Killing Bugs Never Tasted So Good

We've all had fruit flies in our house at one time or another... you leave some bananas on the counter until they turn black or leave a plate of spaghetti sitting on the counter for awhile (ahem), and BAM. Fruit fly infestation. Usually you get lucky... toss out the offending item and the fruit flies gradually disappear, but sometimes they are hesitant to leave. You catch them mating on the kitchen counter and try to smash them, but they fly away too fast. You get out the vacuum cleaner and start sucking them off the ceiling in the evening when they land up there to do whatever fruit flies do on the ceiling, but you still see them flying around your cereal the next day.

Well, I have stumbled upon a surefire way to get rid of those pesky fruit flies! Not only will it eliminate the problem, but it's also fun.

Step 1. Obtain a bottle of sweet, fruity wine (they seem to prefer white). The fruit flies at my house really like Traminette and Simmons' Winery Autumn Late Harvest (they have discerning taste, at least).

Step 2. Drink most of the wine (this is the fun part). Leave an inch or so of wine in the bottom of the bottle.

Step 3. Set the open wine bottle in the area where fruit flies seem to be congregating (kitchen, maybe?). Note: Be sure to use the bottle. A glass does not work as well.

Step 4. Wait.

You will notice less and less fruit flies buzzing around your food and more and more fruit flies floating helpless (and dead) in the wine bottle.

This absolutely works. Last summer we had a fruit fly problem and we tried everything to get rid of them... unsightly fly paper, the vacuum method, Raid, but nothing worked until I accidentally left a bit of wine in a bottle sitting out. The next day I counted 20 some fruit flies floating in the bottle. A couple of days later the problem was completely eradicated. I have used this method a few times since then (I guess we get a lot of bad bananas) when I notice fruit flies around, and it works everytime.

I wonder if I can have this idea patented.

A Testament To My Age

There are two Windows folders in My Documents called My Albums (for pictures) and My Music. I consistently click on the My Albums folder when I want to play some music. I guess I'll never learn... like a grandma who can't set the time on her VCR.

Buggin'

My three year old daughter is afraid of bugs, especially the flying variety. When I say afraid, I mean terrified for her life. At the sight of a fly, bee, gnat, or whatever, she screams, starts crying, trembles, hides her face and/or gets behind me. The scream startles everyone around us, and they think she is mortally injured. So whenever this happens in public, it's really nice to endure all the stares from people.

She also has the uncanny ability to find the smallest bugs around the house. She'll point out the tiniest ant crawling around on carpet where it normally would be camouflaged. One day she told me there was a spider in the potty. I'm thinking it's on her little training toilet... no, there is a spider crawling around in my toilet bowl! I'm glad she found it. I am amazed at her bug spotting ability, but it does not help her phobia one bit.

I don't know why she developed this phobia. I may jump once in awhile if a bug lands on me outside or if I see a big bug in the house, but I've never reacted like that. Maybe it was television. It gets blamed for everything else, so we'll just say that's it.

We have tried various approaches in order to deal with her phobia. We've reassured her that bugs won't hurt her, they are afraid of her, some bugs are good, and so on... but she is three. You can't reason with a three year old. After having this happen again and again I finally lost my patience and yelled at her and put her in timeout on the couch. That didn't work either. You can't scare the fear out of someone. The psychologist in me thought about systematic desensitization, but again, she is three. I think she is going to just have to outgrow it. In the meantime, I have to remain calm whenever I encounter a creepy crawly. I don't like millipedes, and there have been two of them in the house recently. It's really hard not to yelp when you see one of those. I have to suck it up and set a good example!

It's going to be a fun summer indoors... I bought Tess a pool, but she can't enjoy it. She barely even had a foot in it today when she saw something and ran screaming back into the house.

Happy Summer Solstice!

The Scarlet Pumpernickel

Ah... it's fun to laugh at the verbal screw-ups, Freudian slips, misunderstood song lyrics, and jabberwocky that people come up with. As a kid I used to think Aimee Mann was singing "Ooo, trash, even downtown, was so scary" in the song "Voices Carry". To this day, even though I know the correct lyrics, I still sing my own silly version.

Here are some other silly things I've heard or read over the years...

One day (many years ago) I was walking through campus at Ball State with a friend, and it started to sprinkle. She said "It's dribbling." That made me laugh, and I still remember it!

When Pope John Paul II died and they were electing a new pope, I had the news on and the news lady said "The new poop, uh, pope...". I can't remember which channel I was watching, but that was hilarious.

I was looking for a table in a restaurant with someone when he said something like "That table hasn't been busted yet". Busted? Oh... you mean bussed.

Sometimes the brain just decides to mix up what a person is saying... one day my husband referred to something in the living room as a "rotten curd". It took me a second to register that he was talking about the curtain rod. That was so funny that we have been referring to curtain rods as rotten curds ever since.

