Bad To The Bone

As you may have noticed, I haven’t had any posts in a couple of days. Almost a week, actually. Did you miss me?

I’ve been battling fruit flies. I bought some bananas from a produce market (where I don’t normally shop) earlier in the week. The next day I found myself swatting at a fruit fly or two. No big deal, I thought.

I was wrong. Three days later, I came home from work on my lunch break and holy crap, I wondered if Armageddon was happening in my kitchen. Thousands, maybe even millions of teeny tiny flies were swarming all over my kitchen and dining room!

Absolutely freaking, I tossed a bone out the door for the dog to chase, covered my face with an "Adopt Me" bandana (the only one I had! Do I strike you as a bandana wearing kind of girl?) and grabbed the only pest extermination product in the house. Good for ants, not all that good for fruit fly homicide.

The only thing dying in the room was me from the cloud of poisonous smoke that had now overtaken my house. I don’t care what the can says either, the fumes don’t smell like country flowers.

I ran to my neighbor’s house. After a lecture from Lynette about leaving fruit in the open like I do (yeah, yeah, yeah), I looked up how to get rid of the little buggers on her computer. I know a lot of things, but I'm not an expert on fruit flies. Someone who was suggested salsa and a paper funnel.

I went to the store in search of killer salsa and decided on six large jars of Peach and Pineapple flavored. They are fruit flies, after all.

Forcing myself past the bug swarm, I dumped half of each jar into another container and jammed a homemade paper funnel into the tops of each one. After strategically placing them around the room, I waited, watched and scratched my imaginary itches. Within minutes, the fruit flies were drawn to the salsa. Down the funnel they went searching for a taste of that succulent goodness below.

Ahhhh, the power of temptation.

Fortunately, they aren’t smart enough to figure out how to get out and in just a matter of minutes, I had trapped hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. Hours later, there wasn’t a fruit fly flying anywhere. They were all stuck in my traps de salsa.

I marked an imaginary score card in the air. One for The Rock Chick. I decided that these anti-depressants I am taking are wonderful. A few weeks ago, I would not have had the strength to battle even a dumb fruit fly that can’t figure out how to crawl up through a paper funnel. Now here I stood, patting myself on the back, smiling in victory.

Worried though, that they had laid 4,000,000 eggs somewhere, I had to gut and bleach the kitchen and the dining room. For my own sanity. I’m not a bug lover, especially in mass quantities. So far, so good.

Once I did that, I decided, that the rest of the house looked like crap. I do that with cleaning and with decorating. My mom laughs because I can buy something as innocuous as a new soap dish and within 24 hours will have completely redone my entire bathroom.

It’s like that ankle bone’s connected to the shin bone song.

The new soap dish makes the toothbrush holder look like shit, which leads me to buy a new one and then, of course, it doesn’t compliment the towels. The new towels don’t look good with the paint and the next thing you know, I am at Home Depot trying to decide which paint chip matches the closest under the fluorescent lights. It happens every time.

My mom can laugh all she wants. She is the same way. I inherited that from her.

Several years ago, hubby and I scrimped and saved and then splurged on a 60” Sony Hi-Def widescreen TV. It is a work of art in my opinion and I couldn’t wait to show it off to my parents. They sat drooling over the picture quality and then my mom decided that this new TV made my couches look like shit. Can’t have that. Mom and Dad left my house and unbeknownst to me bought a beautiful black leather sectional and had it delivered to my high tech family room. They totally rock!

Back to my story, I cleaned like a madwoman. Scrubbed, threw out and donated to charity. I even built a shoe storage holder for my closet. Most of my shoes don’t actually fit in the little spaces, though, so they remain on the floor of my closet.

It does make me look organized, no? (Yes, that is vintage 70's green shag carpeting. I know you're jealous)


My thoughts whirring alongside my electric screwdriver, I also decided that what I needed was a hope chest at the foot of my bed. This is what happens when the hubby is away at work too much. I start getting all these ideas.

I went to the store and found a “you have to assemble it yourself” hope chest, but I didn’t like the pattern of the fabric. I took it anyway, built it and threw my faux fur jungle throw over it. It’s all about the texture, people. Tarzan and Jane have nothing on me.



I know you’re wondering what I put in the hope chest, right?

Nothing. Yes, absolutely nothing yet, but that’s ok. I like it.

Once the inside was done, I had to do something with the outside. It is almost Halloween, after all, and I had no decorations outside. Anymore. I did have decorations outside but they all blew away all over the neighborhood and I was tired of retrieving them, so I took them all down.

I wanted a small little cemetery on my front lawn and decided to go for the bad boy stakes this time and I used shish-ke-bob skewers to keep them in the ground. Certainly not the best Halloween display, but it makes me happy. I put a blinking skeleton in there for effect, too.



Speaking of skeletons, I also read three books by Kathy Reichs. Kathy is a forensic anthropologist and writes books about a fictional anthropologist/crime fighter gal name Temperance Brennan. Temperance, by the way, is the featured character on the TV show, BONES.

The books were all excellent, really, and they give me a small chance to use the seven years of French and two semesters of Anatomy classes that I took. You don’t need to know French or Anatomy to enjoy the books, though. If you like Patricia Cornwell and Janet Evanovich, you will like Kathy Reichs, too.

While browsing the bookstore, I picked up a book called “Bitter Is The New Black”, by Jen Lancaster. Jen is a Chicago blogger turned actual book author and I’m 100 or so pages into her book and am hooked. She is snarky, snotty, stuck up and yet as funny as hell. She is bad, bad, bad to the bone and I love her. Her blog can be found at www.jennsylvania.com. After I read this one, her book #2 is next on my list.

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a novel during the month of November. There is some novel writing challenge going on (I don’t have the link and am too lazy to look it up right now) and I’m thinking I could write a “blook” too. A bloggish book. It might be fun!

So many ideas, so little time. Right now I’m off to sip a a very weak rum and coke with a squeeze of lime and enjoy another guilty pleasure...this week’s Desperate Housewives.

House? Yes. Wife? Yes. Desperate? Nope!

Despite the fly fiasco, things are better than ever!