This has been an extraordinarily bad week for me and bugs. I’ve been looking in the paper today for an apartment because I can’t go home.

Monday it was the spider. Last night…I can barely tell you of the horror.

Let me preface this story by saying we’ve had a lot of rain this monsoon. A lot of rain. Rain makes the creepy crawly bugs come out of the woodwork.

Oh the horror.

I went to bed pretty early for me last night, around 11:45. I climbed into bed and put my iPod on. I always go to sleep with my iPod on because My Honey has a SERIOUS SNORING PROBLEM. Yes, indeed, it does warrant all caps. His snoring is out of this world extreme. Once I fall asleep, he won’t wake me up. My brain has long added his snorting, snuffling, kicking, and all around obnoxiousness to the list of acceptable noises during the night. The problem is falling asleep. I can’t fall asleep with all that bullshit going on less than a foot away. The only way I am staying out of prison is by wearing my iPod.

So I was all stretched out on the bed, covers pushed aside because it’s so freaking hot, with Mozart cranked up pretty high. I don’t want any hearing specialists telling me how awful that is. Honest to Zeus, it’s either the iPod or I spend the rest of my life on the lam for murder. I love My Honey and, without even going there to check it out first, I’m damn sure I don’t love prison.

I felt Jojo Kitty jump up on the bed and rustle around by my feet. I figured he was playing with one of the dog’s tails and he’d settle down in a minute so I mostly ignored him. I was just on the cusp of sleep, Carmina Burana – O Fortuna playing in my ears (there couldn’t be a better soundtrack for this little event, believe me) when I felt something skitter across my thigh. I recall thinking it was the cat’s tail and I reached down and brushed it off.

I heard it thunk against the wall.

Oh, sweet Jesus, hold on to your seats people.  

“That wasn’t the cat,” the ever alert animal part of my brain informed me with some urgency.

I reached over and turned on the bedside light and – HOLY SHIT – there was a giant sewer roach on the wall about four feet from the floor.

Now I suspect the big cat, Geddy, brought the thing in the house because he does that from time to time, half dead birds, mangled mice, de-tailed lizards. Then I think Jojo got ahold of it to play with and assumed I’d be just as delighted with his new toy.

I was not.

The giant bug squatted there on the wall, his antennae wavering menacingly. Jojo crouched on the floor beneath it, staring up with the intensity of a full-grown tiger.  

I woke up My Honey with a great deal of vigor, as I’m sure you can imagine. “That thing,” I told him in a strangled voice and pointed with  a shaky finger at the intruder, “just crawled across my leg.”

I was making an Olympic sized effort to keep control of myself. I figured the entire neighborhood didn’t need to be awakened by my screeching. I took off down the hall to fetch some instrument with which to kill it. Maybe the vacuum? A .357 magnum. An asteroid. A thermonuclear weapon.  I ran back to the bedroom with a fist full of paper towels. I figured as soon as My Honey killed it he could use the towels to clean up the carnage.

Obviously, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Back in the bedroom in less that five seconds, I was greatly disturbed to find My Honey still in bed, although he was leaning forward and peering at the insect by the light of the 25 watt lightbulb. It still sat on the wall, suspended above the twitching kitty who was making the very same cooing noises he makes when he’s stalking one of us in play.

Why the hell was this bug not already dead?

 And then the worst possible thing happened.

In slow motion, Jojo Kitten sprang from the floor, leaping four feet vertically in the air, and reached for the bug. I leapt to catch hm before he connected and My Honey yelled, “No, Jojo!” The sound of his voice came out in super slow motion, the same as the sluggish movements of my arms and legs, as if we were both drugged.

None of that mattered because Jojo swatted the bug off the wall and sent it careening into the gloom not illuminated by the meager light beside my bed.

Mommy!

Jojo was going insane, flinging himself from nightstand to bed to the floor and back again, chirping , hunting for that bug. The three-inch bug that was now loose, in my room, under the bed, ON MY SIDE. My Honey did not valiantly rise from the bed, gleaming sword in hand, to systematically disassemble the bedroom and slay the bug. No, he did not. He lay back down. He stupidly offered me a flashlight so I could crawl around and look for it myself.

Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

I tried to lay down, music back on in my ears, tried to ignore the sounds of the hunting kitten. Everytime I would unclench just a little, I’d feel that phantom sensation of the bug running across my leg. I gave myself fifteen minutes of barely suppressed hysteria before I got up from the bed and went to the livingroom.

Sleep was elusive there, too. The heebie jeebies are not easy to cure. Every bug you’ve ever encountered slithers out of your psyche to say visit and remind you of past terrors. Around 3:45 when I was still wide awake and staring at the livingroom ceiling I thought I was going to have to call in sick from lack of sleep.

