Grass and Sky

One bright moment. My knitted celery arrived today and I was able to find a ziplock bag to stash it in until I get the bug sitch sorted out.

Landlady called Orkin and they're coming out first thing tomorrow morning to do an inspection and see if there's any sign of bugs. A couple people have suggested that it might be fleas. It could be, but the cats have shown no sign of discomfort. Every great now and then I see one of them chewing or scratching at something, but never persistently or often. And I checked Zoe, who will actually put up with being poked and prodded, but didn't see even one little speck that could be flea-like.

Almost all of the bites are around my ankles and on the backs of my legs, butt, or lower back. Which could mean they (whatever they are) are in my living room carpet - I live on the floor. I almost never actually sit on my sofa, it mostly just holds my mail and other random crap that would otherwise be taking up too much space on the floor.

A friend from work, M, came over this evening to help me clean-up, do a bug search. She helped me go over the bed, sofa and carpet. We found a couple of suspicious little black things that we taped to an index card, but no actual bugs (live or carcass). And then she made me eat when she realized that I hadn't eaten more than a Powerbar and a tiny little bit of pasta all day. I was so brain dead that it was almost more than I could do to focus well enough to make a salad with some lettuce, tuna and dressing. Stupid Meeshie Brain in action.

Now I'm torn between wanting to wash/vacuum/etc. everything in sight and wanting to leave any evidence that the Orkin man will need to decide what's going on.

Oh, and when I talked with the landlady this evening, she let me know that she has very reluctantly decided she needs to sell the house within the next year, so I need to start looking for a new place to live. I've been expecting that conversation for a while, but it just adds that little frisson of extra stress. Yay! I can't even really focus on that right now, though. I need to get through the rest of the summer, make it to Dragon Con without taking a cheese grater to my skin to get rid of the burning, itching, horror that is these bug bites. And then it's do or die time. Find a new job and a new place to live before this place disappears out from under me. It's time, anyway. I've been here for four years and haven't even unpacked some of my stuff. Time to do a huge purge and find a tiny/cheap place to live. That has enough room for two cats.

Oh the second, my steampunky choker necklace shipped today. I can't wait to see how feasible it's going to be to take it apart and remake it in the colors/style I want.

*I had an awesome run yesterday. I wanted to test my slow self a little bit, so I tried to do a ten minute mile. Did it in 9:58, then went on to finish my three miles in 31:25, my best time ever by almost a minute. Woot!

*In not entirely coincidental news, my left calf is tight and sore. I'll need to baby it for a little while so it doesn't get worse.

*The all-over itchiness is easing up, at least on the legs. My arms are still pretty bad. And now I have mystery bug bites on my legs. After some reading up, I'm concerned they may be bedbug bites.

*Again, in not entirely coincidental news, I'll be doing a thorough cleaning this weekend.

*Progress is slow on the steampunk fem Five costume, but it's still progress. The bustier is taking forever, mainly because of trying to sew the boning casings onto princess seams in something like a straight line without bunching up the outer fabric or messing up the casings. But! I've ordered my decorative vegetable, so it's all good. Thank goodness for niche Etsy shops.

I'm such a bad sports fan. I nearly turned the game off after the Flyers scored their third goal. And I would have missed a fabulous comeback by the Pens. Max Talbot got things going by egging Carcillo into a fight (this was a beautiful thing to behold - it was all nudge nudge nudge and suddenly Carcillo was completely out of control). It seemed to light a fire under the team and they scored fourteen seconds later. And by the end of the game, they had scored five unanswered goals to win the game 5-3, and the series 4-2.

I was even lucky enough to only miss a few seconds (none of them crucial) while getting picked up for babysitting. So I got to see Crosby get his second goal of the night.

So, I get home from babysitting a little after ten, and there are no sheets on the bed and there's junk all over the floor (I still have a few things that I never unpacked when I moved and I was looking through them today) and I'm all tired out. And what do I see as I cross the room? A gigantic centipede up on the wall above the window. Now, you might not think that's a big deal, but dudes, I cannot stand the things. CAN NOT STAND. I kid you not, the very thought of that thing on my wall feet from my bed has my skin crawling still, some time later.

You would all have laughed so hard, if you had been here for the next few minutes. I wanted to get it down within reach so I could stomp it into bug mush with a big boot, but it was up too high to reach. So I started throwing odd socks at it. I now, by the way, have several socks draped over the curtain rod that I'm going to have to get down at some point. I eventually remembered that I had a walking stick that would reach easily. This plan came with pros and cons. Pros: I could reach the centipede easily and certainly knock it down to the floor. Cons: I would have to be standing really close to the wall in order to do this. Really close to all those hundred hairy, fast moving legs. *shudders* Practicality won out and I knocked it down. Slammed and missed a couple times with the boot and suddenly the thing, which moves nearly at the speed of light, I must add, was under the bed.

Now what was I to do? No way I could reach it under there. I couldn't even see it. And no way would I be able to finish making the bed or ever, ever sleep there with a centipede under the bed. Luckily, I have a Mal. He fearlessly charged in and dashed about under the bed. I found my flashlight and spotted the thing, and Mal very helpfully herded it out from under, I was able to successfully smash it into hairy pulp, I remembered at the last minute that Mal might not appreciate or understand high fives, and retreated out of the room to regroup. At some point I'm going to have to go remove the carcass, but I'm not quite ready for that task just yet.

I'm still all jumpy and Tookie just took ten years off my life by sneaking up behind me and touching my ear. Poor thing doesn't have any idea why I jumped a mile and slapped at her like she was some sort of monster.

ETA: Okay, and since when do I need to code paragraph breaks in lj-land? WTF?