(old email from 6.03.03)
**Rated F for F-bombs.**
Stop me if you've heard this one...
So, this morning I turn on the shower, and do my now-standard "look around the shower for big bug" check. Seeing none, I take off my glasses and get into the shower. While I'm in there, I think about how silly I am to check for these big damn bugs every day. It's no longer monsooning outside like it was the day of the two assaults. Foolish girl, I thought. Foolish girl.
At the end of my shower, I turn off the water, grab my towel, and step onto the floor. Through my incredibly poor vision, which most closely resembles trying to see through a sheet of wax paper, I notice a dark spot on the wall above the door in the bathroom--a spot I've never noticed before, even with my bad vision. Convinced this "spot" must be another centipede out to get me, I put on my glasses, only to realize that they are completely fogged-up by the steam from the shower.
Cautiously, I reach and open the bathroom door, inviting fresh air in to de-fog my spectacles. I fan the air in front of my face hoping to speed the process, while the whole time I'm on the verge of hyperventilating because if this spot is, in fact, another centipede out to get me, what will I do? Andrea is not home. My bug-killer has left already.
While I'm deciding this, the fog clears. Slowly, I lift my eyes to the corner of the wall and...
Oh holy hell!!! It IS another centipede out to get me!!! I bolt out of the bathroom, put on some flip-flops, run to the kitchen, and dig around for some poisonous spray. In the back of my mind, I hear animal-loving Karen saying "Trap it. Save it. Put it in a jar." But I think, fuck that. Raid would be most ideal right now. But I'll settle for Windex or Pledge or anything else that might kill that mo-fo without me having to touch it. And then, like a dream come true, I spot the Raid under the kitchen sink, which I am afraid to grab because it too is in a dark, damp place, and could have centipedes crawling all over it.
Eventually, I make my way back to the bathroom, fully armed. I decide I should stand up on the toilet seat for the best Angle of Death, but as Andrea knows, that is not a wise idea on our toilet--the damn lid shifted and I nearly took a header into the wall. Only half breathing, I step back down from the toilet, tell the bug "You're about to die, you little fucker," and give him a good shot of Raid.
He squirms! He flinches! He flails! He...falls to the floor right in front of me and starts to run away!! I spray him again--but he resists. Finally, in a moment of complete desperation, I pounce, slamming my flip-flop onto his ugly, feathery existence. I lift my foot...he's dead. A few dozen of his legs are stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Without screaming or fainting, I wipe the mess off my shoe and the other mess of the floor (including the Raid), toss it into the toilet, and flush.
I killed a bug today. A big ugly bug. All by myself.
4.01.2003
boots not made for walking
(old email from 4.01.03)
From the author of "the cat ate my banana bread" comes "something is going horribly wrong with my boot."
I'm wearing these brown boots, right? Giant chunky heel, good 3 inches. Makes me look 5'10". So all day, as I walk up and down the halls, I hear this weird clunk, and I figure it's just one of those strange phenomena in which the crease of my jeans is hitting the heel of the boot and making a funny sound. It happens sometimes, like the swish-swish of corduroys.
So just now, I parted from James' cube and on my way back to my desk--maybe a total of 20 steps--I get this repeat popping noise in my left boot. It's not the usual ankle-cracking sound I usually hear. (Or, as Anne Marie would say, the ankle-cricking sound.) Bewildered and perplexed, I keep stopping in the hall to confirm my hearing, finding only that when I stop walking, the noise also ceases. So I take a few more strides and round the corner, promptly parking in a chair and ripping the boot off my foot. I turn it upside-down and shake it, and there's a clear rattling noise--as though there is a small stone in the heel. (Or, as Kevin would say, dirt in the wheel.) I ask Norik to confirm my noise. He looks on in disbelief that the supposedly "solid" heel of my boot could be making such a sound. Shocked, we decide I must deboot the other foot and compare. The other boot makes no sound.
So we stand in the hall, shaking the noisy boot and trying to figure out the rattle. This is what we are doing when Paul, the man who already thinks I'm insane for talking long-distance on the phone to my dog in Florida, walks by with a concerned expression upon his face. When I try to demonstrate the bizarre incident to him, he runs away fearing for his life.
I shake and shake and shake the boot. Norik and I agree that we can feel whatever it is inside the heel against our hand, and that most likely, it's the core of the heel crumbling. We wish for a drill with which to inspect inside the heel, but since we are lacking, we just decide to shake it some more. Eventually, I put the boot back on, and now I am waiting for the moment when the heel totally crumbles and I roll and break my ankle and fall down a flight of stairs, smashing my head on the fire hose pipe at the bottom, which knocks me unconscious into a coma, causing me to miss my Italian class which Hot Paul takes as a sign that I am not interested in his hotness, so he drops out and joins another level and meets some bored mother-of-three named Rhonda who flirts with him incessantly. All because of my boot.
Clearly, I am too bored at work today.
From the author of "the cat ate my banana bread" comes "something is going horribly wrong with my boot."
I'm wearing these brown boots, right? Giant chunky heel, good 3 inches. Makes me look 5'10". So all day, as I walk up and down the halls, I hear this weird clunk, and I figure it's just one of those strange phenomena in which the crease of my jeans is hitting the heel of the boot and making a funny sound. It happens sometimes, like the swish-swish of corduroys.
So just now, I parted from James' cube and on my way back to my desk--maybe a total of 20 steps--I get this repeat popping noise in my left boot. It's not the usual ankle-cracking sound I usually hear. (Or, as Anne Marie would say, the ankle-cricking sound.) Bewildered and perplexed, I keep stopping in the hall to confirm my hearing, finding only that when I stop walking, the noise also ceases. So I take a few more strides and round the corner, promptly parking in a chair and ripping the boot off my foot. I turn it upside-down and shake it, and there's a clear rattling noise--as though there is a small stone in the heel. (Or, as Kevin would say, dirt in the wheel.) I ask Norik to confirm my noise. He looks on in disbelief that the supposedly "solid" heel of my boot could be making such a sound. Shocked, we decide I must deboot the other foot and compare. The other boot makes no sound.
So we stand in the hall, shaking the noisy boot and trying to figure out the rattle. This is what we are doing when Paul, the man who already thinks I'm insane for talking long-distance on the phone to my dog in Florida, walks by with a concerned expression upon his face. When I try to demonstrate the bizarre incident to him, he runs away fearing for his life.
I shake and shake and shake the boot. Norik and I agree that we can feel whatever it is inside the heel against our hand, and that most likely, it's the core of the heel crumbling. We wish for a drill with which to inspect inside the heel, but since we are lacking, we just decide to shake it some more. Eventually, I put the boot back on, and now I am waiting for the moment when the heel totally crumbles and I roll and break my ankle and fall down a flight of stairs, smashing my head on the fire hose pipe at the bottom, which knocks me unconscious into a coma, causing me to miss my Italian class which Hot Paul takes as a sign that I am not interested in his hotness, so he drops out and joins another level and meets some bored mother-of-three named Rhonda who flirts with him incessantly. All because of my boot.
Clearly, I am too bored at work today.
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