mdotadotx’s Neighborhood

You asked for it...so here it is...

CONTENT.

There.
Be back in a few months.

I hate being afraid of bugs, I really do.  I recognize it as objectively irrational, but still cannot calm the terror that wells up inside me.  I've said it before, but I always feel compelled to reiterate.  This is not a girly "ew, gross!" type of thing... I get very worked up when people imply I need to just "get over it".  Oh trust me, I've tried.  I've begun breaking down the fear a little, realizing which situations/bugs/etc cause the reaction more strongly and which I can talk myself down from.  This has helped a little, but sometimes the bugs still best me.

If you want some background reading here is a link to a post from last Feb about a similar run-in.

Before I left for Chicago, I had a run-in with a Palmetto bug in my apartment.  I was horrified and terrified and had no idea what to do.  I was talking to myself (out loud, probably) and telling myself... "There is a thing that rational people do in this situation.  Regular people don't have a panic attack right now.  I am an adult.  I live on my own.  I have a great job.  I pay my bills and keep two cats alive.  There is something to do in this situation.  Now... what is it??"  I eventually got through it (with the aid of a couple friends on the phone and a Dyson vacuum cleaner), but it took like 2 hours of my life.  Ridiculous.

Today was almost worse.  There was an upside down palmetto bug on my kitchen floor that I believed to be dead.  I was sort of avoiding dealing with it so walked by it several times (in large arcs) thinking "later".  One trip past though caught my attention because I thought I saw it twitch.  Sure enough, I looked again and it was wriggling trying to turn itself back over.

*breathe*

I got my Raid in hand, shooed the cats away and sprayed with what might have been a little too much wild abandon.  Bug killed dead.  As advertised.  But now I have poison all over my floor and a dead, wet roach.  I lock myself and my cats in my bedroom and try not to think about it. 

This isn't an effective long term plan since i do eventually have to let my cats out and I have to clean up all the poison before I can do that.  Anyway to make a drawn out and stupid story less drawn out (but no less stupid), I come to realize that even though the bug is drenched in poison and I KNOW it is dead, I still can't get near it.

I ended up scooting a paper bag on the floor with a swiffer stick along until it half scooped it up, and got it out of the wet-with-Raid area, then put a bucket upside down on it.  Then I cleaned up the Raid and let my cats back out.  I'll deal with the bucket later.  Or I'll hire a maid.

Brilliant.

Anyway, here is my highly scientific list of what makes my run-ins with bugs worse.

1.  Contained spaces.  Being inside (even inside a large space) is always worse.  Being inside my *own* space (my home or to a lesser extent, my office) is on the more extreme panic attack version of the scale.

2.  Things that fly at me.  Or run toward me.  Especially in a spastic manner.  I have yet to be afraid of a roly poly.  I'm even not afraid of spiders.  They're smart, they keep to themselves or run away.  Thumbs up to snails and caterpillars.  Biiiig thumbs down to cicadas, palmetto bugs, flying crickets, grasshoppers, june bugs and bees.

I have learned that my current nemesis, the Palmetto bug (aka fucking huge flying roaches) flies at people because they believe people to be trees (and they live in trees when not scaring me to death in my home).  It is comforting to know they aren't trying to attack me, but I do doubt I will be able to remember that rational fact next time I am faced with the situation.

3.  I do not think that bugs are gross.  I do not wish for bugs to be dead.  I just want them to be alive, away from me.  Or I want to be alive, away from them.  If I am able to, I will catch them and release them outside.  If someone else is dealing with it for me, I strongly encourage them to do the same.  Still sometimes, it is inevitable and while it does actually, um, bug me to kill them, sometimes I just have to move on with my life.

4.  Body mass and exoskeletons.  If they have weight when they hit me or make a crunch that can be heard and really felt when crushed, I will have nightmares. 'Nuff said.

5.  Ears.  Please, bugs, stay away from my ears.  Even the smallest gnat can send me into a panic if I hear it buzz right next to my ear.

6.  Nighttime.  I can deal with everything better in the daylight.  Even if it's inside, I can still deal with it better if it is daytime.

I think my point is that I need to move somewhere that doesn't have tropical insects.

Guess who I got to spend today with???

Hannah Banana

So today just before 1 pm, I was very hungry.  I had forgotten to grab breakfast this morning (due to oversleeping... my life has clearly changed when 6:45 am is "oversleeping"), and had only managed a piece of gum so far in the day.  So I go to the kitchen, grab my can of veggie soup and a bowl. 

I open the can and start to pour it into the bowl.  About half way through doing this, I realize that the soup is not going to fit in the bowl.  I continue to pour anyway, and my mind wanders to something else.  About three quarters of the way through, I hit the bowl's capacity, and realize with a jolt that I should stop pouring.  So I do.  I look at the completely full bowl.  I look at my can with a fourth of the soup still in it.  I wonder what I should do.  I don't want to waste the extra soup.  And actually I'm hungry.  And I want to eat that extra soup, dammit.  So I am going to put it in the bowl, be damned! 

With no concern for the aftermath, I pour the rest of the soup into the bowl.