I went to work, which was probably best. What I need right now is sleep and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to go back into that room again.

If I’d been left alone there, in that house all day, haunted by the idea of that super-sized insect, I suspect there would be no house left by the time the family came home. A charred and smoldering hull would sit on my lot, littered with bullet casings and the remnants of an atom bomb.

I know you people are wondering how Jojo the most adorable orange kitten is doing. He’s almost five months old and had grown an amazing amount in such a short time. He’s going to be a big kitty when he grows up.

He still comes to work with me everyday. He’s super loving – we believe this to be the undeniable truth that he has been raised by me, Ava and seven aunties five days a week. The women at work absolutely adore him. Even the security guard thinks he’s the cutest thing in orange hair.

messing around in the laundry while I wrote this post

Venders come in and find out we have an office kitty and look at us oddly, but then they see him either sleeping all curled up on my desk or racing up and down the hallway like an orange version of the Flash and they are totally won over.

That’s what brought up this post. It used to be that he slept all through the day, waking up periodically to nibble on some kibble or, more likely yawn, stretch and resettle himself on his sweater. He sleeps on my office sweater, the one I leave over the back of my desk chair for when the air conditioning goes into over drive and I’m slowly freezing to death. They say freezing to death is a really nice, peaceful way to go. I just don’t want it to happen at work. That would be awful.

But I digress.

I started laying out the sweater on my desk for him to nap on and now, as soon as he sees the thing, his eyes get droopy. It’s the kitty version of Pavlov’s Dog.

So he used to sleep all day once we got to work, spending all his crazy kitty energy by 5am in the morning when he’d race around the house wrestling with Winnie the Wonder Mutt. Now, he’s still raring to go when we get to work with about another hour of energy left in him.

I know his aunties thought I was crazy when I described his manic antics since all they ever saw was the poster kitten for lazy cats. Not anymore. Now he lurks in among the floor plants and behind doors waiting to pounce.

He hides under the copier waiting until some unsuspecting person wanders along with innocent plans of using the office equipment and bursts out from underneath to bat at her feet then race away.

There’s a door that separates our offices from the lobby and he shoves his arms underneath all the way up to his shoulders so that our receptionist will play with him. He does this same thing at home only it’s under the bathroom door instead.

We blew up balloons and left them around the office and he has the time of his life bouncing all around the office, batting at them then chasing after them.

Honest to Zeus, or Saint Francis or Muhammad – whoever, he is the best stress reliever in a super stressful job ever. We highly recommend getting yourself a work cat.

My worst nightmare happened today.

Honest to Zeus, I don’t how I lived through the experience to tell you about it now.

I have a wee phobia about spiders. Any spider, any size, poisonous or not. The hairier it is, the more terrifying I find it. Although I do find Daddy Longlegs ridiculously frightening. Yes I know that they’re not poisonous. I do understand that spiders keep the insect population under control.

Frankly, I don’t give a shit. They’re horrifying.

I live in the American Southwest – the home of many a poisonous snake and lizard and insect. Think rattlesnakes, gila monsters, and scorpions. None of these really concern me. I don’t plan to seek them out, mind you. I’m not an idiot. But none of the above give me the screaming willies.

However, you let a tarantula wander across my path and I’ll be climbing a light pole, let a wolf spider in the house and I’ll need you to get out the paddles and restart my heart.

So I’m sure you can imagine my reaction when I reached my hand into the mailbox and belatedly saw a spider in there.

This has long been a nightmare of mine, lasting much longer than the monster under the bed who grabs your leg or hand if you are ever so stupid as to let one dangle over the side.

Of course, I had to set fire to the mailbox. Honestly, there was nothing else to be done.

They say it’s your birthday! Da na na na Na na. It’s my birthday, too! Yeah!

In case you missed the subtle clue, today is my birthday, and it was lovely.

I woke up late, opened presents, went out to breakfast, watched olympics coverage and took a nap. Later in the day we met all the family at my Mom-in-law’s house for a swim and a barbecue. There was more presents and cake.

Oh My God. I know it’s ridiculous for a 43 year old woman to be this excited over her birthday, but I don’t know what to tell you. I really, really, really love my birthday an inordinate amount.

Maybe it’s the Leo in me, demanding attention. Perhaps I’m childish. Maybe. I’m sure there are many Freudian things to say about me and my birthday fetish, but I don’t care.

I’m vaguely embarrassed to admit that I am always amazed to realize that businesses are open on my birthday, that it’s not an actual holiday. That makes me sound completely over the top self-absorbed, but I’d like to think that particular foible is limited to my birthday and not how I conduct myself on a regular basis.

Whatever it is, people let me get away with it and I’ll be continuing along until I’m dead.

