Insert Bad Joke About Things Bugging Me

While I am glad that warm weather is coming, I was reminded tonight of one of the reasons I hate summer. There was a spider on the wall, and I was forced to dispose of it. If there is anything worse than being alone when confronted with a bug somewhere in the house and having to deal with it myself, it's when the bug is big enough that you feel it pop when you squoosh it with the tissue.

That's nasty, I know. I apologise. But if this blog is about anything, then it's about making you share my pain.

If I could erect some kind of bug-proof barrier around my home, I would be very happy and maybe not even ask for anything again ever. I could even live with the fact that it would keep out ladybugs, which are the one insect I'm always happy to find inside. Finding a ladybug means having an impromptu session on the wonders of nature and then peacefully releasing it outside to do whatever it is that ladybugs do, like flying away home to rescue their children from a burning dwelling, or eating aphids.

But then again, I am a little nutty on the subject of bugs in the house. Not without good reason. I will be the first to admit that my anxiety issues tend to make me a magnet for, well, anxiety about various issues, and the bug thing is one of them. But in this case, I am well and truly justified. When my family first moved to Cole Harbour, our backyard was so full of spiders you could not walk out on the deck. Our first apartment together in Dartmouth had a stone balcony that spiders just loved. They loved it so much that they would even hang out in the door, falling to the floor with a big splat when I would open it. I don't think I ever actually set foot on the balcony. Our first rental house in the Valley had an earwig problem that I don't think I've ever actually gotten over. It's hard to move past finding an earwig crawling up your leg as you're nursing your newborn daughter in the living room at 3 a.m.

Likewise, it's hard to move past finding two gigantic black spiders in my bed one terrible night after we'd moved into the next house in the Valley. Or the fact that ants nested in the front wall. Or the wasps that made a home in the eaves and got into our bedrooms... let's not forget the one in L's crib, which stung me (thankfully, and not her) when I was putting her down for a nap one afternoon. And have I mentioned the silverfish? There were more than normal in that house. Oh, and centipedes too. And millipedes. Welcome to rural Nova Scotia! they seemed to say as they invaded my house in what felt like a neverending swarm of grossness. Mind if we terrify and disgust you on a daily basis until you move somewhere more civilized?

My point is that my paranoia, in this case, is understandable.

So, to sum up: yay summer. Boo bugs. And I cannot elaborate anymore because I am already so itchy I may not sleep for a week.