Oh my goodness, friends, I just smote a centipede that was, like, 6 inches long. Okay, really and truly, it was only 2+ inches long. But it was climbing the wall in my shower! Do you know what happens when a very nearsighted person gets into the shower with a big bug? She leans in close to see what that big dark smudge is, that's what she does. Just ask the person who still gets the shudders thinking about her up-close shower encounter with a silverfish in 1990.
Gah! I just did an image search for silverfish, a beastie I'd never encountered until I moved to the Midwest. It was going to be a friendly blogger thing, in which I said, "Here, let me show you what I'm talking about just in case you're unacquainted with the silverfish." But it turns out the friendly blogger course of action is to close the tab and step away. And bleach the brain. There are too many bugs in this world, my friends.
But! Back to the point: there is one less bug in the world than there was earlier this evening. I started to ask for help, but then I remembered something Elwood said to me years ago when there was a different big ugly bug causing me a different flavor of distress. He said, in a voice both kind and disbelieving, "Jamie, you have been through childbirth five times. You can handle a bug."
I repeated these words to myself. Jamie, you have been through childbirth five times. You can handle a bug. I fetched the WMD (Weapon of Millipede Destruction in this instance; I cannot distinguish between a centipede and millipede reliably but I do know that WCDs are not a thing). My flyswatter was no match for its exoskeleton, but as it wriggled, stunned but clearly plotting its revenge, I crushed it in my fist* and laid its carcass on the pyre** for destruction.
*carefully shielded by a tissue -- a bare-handed bug-crusher would not have to psych herself up first by thinking about childbirth
**if by pyre we mean the garbage can
I was going to write another post about plans and productivity tonight, but sometimes duty calls. Or sometimes duty slithers up the the bathroom wall, lurking in the shower curtain. I am waiting for the king to send a herald offering me half the kingdom and the prince's hand in marriage. I'll have to tell him I'm already married, but I expect a savvy financial guy could translate half the kingdom into our next college tuition payment.
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