Fly Away Home Already

So, it occurred to me this morning that, as I'm directing you here to the "new site", I wasn't providing you with anything "new". That's a bit of a faux pas. So, I thought I'd offer up at least a little bit of a story. Think of it as the blog version of everyone warming up their left over spaghetti for Sheriff Taylor when Opie kept screwing up the message as to who invited the sheriff over for dinner.

Mmm...oregano.

You probably didn't get either of those references.

Damned kids these days...

So, remember back in the early part of December when we had that warm snap? You know, before the bottom fell out temperature-wise and my feet developed their own permafrost? Apparently, that was prime time for the ladybugs...er...the ladybird beetles...to rise up from hibernation and invade my house.

Incidentally, here in North By God Carolina, we still have red ladybugs with black spots. In Indiana, those had all been pretty much displaced by the orange and black Japanese ladybugs. You know, the ones with the small boobs and the really earthy smell to them when you crush them. You're familiar with the smell, the one that you can't stand, but after smashing the ladybug and being reviled by the stink, you sniff your fingers again because it smells like victory and death and shame all rolled into one? Yeah, we have those here in North Carolina, too, but we also have a lot of the red-and-black ones.

Anyway, my house is overrun with the little fuckers. I hear them buzzing around at night, clicking against the ceiling in my bed room. Occasionally, I'll feel one smack into the side of my head while I'm sitting quietly trying to read. However, the place where the ladybugs congregate the most? My bathroom.

And, not coincidentally, this is where they die the most, too. Because I kill them, not because my shit stinks that much.

Honestly, it looks like fucking ladybug Ragnarok around my sink, with dead bodies littering the area by the tens. Some are squished. Some simply have been on the lights too long...or something...and they've fallen onto their backs, folding their legs up over their thoraces (thoraxes?) in that typical "I'm a dead bug" fashion.

I guess the silver lining is that my bathroom is now all but aphid free...

The final straw, though, came the other morning. I stripped naked for my morning shower and marathon-masturbation session. When I reached for the soap to scrub my filthy body clean, I started where I always start: on my muscular, masculine chest.

Immediately, something didn't seem right. Instead of cleaning my chest, the soap was making my chest stink, all earthy and musky, and there were hunks of shit in my chest hair. Fuck me running, I crushed a ladybug...er...ladybird beetle...into my chest hair and then proceeded to rub it around. I don't know if it was on me and I'm just that oblivious or if it was on the soap or what...but its entrails and various pieces of shattered carapace were smeared across my chest. I knew that for sure.

This was a violation most foul. Mostly because, no matter how much I rinsed my chest with the showerhead, and no matter how much I scrubbed and re-scrubbed the area, my paranoid and germophobic mind kept smelling the distinctive odor of crushed ladybug. Finally, after I had wasted enough time getting "clean" and I needed to get the kids ready for school, I got out of the shower and toweled off. A visual inspection showed no residual ladybug pieces, but I knew they were still there. Throughout the day, I would catch little whiffs of that distinctive odor. I'd be sitting at my desk and suddenly my upper lip would curl and my nose would twitch, and I'd look around for the offending beast, but I could find none. That's when I knew that I carried the distinctive aroma of dead bug with me all day. *shudder*

So, this weekend will be fraught with peril and pesticides. Or, I could just open the window and shoo them away. Whichever disrupts my intended schedule of lazy and worthlessness less.

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home...or at least get the fuck out of my bathroom.