My mom is the queen of mispronouncing things even after she's been saying it correctly. She once said "He's got that Alzenheimers". I guess she had forgotten how to pronounce it. On a recent trip she was unloading stuff from the car and asked her husband if he could get her "Bed, Bath, and Body Bag". I said "Mom, I didn't know we had a dead body in the car." It was a Bath and Body Works bag, but she had somehow thrown Bed, Bath, and Beyond in there.

And I saved the best for last. A while back someone at work sent a message out to the entire Carmel office. The message informed everyone that they would need to change their passwords due to a possible security risk. The last line of the message said:

"We apologize for the incontinence and appreciate your understanding."

:)

Character Licensing Has Gone Too Far

I know companies want to make a buck by selling their trademark character license, but it's sometimes hard to find kids' products that are not stamped with a cartoon character. I swear, Dora, Pooh, Disney Princesses, Elmo, Thomas the Tank Engine, and whoever else is on EVERYTHING! Sunglasses, shoes, clothes, toy furniture, bikes, and even potties. I don't mind the toys so much, but I do not buy any clothes or shoes with characters on them. I don't know why it bothers me so much. I guess I just don't want my daughter being a walking advertisement for Dora the Explorer. And I think a plain little flowered dress is much cuter without a giant cartoon on the front.

Turn Me On Tonight; I'm Radioactive

I haven't blogged in awhile because I've been busier than ever, and the funny thing is that I'm not even working right now. On the first day of spring, I received my dose of radiation (for the zillions of bone tumors that I have). I had to travel to Philadelphia to get it, and Leslie went with me. We went to the hospital at UPENN. The radiation team was wonderful. They were nice and I felt like I was in good hands with them. The hospital, on the other hand, was terrible. First of all, it must have been designed by the person who designed the Winchester mansion. There were elevators that went to certain floors but not others, corridors that lead to no man's land, and very dismal waiting areas. Once I received the radiation, which took about 30 minutes, we had to wait several hours before they had a room ready for me. It must have been 7 PM before we got into the room, and they were still preparing it. By preparing, I mean wrapping it in plastic. Yeah, the Saran Wrap kind. EVERYTHING was wrapped... the bed rails, phone, TV remote, tray table, toilet seat and handles, light switches, faucet. Even the floor was covered in entirety with large sheets of plastic, which made it very slick. They also wrapped three large metal sheets in plastic and placed them beside and at the foot of my bed. I was in a plastic fortress. It was difficult to operate the volume dial on the TV remote through the plastic, and when I made a phone call, the person on the other end said "What's that rustling?" I decided to just use my cell. Before anyone entered the room, they had to put some booties on over their shoes, and when they left the room, they had to throw them away. We found it very strange that I was allowed to meander about the hospital all day after receiving my dose, but that they took all these precautions in my room. The whole thing seemed really wasteful to me.

To make matters worse, the TV only had 3 channels, and only one of those was watchable, and I use that term loosely. I had the Weather Channel, which is good for about 10 minutes. Then there was CNN Headline News. After seeing the same story about a new Kevin Costner movie for the fourth time in an hour, I settled on my third channel... ABC Family. I watched The Sound of Music because that's all that was on. They ran an ad during the movie that said the same movie would be played the next night and the night after that. Three nights in a row of the same thing. I felt sorry for anyone staying in the hospital more than one night. For a fee of $8 you could get more channels, but I thought that was ridiculous and did my crossword puzzle instead. Strike 1 for the TV stations.

The food at the hospital was very bad. I asked the nurse for a menu, and he had a strange look on his face. He brought me one, but there was essentially only one choice for a meal, and you could select your own drink. I circled what I wanted. That was around 6:30 AM. My food didn't arrive until after 8 AM, and it was not what was on the menu. They brought me two boxes of cereal and milk. I don't drink cow's milk but at this point I was starving, so I ate it. About 30 minutes later, they bring in another breakfast. I didn't touch it because I had already eaten. It looked gross anyway. At lunch they brought some chicken and pasta that was tolerable, but they gave me ice tea in a carton. It was disgusting. The food was strike 2.

I should have been gone way before lunch... around 7 AM, the radiation guy came in and checked my levels. He said they were good and left. The doctor came in at 8 AM and said I could leave. YAY! About an hour later I called the nurse and asked if I could be discharged. She said we were waiting for the radiation safety team to come before I could go. I told her that the guy had already been in that morning and she said "Oh, no, no, no... only the doctor was here." Oh yeah? Were you in the room? She proceeded to tell me that I couldn't leave until they came back. I asked if she could take my IV out and she said she would do that before I left. All right.

