"I need to sanitize my whole body."

If you've known me for any length of time, you are well aware that bugs are not my friends. You should also already know that we keep a fly swatter in our bathroom that we use to viciously attack any creepy-crawly intruders. (And by "we," I mean "Jacob," clearly.)

Now, rewind to last Monday evening. Jacob was at work and wouldn't be back until the following morning. I was getting ready for bed when I noticed some sort of winged insect crawling all over the wall next to my side of the bed.

We certainly couldn't have this. It's true that I occasionally refuse to enter certain rooms if I see a spider or other insect until Jacob gets home and disposes of them (just a few weeks ago, I opted out of breakfast because that would've required entering the kitchen, and a spider had staked its claim on the kitchen ceiling), but I couldn't very well stay up all night just to make sure the insect didn't eat me in my sleep.

I grasped the fly swatter, took aim, and smacked the insect -- right before I leaped back to make sure it didn't fall on my feet. And then when the insect was on the ground I doled out a few more beatings just to make sure it wasn't just playing dead.

When Jacob kills bugs, he usually flushes them down the toilet. I had thought about doing so, but then my conscience would've felt guilty for wasting water -- and sometimes bugs can be tricky and just float around in the toilet, requiring multiple flushes for proper disposal. And I don't know about you, but there's something very unsettling about exposing your nether regions to an insect carcass.

This is my very lengthy way of describing my thought process when I tossed the bug into the (admittedly full) trash can in the bathroom instead of the toilet.

All was fine and well until the following evening. I was in the bathroom when I thought I spotted a toenail clipping on the ground. I picked it up to toss it in the trash can.

YOU GUYS. It wasn't a toenail. Do you see where I'm going with this? It was the bug. I PICKED UP A DEAD BUG WITH MY BARE HANDS. (It was so harrowing that I need to WRITE IN ALL CAPITALS.)

Jibblies!

But you don't want to eat 'em now

How to Completely Ruin Roughly A Pound and a Half of Strawberries

1. Go on a massive shopping trip to both Walmart and Costco, purchasing four pounds of strawberries from the latter.
2. Upon unloading the groceries, shove the strawberries to the back of the fridge, which is the only place they'll fit.
3. The next day, use a little over half of the strawberries to make some delicious homemade strawberry ice cream.  Be sure to tell the Internets about this so everyone can be jealous.
4. Notice that some of the strawberries have frozen solid, which is a peril of all food that ends up too close to the back of the fridge. (Frozen salsa, anyone? How about sour cream?)
5. Hope that only a few berries were affected, and rotate the carton so the remaining strawbs are closer to the front of the cooling receptacle. 
6. Two days later, decide to cut up some strawberries for a little snacky-snack. Realize to your horror that ALL of the remaining strawbs had frozen and then thawed out, resulting in a mushy mess. 
7. Contact your friends with small children to see whether they're interested in purchasing the latest all-natural strawberry baby food at a low, low cost!
8. Rake in the dough?

The times we've shared

Once upon a time, when I was a wee lass of somewhere between six and nine years old (the details are hazy), my sister Heather and I had the same music teacher in elementary school. Said music teacher asked us to call her Mrs. DoRae (or some variation of spelling thereof), as in Do Re Mi. Har, har, har! So punny. (In case you were wondering, her real name was Mrs. Doris.)

Now, Mrs. "DoRae" was an aspiring singer/songwriter. And while I can only remember snippets of the song "Strawberry Ice," Heather and I still fondly sing the classic hit "Pickles in the Snow." Allow me to share the lyrics with you, as we sing it.

Pickles in the snoooooow
But you don't want to eat 'em now.
Nooo, you don't know what they're doing in the snow,
What they're doing on the grooound. ("Ground" is sung in a gravelly, rather unattractive voice.)


Pickles in the snooooooow
But you don't want to eat 'em now.
Something something something something
'Cause they're not green, they're brooooowwn. ("Brown" is sung in an even throatier voice, if possible.)


While for some shocking reason, Mrs. DoRae's songwriting career never picked up off the ground, I'm sure she would be thrilled to know that "Pickles in the Snow" is sung, sometimes daily, not only by two of her former students, but by many of those students' former roommates and (current) husbands, as well.

The holiday special

Back in the day when I lived with five other girls instead of one handsome man, our apartment was known for celebrating even the most obscure holidays in the most fantastic ways.

For Earth Day, we made "dirt" dessert (in very non-biodegradable plastic cups).

For Cinco de Mayo, we served chips and salsa and hit a piñata.

For Mexican Independence Day, we decorated my sister's car in red, white, and green streamers, and threw candy out the window while driving around playing Mexican music and shouting "Viva, Mexico!"

And so forth.

In the past couple of weeks, I've attempted to recreate some of the joy in celebrating holidays with Jacob. Unfortunately, he doesn't get quite as enthusiastic about said celebrations as I do.

For Leap Day, I practically had to beg and plead for him to play a rousing game of leap frog with me. We leap frogged our way from one bedroom to the living room, for a grand total of five leaps. Also note: It is very difficult to leap over a 6 foot, 5 inch individual, even when that person is crouching on the floor.

Pi(e) Day holds a special place in my heart. One year, my roommates and I threw a fairly impressive Pi Day party, with numerous varieties of pies for the taking:

Last year, I made a solitary chocolate pie. This year, I was even lazier than that:

Thank you, Hostess, for manufacturing individual pies a girl can use to celebrate Pi Day in a pinch.

Last year, I blogged about how I celebrated St. Patrick's Day a day late with some frightening green fettucine alfredo. This year, I celebrated in a more timely manner, with results that were much more pleasing to the eye.

