Scorpion Update: The Battle Continues to Rage

Scorpion tally, including today's beast...

Scorpion stings: 0 (Thank the Lord!)

Scorpions found dead inside, no need to kill: 2 (one in bedroom, one in living room)

Scorpions found dead, smashed between two pieces of siding for shed: 1

Scorpions found alive under charcoal bucket: 1

Scorpions found alive in closet light globes and fried with heat from bulb: 5

Live scorpions found in bedroom, and immediately killed: 1

Live scorpions found in living room, and immediately killed: 1

Live scorpions found in dining room/kitchen, and immediately killed: 3

Scorpions personally killed by me: 4 (11 if you include the ones found dead inside from light bulb heat/industrial bug spray)

Scorpions personally killed by my husband: 2 (seems a bit unfair, no?)

This is FAR TOO MANY scorpions. No scorpion is a good scorpion, but the best kind is a dead one. Unfortunately, I have come across FAR TOO MANY in the past month. Our house is around 1600 square feet. Given the randomness at which I have just happened to be in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time to see these beasts (case in point, today one crawled right under my daughter's Pack 'n' Play and was heading under my bed just as I was laying her down for a nap... had I gone in there a minute later, he'd have been safe from my "killing shoe"), I have estimated that we have over 30 million scorpions roaming the house. The math formula is highly complex and looks something like this:

1600 sq. ft x 10 toes on Lisa's feet x Lisa's 2 eyes x 1 baby that likes to distract Lisa x 3.14 x a whole bunch of other numbers = 30 million scorpions= FAR TOO MANY scorpions

(This is the beast I killed in the kitchen a few weeks ago. Don't worry... I smashed him over 50 times to ensure he was dead before I took the photo. These scorpions seem to have a way of coming back to life, so I made sure I was 100% positive he'd kicked the bucket.)

A time to live, and a time (for scorpions) to DIE

In order to really understand this post, you'll need to see the previous one. 

After taking C to the doctor for her 4 month visit and vaccines, I stopped by Ace Hardware to talk with the scorpion-killing expert. I made sure to point out that I don't just want to kill the few that I might see, but I want to either 1) frighten them all away forever or 2) completely annihilate every last one. After he told me that nothing scares them, I settled for total destruction. Before I bought the indoor spray and the outdoor power killer, I contemplated the following methods of death for the little terrors that have chosen to move in with me:

Cannon to right of them/Cannon to left of them... this method might leave a few holes in the house, though.

I feel that the TNT method would be very Wile E. Coyote of me. It has promise.

I don't actually know what's going on here, but this looks like it would take care of scorpions.

The one problem with this idea, besides the fact that I don't know where one purchases a guillotine, is that it might only cut off a leg or something. I'm going for 100% dead, not just the walking-wounded.

The samurai is my top choice for several obvious reasons. 1) I would not even have to be in the house while he goes all crazy on them. 2) With all of his clothing, he is far less likely to get stung while crawling in the attic to kill the scorpions. 3) He might even be available for babysitting while I run to the store. 

Closing note: If any scorpions are reading this, please stay away from my house. I have pesticide, and I'm not afraid to use it.

My closet is Hell

This is not a funny, ironic, "my closet is a mess" kind of post. No, my friends, this is a "Lisa has come face-to-face with her understanding of Hell" kind of post. Let me explain...

M is still off in New York, leaving me and C to work on whipping the house into shape (much slower than I'd ever anticipated). Since C and I are heading back home tomorrow, I thought I'd go ahead and organize my closet a bit and pack. Oh no, my friends, oh no. That will not be happening. There will be no closet organizing. After I flipped on the closet light today, I heard a rustling noise above my head. I thought that maybe a moth was hitting against a plastic hanger. And then, I look up to see THIS:

I would advise clicking the photo in order to enlarge it... then you'll understand my horror. THREE SCORPIONS (1 huge, 1 medium, 1 deceptively small) were in the light globe, which I assume means that they came in from the attic. I called my mom immediately to tell her I might be heading home tonight instead of tomorrow. When I explained that the scorpions appeared to be fighting and locked in mortal combat, she mused about when their mating season is. Not only did this scare the daylights out of me even MORE, it also says something about mom's mind, I think. Get it out of the gutter, Mom!

There is also a scorpion in my husband's closet globe. I turned on both lights and left them on... hopefully these guys will die miserable deaths up there and it will be a warning to their friends. Our neighbors have told their horror stories about scorpions, but I naively believed I didn't have to go into panic mode until May. Hmm... guess not. This has become my idea of Hell.