What do you think of birthdays? Are they to be passed quietly with no mention? Or are you more like me and you announce it to the world? Hey, if you don’t tell anyone then you don’t get any presents. PRESENTS is my motto.

The kids are either back in school or their return is imminent. This gives us a great deal of relief because, honestly, you can only hear, “I’m bored” so many times before your head explodes. Well, the jokes on them. School is what complainers get. There was a lot happening this week with the Olympics and the elections and all other shenanigans going on in the world. It was almost hard to pick only five things. Never fear, we did it. Five things. Not four, not six. Five, just like the title suggests. Get comfortable and we’ll dive in.

1. James Bond. Wow, Daniel Craig is awesome as our favorite spy. There was immense sadness when the news came out that there weren’t any more Bond films planned. Let’s call it like it was – depression. There was depression. You can have your opinions about who is the best James Bond. Everyone has one. Unfortunately, many people are wrong. The other guys were fine, but Mr. Craig is a kick-ass, gritty Bond who is ridiculously hot in his hotness. Why is a beaten and bloodied James Bond so sexy? We don’t know, but it is. Fact. Maybe it all harkens back to the old adage, Chicks dig scars. Whatever it is, the man has got it in spades. Check out the movie trailer for the film opening in November – Skyfall it’s called and awesome it will be.
2. Ridiculous pleas for money. Maybe this is mean spirited, but when we read
   

   real Octopus mom

   that Octomom, Nadya Suleman, had created a web site to shill for donations to buy her a new house we were sickened. She’s asking for $150,000 for a down payment. In this economy? Talk about people making their own problems. Here is the mean part: she’s collected a grand total of $270.00 and that made us laugh. We’re fairly certain that we’re going to Hell anyway no matter what our reaction to this unholy cause. The tragic part is that those fourteen (14!!!!!) kids did not pick their mother. Still, we’re not sending money.

   

   Zombie in NYC

3. Zombies in NYC. The zombie news just keeps coming. Apparently, the dish network hasn’t come to terms yet with AMC and some other cable networks and therefore their customers are without the glories of those channels and the excellent original programming they provide. AMC, the people who bring us The Walking Dead, decided to take the bull by the horns so to speak and dressed a bunch of people like zombies and sent them into NYC to promote the show and to get people to demand the return of that channel. Can you imagine? We understand people were totally freaking out. We’re really just impressed that no one was actually beheaded. If one of those stunts shows up in our town, we’re machete-ing first,
   

   The original cloned dog

   asking stupid questions later. Be forewarned AMC. We don’t screw around with zombies out here.

4. Cloning. Get out your pens and paper and map this along with us. It’s complicated. Once upon a time there were some people with too much money who really loved their dog. Time passed and their beloved dog, Lancelot, died of cancer so they had his DNA cryogenically frozen because that’s what all rich people do when their pets die. No goldfish funerals in the toilet for the 1%. Sadness fell over the land until they “won” an auction for the opportunity to have Lancelot cloned from that DNA for $150,000. We know, right! Anyway, Lancelot Encore was born and much happiness ruled the land. Next, they paid “several thousand dollars” to some people with a beautiful blonde princess dog to have Lancelot Encore’s puppies. They were born on July 4^thand were named Glory, Liberty, Star, Allegiance, America, Patriot, Independence, and Victory. Clearly, rich people have no idea how to name a puppy. We’d have gone with Gordon, Lulu, Sally, Amos, Alice, Poppy, Imogene, and Viola. Anyway, as insane as this is, it’s still a better use of $150,000 than #2.
   

   That could be us coxswaining in that boat

5. Kicked out of the Olympics. Like us, you’re probably watching Michael Phelps and Gabby Whatsherface win gold medals and look excited while doing it. At the same time you have no intention of getting your butt off the couch and do 10,000 crunches to get that same stomach. Keeping that in mind, Amylynn did find us a sport that we could participate in with little or no effort on our part. You know those long boats with eight people rowing at light speed? At the very front of the boat there is this chick who sits there and yells at them to “stroke!” She gets one of the medals when they win, too. The Sisters excel at yelling at people and doing as little work as possible. This is our niche. All this brings to mind the badminton teams who were thrown out of the games for trying to lose. Losing is really just an organic effect of the Sisters doing sports. It probably has to do with our intense lack of caring, but that’s not the Olympic motto. At the games you’re supposed to do your best. If the Olympic committee will fly us to London, we promise to do our very best yelling at the losers.

I was really hoping that when the moon came up full last night that I’d turn into a werewolf so I wouldn’t have to go to work at Bank of No Forks today. As you may have guessed, that didn’t happen.

A girl can dream.

Today was Sassy and The Bandit’s first day of school. That seems so early to me. I learned that this year The Bandit’s four buddies are all in the same class. That didn’t happen in first grade. That year, someone very wisely divided the group and sent them in pairs to separate classes. Clearly, the registrar did not get the memo.

