperature I can, and begin blasting the AC. I think this is a smart thing to do. I will freeze that little bastard out of the dashboard.

And you know what, my idea worked. After about two minutes, up crawls this eight-legged freak. And I pick up a napkin, while driving, and try to grab him. I don’t want to smash him because he is huge and I don’t want to have to clean spider-innards off of my dashboard cover. Not only that, but he has survived long enough to get that big and it seems a shame to kill him. But on the first grab, I didn’t grab him hard enough and I only shave off some of his hair on his body. So I grab again, this time accidentally smashing some legs. But on the third grab, I get him and I open the napkin up out the window and I assume he lands outside my car on the road.

But then I realize that I might not have had my hand far enough out the window during the release and that there was a possibility that the wounded spider was in my backseat. So now I have to pull over and check because the only thing worse than freezing a spider out of your dashboard is to then subsequently be attacked from behind by the same spider. I checked and I didn’t see him, so hopefully the release was successful and he isn’t hiding under my driver’s seat plotting his attack.

I am under the impression that it was a wolf spider. But can anyone tell me how to distinguish between a brown wolf spider and a brown recluse spider? Because I heard those are NASTY and I don’t want to accidentally mistake a deadly spider for a non-deadly one.

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Caught in your web

Published on May 13, 2005 in Country Livin' & City Life. Closed

This morning the sun was shining into my windshield and I saw a glittering spider web. I reached up to knock it down and I saw that the web was not just a little corner of the driver’s side windshield. Oh no. Some busy little spider spun a web around EVERY WINDOW IN MY CAR! And they were all connected.

I am nervous that there is some sort of spider union forming and that they are going to over-take me during my next car trip!

(Side note: The last time my sister came out to visit, she went home with a GIANT and I am talking GIANT like 3 inch diameter, wolf spider on her VW Beetle. The next morning her boss said, “He must have thought he caught the biggest bug ever!” I just think that is too cute!)

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