A Tale of the Leftover-Keeper Man

The evidence

My former initials might have been LKM, but M is truly the one who deserves those initials... the Leftover-Keeper Man. I finally recognized this when I was showering the other day. I put a bar of soap on the soap tray, which is above my head. It slid straight off onto the floor. I couldn't figure it out until I stood on tip-toe and saw two tiny bars of soap on the tray. I'm not sure who M thought would use them up! I finally came to the conclusion that my husband is incapable of getting rid of things he thinks he MIGHT someday use (though he actually relies on me to use them, since he considers them useless).

Other instances:

- At one point, early in our marriage, M left FOUR bags of bread heels. Even now, the heels remain in the bags until I finally eat or toss them.

- We often have multiple bottles of Clean Shower in the shower... each will have about an ounce left. I consolidate them.

- I always reach for the spray starch and realize that all four canisters have one spray left in them.

- Six... SIX... tubes of mostly-used toothpaste in the vanity drawer. M's response to this is that he planned on squeezing the toothpaste from the bottom when he "had a day [he] didn't have anything else to do." Yeah, right. I used them up and tossed them out.

I have decided that there are two ways to look at this with regard to our marriage:

1) Even when I'm all old and used-up, M will still keep me.

2) Once I'm starting to get old and used-up, M will replace me with someone new, but keep me in the shed or under the bathroom sink.

I've decided that Option One is the best way to think of the situation.

Tip for success: Surround yourself with brilliant people

I'm so proud of my good friend Julie from grad school-- she was published in the Burnside Writers Collective! Julie is the gorgeous blonde you see above. She wrote a great article about The Christian Scholar in Academia. If you click on the link you can read it. Julie is a great Christian, a brilliant writer, a wonderful English 104 instructor, and is oh-so-funny! M and I both just love her. And to prove that she's incredibly cool... Julie attended a conference last summer in Ireland and presented a paper she'd written. I told you she was great! (And single... I'm always looking to set her up with a great guy... so if you know any... call me)

Fun with Feral Swine

I love my husband. Here's why: only he could talk to an 8-week old baby about feral swine, ticks, and fire ants and make the conversation seem sweet. Oh yeah... he can also add fun facts about the sleeping habits of Thomas Alva Edison and Albert Einstein and keep C completely enthralled.

Last night as I was getting dinner ready, I was thinking my own thoughts and half-listening to M and C's mostly one-sided conversation when an odd word caught my eye: ticks. Hmm. I listened in and realized that M was telling C about ticks and cattle fever. He explained to her that there aren't too many ticks in North Texas because of the fire ants. Apparently you only have one or the other around. C appeared intrigued and cooed a bit at M before breathing heavily into his face.

At this, M remarked upon her milk breath and how she was a little piggie about breastfeeding. This led into the feral swine discussion, and how feral swine are pigs, but perhaps not little piggies like C is. While I couldn't quite follow the logic of that distinction, I'm pretty sure C did. She believes everything her Daddy tells her (this will, unfortunately, likely not last into her teenage years). At this point, C decided she was more interested in the lamp behind her dad's head than in feral swine.

Thus, Thomas Edison entered the picture. M explained to C that Edison only got to sleep for 4 hours a night, while Einstein slept for 12. M's reasoning was that Einstein was so brilliant and worked so hard during the rest of the day that he was able to sleep 12 hours. Edison, on the other hand, had to keep working and working to invent the light bulb. [This is the part where I suggested that perhaps it would have benefitted Edison to get more sleep at night in order to be more productive, since it must have been hard to work the other 20 hours (particularly the darker hours) until he actually invented the silly light bulb.] I'm hoping that C picked up on the sleeping LONG hours instead of just 4. Otherwise, I'll be one tired lady for the next few months!

C is sleeping a lot better and usually gives me 5 uninterrupted hours of sleep before she needs to eat. I'm pretty sure she laughed yesterday, though I haven't gotten her to repeat this yet, and she's becoming so much more fun. The evening random shrieking is not so great (but she did stop last night when M was talking about pigs and inventors and bugs), but the daytimes are wonderful. She's alert and so cute and even takes naps in her "big girl bed," aka her crib, as opposed to the Pack 'n' Play she sleeps in at night. It's hard to believe she'll be 2 months old on Monday! We go to the doctor for her check-up on Tuesday, so I'll be able to see how much she's grown. She's definitely filling out with adorable baby fat and is decidedly longer-- I feel like her legs are getting longer each day! Every day I love her more and more. I never knew motherhood was this great. Wow.