Antvasion! and the Walking Stick in My WIne, and What is Biting Me?! (The Story of the Jeep)

It is prime insect season at the cabin. Even as I write this, there is a crazed spider running up and down the wall in front of me. It is very confused about exactly where it wants to go.

In addition to the masses of ants in the sink, whom this year do not seem repelled by the fresh mint and so are giving us all kinds of Kodak moments for filming for our epic picture Antvasion!, the other night a walking stick fell into my wine where it innocently resided on my bedside table. We do not know why I, undisgusted by anything other than rats and giant cockroaches, are so unsettled by walking sticks, but I am. I think it's because you cannot see their heads. That is, they appear not to have them, because that would make them look like not a stick and that would ruin the point, now, wouldn't it. I bravely plucked him out of my wine, though, and with barely a shudder got him out the back door and onto the porch.

The other primary insect action right now is whatever is biting me at night. I wake up every day with a new bite in a new place. Of course the first thought is always that it's a brown recluse, and one waits anxiously for a couple of hours for the necrosis to begin; thankfully, it never does. But because of this, 2 weeks ago on Saturday when I woke up with bite just under a pink and swollen left eye, I immediately wanted a Benadryl, though they completely send me into a stupor. I could not go get one myself, as I was pinned to the bed by cats, so I asked my darling husband if he could be so kind as to get one for me. He did. It was the wrong kind, the blue sinus type. I asked for another, hoping for a pink, non-capsule type that is easy to break in half. He came back with a pink capsule one , at which point I said to hell with it, I will take the whole dang thing. So I did.

Which is, I believe, the reason that when we left the recycling center that afternoon on the way to brunch, I backed our jeep into a telephone pole. Or, as my friend K would say, a telephone pole leaped out and attacked me. I managed to hit it at the juncture of four—not one, not two, but four—different car parts: taillight, right rear panel, liftback, and bumper. Oh, and possibly more damage under the bumper, according to the guy at the body shop. We proceeded on to brunch and then took me home where sadly and
druggedly I fell into a deep 3-hour sleep. Two weeks later, you can still see the bite mark under my eye.