My Honey and I are trying to decide whether or not to warn the teacher that this particular group of boys was referred to as the Four Toddlers of the Apocalypse not so very long ago. Should we tell or would it be better to let the teacher figure that out for herself?

For those of you who have been following my writing career, as uneventful as it’s been, there is something big coming….soon. Most definitely by Christmas. Stay tuned…..

I love the Olympics. I watch all the events. I stay up too late trying to see everything. When it comes to the Olympics I’ll watch the stupidest, most boring sports just cause they’re Olympic. Ping Pong? Trampoline? Archery? Really, when else are you going to see that on TV? It doesn’t matter. By the end of these two weeks, I’ll know everything about competitive archery. I do think it’s really too bad that they don’t let Hawkeye compete. He would kick some serious butt.

There has been a lot of talk on the internet and everywhere else about the athlete’s bodies. While I agree that these people have some ridiculously phenomenal bodies, I don’t think that’s where the attention needs to be paid.

There is an elephant in the room that no one ever brings up. A giant glittery elephant.

Some of these gymnasts have a serious love of eyemake up. And shimmery glitter. It’s more than mildly disturbing. In

Mercy!

fact, sometimes I can’t concentrate on the event because of the train wreck on some of these girls. Perhaps it’s that they just have so damn much on and they are only fifteen and sixteen years old. Where is their mother to wipe some of this crap off?

Perhaps, next Summer Olympics we should send Glamour and Vogue magazines over to some of these Eastern European countries as a preemptive strike against the over application of eye shadow. One of them even had fake eyelashes on. Excessive much?

Back to the glitter. I do love me some glitter. It’s my favorite color. Nevertheless, moderation people. Seriously, I’m fairly certain that the Russians used all the glitter. If Disney stock plummets because there is a glitter shortage, we’ll know who to blame.

I’m actually a little concerned about myself. I’m exhibiting behavior that is wholly unlike me and, honestly, I don’t know what to think of it.

You may recall that from years past, that my birthday is approaching. This Sunday is the day. Usually by this time I’ve informed you all of a PO Box you can send gifts to, where the party will be, what my expectations are for the celebration.

Oddly, not this year. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I was all caught up in going to the RWA convention and just before that I was in Albuquerque and just before that San Diego. It’s been a whirlwind of travel and I think the date just sort of snuck up on me.

My Mom is concerned. My Honey must have asked me five hundred times what I want for my birthday and I still don’t really know. I can’t decide what I want for my birthday dinner. I don’t know what restaurant I want to go to for my lunch, or even if there’ll be the traditional birthday lunch, since Kelli started her new job.

For the love of all that’s holy, I couldn’t even decide what kind of cake I wanted. I told my mom to pick. That’s actually quite alarming.

Ava thinks I’m handing myself with a new-found maturity. That sounds like crap to me.

You would all be so proud of me. One of the things that goes on at the National Romance Writers Convention is that they give you free books.

FREE BOOKS, people.

You must know what a weakness I have for books. Books are my kryptonite. I just can’t help myself.

The freshly packed trunk on the way to Anaheim

But the problem, you see, is that there were four women in Carly, Ava’s Cadillac, along with the attendant amount of luggage. That trunk was unbelievably full and the idea of squeezing even one more thing into was unfathomable.

Yet, they were giving away books. I could feel my fingers itching.

On Wednesday we checked in with the RWA people. We each received a huge red and white canvas bag along with our credentials. Ava and I plopped on the floor right in the middle of the lobby like little kids and opened the goodie bag. Inside were maybe fifteen books, hardcover and paperback.

I felt heart palpitations.

We attended a signing for literacy and I only bought one book. Only one. I was quite proud of myself.

Throughout the convention there were massive organized book signings underwritten by various publishers. At these events, free books were given away as they were being signed by the authors. Ava and I didn’t attend any of these events. We thought it was best not to be tempted.

That, and we were so busy taking craft and career workshops we didn’t have time to get to any of the signings.

No matter how hard I tried, the damn free books kept coming. Sometimes at the end of the workshops, there were free copies of the speaker’s books. I tried to resist. I think we only collected four or five of those copies.

So Ava and I were up to somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five books in our hotel room. Don’t forget that there were two other women with a combined total of a similar number of books as ours.

We figured that we could ship the books home via overnight shipping. There was even a conveniently located shipping company in our hotel lobby. But, really, isn’t the reason for driving – besides that’s it’s much cheaper than flying – because you don’t want to worry about overweight luggage and such?

We ended up getting every single one of those books home by shoving them in every single pocket of space in that trunk and on the floor at Ava’s feet in the passenger seat. Our friend,Tara Simone, is a phenomenal packer.