eregyrn | Random Junk

Man... I have a bunch of things I want to post about (recent day-trips, Stargate fic, my bonsai, etc.), but that will take more than a few seconds to compose a post on... so I'm falling behind. Bleh! So here's some unorganized random brain-firings, instead.

1. WHY, when it is 86 degrees inside my apartment, will my big, hot cat insist on sitting in my lap? WHY?

2. I've been having a run of insects in the apartment. The usual carpenter ants, of course. And also... what I think might be water-bugs. Thank god, this year, no carpenter bees. (They appear to have made a home in the walls using the same holes that the aforementioned sparrows are using. I say, I don't care, if they stop comiing IN the apartment.)

OMG WHY DID I JUST GOOGLE-SEARCH "WATER-BUG"?????? *is completely grossed-out forever*

The bugs that I've got that I keep thinking are "water-bugs" are elongated beetly things nearly an inch long, and thankfully, they are sluggish, kind of clumsy, and they don't try to fly. So alive or dead, I just pick them up in a wad of toilet-paper and flush them. If they really *are* water-bugs, I'm sure that's like going to water-bug nirvana or something. Bleh.

Also spiders, as usual. Honest to god, unless they startle me (such as the other morning in the shower), I try to leave them alone, if I can do so without interfering with their webs. There are a few around the sink, and I was like, "what do you think you're going to find to EAT there, spider?" but I left it, and a few days later I saw it actually coccooning-up something smallish, and said, "Okay, fair enough, you win".

There is a very industrious small spider that has made a really *SPASTIC* web between a small lamp and a table, out of the way of the knob to actually turn the lamp on and off. The first time, I got rid of the web, and by the next evening, it was back, so I've left it. And have now seen the spider. And am not thrilled about it, but, yeah.

I've *had* to get blase about spiders, because in my apt. building, it's not like they aren't everywhere. We have a washer/dryer in the basement (*BLISS*!) and in warm months they are, like, Six Flags Over Spiders, and it would be futile to try to clear them out. I do secretly enjoy watching them twitch and scurry whenever the dryer is turned on and starts vibrating and they don't like it, though.

But I'm not blase about thousand-leggers, nope, absolutely not.

This morning was a BANNER morning for insects. I had to oust one of those water-bug things from the tub before my shower, as well as a couple of... I dunno what they were, little gnat-like things only they were crawling around... who cares, they're flat mush now. And then I pull back the shower curtain and AAAAIIIIIGGGGH!!!!! Thousand-legger! On the wall! Only a small one. And I *KNOW* I would rather it ate many bugs for me, but there is an unspoken bargain in my apartment, and that is, I am happy for thousand-leggers to eat all the bugs they like, OUT OF MY SIGHT. Still, I have that thing where... you know, when you're standing there, completely naked, with a wadded-up piece of toilet-paper in your hand, and you just have to reach out that extra few inches to smoosh the bug, but you Can't. Do. It? Because of the insane conviction that, I don't know, it will leap off the wall and onto your face? Yeah.

3. Hey, you all remember the raccoon? From a couple of months ago?

The upshot of that was I talked to my landlady, and got her to authorize me to buy some new trash-cans with well-fitting lids (and wheels). Because the old trash-cans were either busted, or gone completely, owing to a new set of trash-guys who like flinging the emptied cans back at the sidewalk... where they roll around until they roll, or are blown, out into traffic on my quite-busy street, and cars or better yet large trucks strike them, and there you go. So anyway, few intact trash-cans left, and no lids, and fellow tenants who like putting bags out in the trash-cans during the week, which was always a big Fest o' Garbage for the squirrels and the birds and the bugs.

And I was like, oh no, can't be having that with a raccoon around. It's bad enough with the smaller animals and birds and stuff, and I've complained about it every year. So this year I got the landlady to let ME go buy the trash-cans (and take it off the rent). Which I did. Nice big sturdy suckers, from Lowes, squarish so they don't roll, with wheels, and good lids.

Okay, so, they've been out there for less than a month. And yesterday morning I left my apt. and glanced over and happened to notice... big HOLES! That had been GNAWED in the rim of the lids!

I'm talking holes that were easily 6" long and an inch and a half wide! Big enough for freaky little raccoon hands, in other words, although not for any other parts of the raccoon. So, HAH! on it, because while there was a bag of garbage in there, it was down near the bottom and it wouldn't have been able to reach it. But that's not the point. The point is MY BRAND-NEW GARBAGE CANS, DAMMIT!

ALSO? How the HELL did the raccoon get UP onto the top of them to do the gnawing??? How did it scale them? It doesn't bear thinking about.

So I stopped at the store on the way home and bought black duct-tape, and when I got home I taped up all the holes. (

jenlev suggested I take pictures and post them; if it happens again, be sure I'll do that.) We'll just see what the little fucker tries next.

4. Meh. I'm sure I had other things to post about, but I can't recall what they were after all the ranting. Or the things I can recall... do you ever get to that point where you think about posting something and then you get around to actually doing it and then think, oh, why bother posting that, it's dumb?

Like, I could tell you that I like the new Fountains of Wayne song because it's actually a bouncy and cheerful song about being a sad, single loser in your late 20s or 30s (hello), but don't despair... and also I'm pretty sure the song is strongly alluding to the idea of single women masturbating in the shower, which, I have to give it props for that. Or I could say that I like the new Green Day song, which has a great beat and is also actually very political and anti-war, which is nice, because I do sort of wonder every once in a while where all the protest songs have gone. But... meh.

Yeah, it's that time of the summer when I feel kind of very isolated, like no matter what I do, there's just crickets chirping out there, and meh. I don't know whether that's because it's summer and that's when people's schedules get wacky and they have better things to do, or whether it's because I'm just ridiculously needy, or what. Probably, er, both.