I promise, the rice and milk are green. And for some reason, Jacob wasn't too terribly thrilled about taking the leftover green rice to work for his dinner tonight. I can't imagine why.

Also, remember my dilemma about this shirt? In honor of St. Patrick's Day, it made its first appearance since I purchased it almost a year earlier.

I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it.

Lesson learned, tough stuff

Reason #27 why Blistex is better than Chapstick:

In our family, we girls were expected to do our own laundry starting at the age of twelve. Throughout my high school and college years, I had the unfortunate habit of leaving a tube of Blistex in my pants' pockets while washing my clothes. This often brought me angst, as the Blistex wasn't salvageable after a run through the dryer, but at least the extent of my woes was a ruined tube of lip balm. The then-melted nectar of the gods managed to stay concealed inside the tube, and my clothes were no worse for the wear.

I must've run at least half a dozen or more tubes of Blistex through the wash, with the same result. Naturally, the one time a tube of Chapstick weaseled its way into the laundry, it exploded in a fury all over Jacob's and my shirts in the dryer. This was a tragedy, and I admit I was a bit of a Sir Grumpsalot when I found out. Jacob and I dutifully applied a stain remover treatment to each grease spot we found on our clothes and ran them through the wash again.

A small improvement, but the spots were still there. And then the clothes sat in the dryer for five days while I successfully avoided thinking about trying something else to remove the stains.

Today, I tried using dish soap to remove the rest of the stains. After a nice soak in the tub, back into the washing machine they went. Upon retrieving the laundry, I noticed that some grease spots remained, but I went ahead and hung the clothes up in the closet anyway. Maybe nobody else will notice?

* * * 

Reason #59 not to buy an 88 cent can opener:

A few months ago, the can opener I, ahem, accidentally stole from one of my former roommates kicked the bucket. I resorted to borrowing a can opener from one of our neighbors in desperation, but before long we determined we needed to purchase one of our own.

As Jacob and I perused the kitchen needs aisle at Walmart, we were overwhelmed by how many varieties of can openers there were. Well, really, there were only two or three different kinds, but the prices varied widely. What made a $12 or $15 can opener better than a $3 or $4 one? And why spend that much money when you could purchase a can opener for 88 cents?

As it turns out, the reason for spending that much money is so your can opener doesn't break on you mere months after purchase. A few nights ago I was attempting to open a Costco-sized can of peaches for my not-quite-midnight snack, and I was struggling. I called for Super Husband to come to the rescue and open the can to satisfy my peach craving.

He was unable to get the can opener to work, either, and after 15 minutes with no success, he decided to use scissors to cut the lid off. Um, yeah. Said can is now a death trap (or at least a mutilation hazard):

But I was able to eat my peaches, and that's what really matters. Though I guess now we need to buckle down and fork over some money for a higher quality can-opening device.

Flowers, chocolates, promises you don't intend to keep

This morning Jacob woke me up at 6 with a Valentine's Day breakfast in bed surprise (consisting of a bagel, yogurt, part of a muffin, peanut butter crackers* [ha!], and milk). He said he stayed up all night just so he could surprise me (he didn't have work yesterday, so he could've gone to bed at an "early time", which really means four in the morning).

I think he made me breakfast partially because he loves me and partially so it would mask my morning breath of death by the time he came to bed.

Happy Valentine's Day!

*So we bought a Costco pack of snack crackers MONTHS ago. We ate all of the cheese crackers and the cookie-style crackers ages ago, and we've been hanging on to about 30 packages of peanut butter crackers ever since. A few days ago I snuck one in the lunch bag he took to work. He retaliated by telling me I needed to eat ten packages a day. So far, neither of us have eaten any. So if you're in the area and you like peanut butter crackers, I'd be happy to gift you some!

Parking woes

I like to think I'm usually a pretty understanding person. But I admit it, I can be petty sometimes. Take our latest parking situation at our apartment complex.

The parking spots are assigned by apartment number, and when we moved into our apartment, we had the good fortune of being awarded THE ideal parking spot. It's the spot closest to our apartment building, and it's on the end so you can just pull forward out of the spot instead of backing up like everyone else. Which is good, because backing up is not one of my strong points in driving. Neither is parallel parking or making unprotected left hand turns, but that's besides the point.

The parking spot is so ideal that I even spent 15 minutes constructing a fairly accurate diagram of our parking lot and apartment building:

See what I mean? Perfect. (The rest of the parking spaces in that row are also numbered, but I didn't include them because, erm, I can't remember which numbers are next to ours. I assume they're in the 20s, but you never do know. At the back of the parking lot, we have a row of unnumbered spaces for visitors.)

Now lately, a Big Mean White SUV has been parking in our parking spot while Jacob has been at work. The owner of said Big Mean White car (or BMW car) is clearly a visitor of one of our neighbors, as our neighbors do an excellent job of parking in their own spaces. If they had an award for proper parking, my neighbors would all get gold stars. But when Jacob comes home and our parking spot is taken, he's forced to park in -- gasp!-- one of the unnumbered spaces a whole 30 feet away!

This means that when Jacob tumbles into bed and doesn't mention that he parked somewhere else, I get a mild panic attack when I look out the window some time later (and see the now-empty parking spot, as BMW car has left since then) and naturally assume our car has been stolen.

All in all, this isn't the worst situation to be in. But it's our parking spot! Have they no sense of common decency?

Tonight I was tempted to leave a note on their windshield, informing them that they were parked in a reserved parking spot -- and could they be so kind as to park in one of the unnumbered spots in the future, instead? But I didn't know how to phrase it without sounding either completely pretentious or like a jerk. Suggestions?

(And as it turned out, the car left 15 minutes after I first saw it, so maybe the owner could just sense the negative vibes coming from me and decided to hightail it outta there. Problem solved?)