Call Me Miss Muffet

An excerpt from a horrifying story online today:

A studio apartment is typically suited for one occupant. But Dylan Baumann has been forced to coexist with about 40 lodgers in his small living space in Omaha, Nebraska. Even worse, the new tenants are potentially deadly recluse spiders.Still, even with the near-constant threat of venomous spider bites, Baumann has decided to stay in his apartment until his lease is up in September.

"It's mainly just learning to cope with them," he said. "Pushing your bed away from the wall, pulling out your bed skirt, making sure nothing is touching the walls, shaking off your clothes before you put them on, after you get out of the shower, shake out your towel, knock out your shoes at night. It's just kind of learning to not get bit."

The two absolute best comments left by readers:

1) here's what you do. take shoe in hand, squash spider. repeat 39 times.

2) Does anyone else find it odd that so many recluse spiders live together?

Egg Foo Duh

I normally don't expect too much from my fortune cookies. Evidently, they also don't expect much from me.

Buzzer Beater

All right, Nature. I get it. Perhaps I'm not spending enough time with you, and you feel the need to come to me. Because as I was unloading groceries from my car last week, I happened to look up and see a wasp's nest hanging inside my trunk lid. Not cool, Nature. Not cool.

There was a single wasp perched on the baseball-sized structure. I immediately froze. I looked at it. It looked at me. And I know we were thinking the exact same thing:

"This shit just got real."

But I still had perishables to unpack, so I closed my trunk and went inside. I then placed a call to my dad, a veteran of many wasp battles, to inquire about an appropriate plan of attack. Upon hearing my predicament, he laughed for a full minute. Then we strategized.

Having been stung before, I wasn't terribly worried about anaphylactic shock. But I did know that that little sucker was capable of zinging me multiple times, and I didn't know if he had friends. I wanted to end the night after sustaining the fewest injuries possible (which I think is a good aim every day).

So the second time I popped the trunk, I did so with a can of insecticide in one hand. I was all, "I'm here to unload groceries and kick ass. And I'm all outta groceries."

And the wasp was all ... dead. It was a bit anticlimactic, really. I grabbed an old license plate, flipped the nest out of the trunk, and then stomped on it for good measure.

When I told my sister this story, she said, "Aren't you afraid there will be hornets in your car now?"

Well, I wasn't . . . until she said that. Perhaps I'll just have to drive around with the windows down more often. Let a bit of nature in. And, if that little bit of nature is airborne and angry and full of poison, maybe let it out.

Oh, Duck

Last year, I wrote about how distraught I was to see a mother duck lead her ten chicks across the parking lot of my apartment building, mainly because it meant I'd need to watch out for them all summer long.

This year, I'd hoped to avoid the responsibility of worrying about yet another family. So you can imagine my consternation when I walked outside last week and saw this:

Dammit.

Devil in the Details

Perhaps I'll take the order number as a sign that I should limit my fast food intake.

Feeling Flushed

Last week I had the opportunity to visit Sedona, AZ, where I spent a lovely afternoon eating and browsing cute little shops with my family. What I didn't know was that Sedona is also home to several energy centers, or "vortexes," which are supposed to be spiritual power centers. While I won't comment on the validity of this notion, I will post the picture I took in a gas station bathroom. It seems to express their views quite clearly.

Luke, I Am Your Tenderfooted Father

I'm growing increasingly aware of the need to avoid judging books by their covers.

I used to ride the bus with a rather large man who would sit and talk with the bus driver for the entire trip, trading lines from movies and comedy specials. If I hadn't heard him joking around, I might have been terrified by the size and sound of this guy. He had one of the deepest, most sonorous voices I've ever heard. Everything about him seemed scary and powerful . . . until he told the following story.

Several years ago, he was awakened in the middle of the night by some noises on his front lawn. When he looked out the window, he saw a group of teenagers toilet-papering his house. Guessing that they were his son's classmates, he decided to give them a scare.

He exploded out the front door in his pajamas, bellowing like a crazy person. When the kids piled into a van and took off, he chased them down the street. Apparently they were also struck by the depth of his voice, because he could hear screams from inside the vehicle: "Darth Vader's gonna kill us!"

Finally, the van managed to outdistance him, and the frightened teenagers escaped into the night. That was when he realized that he'd rushed outside with no shoes on. And, because he hated being barefoot, he was forced to hop gingerly back to his house. "Imagine what those kids would have thought," he laughed, "Seeing Darth Vader tiptoeing down the street!"

Of course, this was also the guy who said that, after watching the movie Candyman, he was huddled in his bed with "all the lights in the house on AND a flashlight."

Dark Lord, indeed.

Arguing with Asterisks

I recently read an article online about the number one thing that men should never say to women during an argument. The answer came as no surprise: "Calm down." I can think of few things more infuriating in an already tense situation. So that's not the interesting part.

When I scrolled down to read the comments on the article (manifested as ranting in varying degrees of coherence as always), I saw numerous other suggestions for taboo phrases. And then I came across this comment: "Don't ever tell a man he has a tiny ***er. That can stay with them for the rest of their nature lives."

What caught my eye wasn't the typo in the second sentence, though I enjoyed it. The interesting part was the number of asterisks in the self-censored word.

Because I spend my days paying attention to details like these, I was soon stymied. It couldn't be wiener or pecker. Too many letters. Maybe it wasn't dirty after all. Hmmm. What do men have that they don't want in a small size? Diner? Anger? Nope. Too abstract. Buyer? Biker? No, size wouldn't matter. Boxer? Maybe, if it's referring to underwear.

And then it hit me. I had been overlooking one of the most out-of-date, hilarious examples of sexual innuendo (and in one case the oddly acceptable name of a teenaged boy's best friend on an 80s sitcom). Boner. Of course!

Now I can ***ep tonight.