Now what did I think would happen?  Did I think the bowl would grow?  That it was only deceiving me by looking full and that it would actually accommodate the rest of my soup?

No, I believe that I just wanted to eat the soup and to eat it, I needed to put it into the bowl.  The laws of space do not apply to my soup bowls.  Except that, in a shocking turn of events, they do.   And soupy carnage splashes all over the counter tops, wasting the soup I so wanted to consume.

Dammit.

In the epic battle of Mac vs. PC, it's never been left to guessing which side I'm on.  I've had a Mac in my house as long as I can remember, and have always enjoyed sparring with die hard PC users (Ashish!).

However, as I am currently sitting on the Riverwalk in New Orleans (in the Plaza de Espana), I would appear to any onlooker to be a PC user.  Damn.  It seems that my love of all things Apple is limited.  First, when I got a new phone a few weeks ago (dropped mine in the hot tub), I shunned the idea of an iPhone and instead opted for a Blackberry.  THEN, I got a new Dell at work.  Granted, I don't have the option to use a Mac at work, but I find that now I am more likely to tote around the new Dell than my MacBook.  It's smaller, it's lighter, it has awesome battery life and (probably the most relevant point), it has a wireless broadband card.

Do you have a wireless broadband card?  Because you should.  It's amazing.  It's wonderful.  It's maybe my favorite thing ever this week.  How do people live without it?  I just don't know.  Apparently the ability to click around aimlessly (or even with aim) on the internet while sitting by the river is strong enough to pull me to the dark side.  *sigh*  I'm not as strong as I pretended to be.

(ps, as quick updates on my life: I have recently turned a quarter-century OLD and am living in New Orleans for the next month.  There are many things I have to say about both of these things, but whether or not I will get around to writing about them remains to be seen)

If anyone needs any guidance on birthday presents for me (you have just over 2 weeks!), try this.  Awesome. 

KTHXBYE

a rising
Originally uploaded by emily ann

Will write text shortly, when I can switch this to neighborhood only.

Attention New York Times:

My purpose in life isn't to be stared at.

I am not eager for women to become “a little more hard-core, a little more androgynous, a little more butch.”

I don't consider myself very hard-core, androgynous, or butch.  Sometimes I wish I could be butcher, actually. 

Yes, gender play is fun, and trousers are a useful wardrobe default for the woman in business.

Gender play?  I'm pretending not to be a woman because I like jeans? 

Woman in business?  Or woman who wants to avoid being harassed walking down the street and on the train?

...there remains in Shaw’s descriptions of the women on the streets of Manhattan, in their ripe young multitudes, something unexpectedly fresh and also recognizable.

ripe young multitudes?  Seriously?  You say this in a mainstream newspaper?

...the dress was transformed into a wardrobe staple, to the benefit of women and those who get pleasure from gazing at them.

Anyone been to college?  Read any film theory?  Or any other kind of theory, for that matter?  About the male gaze?  Any of this sound familiar?

“I find that dresses are slimming, and they cover all the problem areas and highlight all the curves.”

And that way all the men in the world are saved from having to see your "problem areas". 

“Instead of spending days thinking about your wardrobe,” she said, “you can concentrate on who you’re voting for for president.”

What?  Just, what?  Who spends days thinking about their wardrobe?  No one I know.  And who is unable to decide what to wear in the morning AND think about politics?  Gosh, there are plenty of people who use Hillary Clinton's wardrobe decisions as a factor (sometimes, THE factor) in whether or not to vote for her, but they aren't people I would ever take seriously. 

Sloane spoke for a lot of us in recollecting a long-ago day and a girl he had seen on a ferry for barely an instant. “A white dress she had on,” he said.

“She didn’t see me at all,” he said, “but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”

If that girl had any idea, I think she would be just a little disturbed by that.  If this guy has a significant other (I've never seen Citizen Kane), I hope she was bothered by it, too.

Do you remember those logic puzzles from elementary school?  You know, like "Edna is standing next to Brian.  the person in the blue shirt is not next to the person in the green shirt.  Rachel isn't wearing green.  Jason is taller than Brian."  etc, and you have to figure out what color shirt everyone is wearing, their relative heights, and what order they are standing in?

Well I rocked those logic puzzles.  I would go through them really fast, and my answers were always right.  However, the part where I got stuck was then the teacher would ask me to explain to everyone else how I arrived at my answer.  I was always confused by this.  Both because I didn't think I should have to explain when I was right, and also because I couldn't actually explain why I was right, I just knew I was.  I seemed to naturally skip a lot of middle steps that my brain did without instruction, so if I tried to go back over it step by step, I'd get stuck.

Anyway, this project I'm working on at work reminds me of those logic puzzles, except with plane tickets, a time axis, 37 calendars, soft requirements like "Rachel would kind of prefer to stand next to Jason, if possible.", and no guarantee there even is a right answer.

It kind of makes my head spin, but I think I'm actually figuring it out. I just hope no one asks me to justify the final product.

this was fine in the morning when i was working from home, but now i have to go into the office.  so i'm going. 

in jeans, a wife beater and pigtails. 

i'm all about looking professional.