So a couple more hours go by, and I'm sitting there watching crappy shows on ABC Family and eating my crappy lunch on my crappy bed in my plastic room. I really, really wanted out of there. Leslie suggested that I call the doctor, so I left him a message. I must have paged the nurse three times to ask what the hold up was. Finally, she came back and said I could go... the radiation team had already been there. Noooooo, really? By then it was 1 PM. Strike three!

The nurse gave me a little purple and yellow flower since it was Easter weekend. Some charity group was handing them out to patients. It was a pain to carry it with my bag and purse, but I did. While sitting in the taxi on the way to the hotel I noticed the flower was fake. Good grief. I would have ditched it somewhere in the hospital if I had realized that before. Oh well, I don't know how I would have gotten it on the plane anyway.

I was exhausted after two nights in a row with little sleep, but I couldn't be in Philly and not get out to see it. Leslie and I went to Reading Market, which she discovered was right behind our hotel. We walked to Independence Hall and then got on a trolley tour that took us around to lots of sites. We saw Ben Franklin's grave, Betsy Ross's house, the art museum (home of the Rocky steps... "it's the eye of the tiger"), and lots of other stuff. There was a Rodin museum that I would love to go back and visit. The Thinker was right out front, and The Gates of Hell were behind that. Sweeeeeet. I wrote a paper on The Gates of Hell once.

All around Philly are interesting statues and sculptures, including Robert Indiana's LOVE sculpture (which is replicated everywhere), some Claes Oldenburg, Calder, and even some stuff done by actor Kevin Bacon's dad. I read about Robert Indiana and found that he was born in New Castle, just a 25 minute drive from my home town of Rushville.

I'm glad we had the chance to get out and see some sites in Philly, however brief it was. I have a lot of people to thank too... James and my mom for watching the kids, Leslie for going with me, Kim for the hotel and airline deals, Michele for letting me stay at her house, Michelle for keeping me company and bringing movies, Ji for coming to visit, and everyone else for moral support!

I will be going back to Bethesda in May to have follow-up scans. Keep your fingers crossed that these things are shrinking!

People Are Strange

My first job was at a little coffee and donut shop called Mr. Freshie in my home town of Rushville, Indiana. I started working there when I was 15. My cousin, Julie, had decided to quit working there, and she called to see if I wanted the job. It was pretty fun... my duties were waiting on customers, keeping the coffee brewed, washing dishes, and general clean-up. After my initial training, I worked weekends, and I ran the place by myself 2-3 nights per week. Sometimes I would ice donuts if we ran out, and when I was bored I liked to fill donut holes with filling. Yummy! I did a commercial for them on the local radio station for my radio class. I remember saying "Come down to Mr. Freshie to hear all the latest gossip." I made $3 an hour, and I got meager tips. I mean, how much tip is someone going to leave if their bill is 85 cents? I was lucky to get a dime, and quarters were like gold.

The shop was rather small and was always full of people on the weekends. There was a constant cloud of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. I used to joke that we sold "smoked donuts". The donuts were actually really good. A couple of the popular items were nutsticks and flat cinnamon rolls with caramel icing.

Like any small town coffee shop, we had our regular customers, and man, were they ever characters. Here are some of the people I remember most. I'm using first names only, but if you're from Rushville, you'll probably know who I'm talking about.

Coke
There was a gas station next to Mr. Freshie, and Coke was an old man with a white beard who lived in a car behind that gas station. When I went out back to take out the trash or get supplies from the shed, I could see his TV antenna sticking up over the fence. He rode a bike around town. I guess he either didn't have a license or his "house" wasn't drivable. He was quite the entrepreneur. In his mind, he owned a fleet of helicopters and who knows what else. He would sit in the donut shop and tell tall tales of his adventures. My step-dad recently told me that he was in there one day when I was working (this was way before he was my step-dad) and Coke was talking about running off to Hawaii and taking me with him. You could never take him seriously...

Merriam
Almost every night you could count on Merriam to come in, and she would stay until closing. I don't think she lived in Rushville, so she would drive from out of town just to hang out in the donut shop. She was quite a paradox. The story was that she had not taken a bath since her husband died many years before. I believe that was true. The stench that came from her would knock you over. She had holes in her shoes, no socks, always wore the same clothes, and her hair, which was long and grey, was in a gigantic tangled mess on the side of her head. Really, it looked like a rat's nest. I don't think any amount of combing would have gotten through it. She was very intelligent though, and I enjoyed talking to her. I learned to block out the smell. The ironic thing about her was that as I did my nightly cleaning, she would point out the spots I missed on the counter or floor, even the tiniest little crumb. She would move the gumball machine so that I could sweep and mop behind it, and she would straighten the doormat if I laid it down even the least bit crooked. She would watch me lock the doors before she left. I never could understand why she was so picky about that stuff but refused to clean herself up.

Phyllis
Phyllis stopped in every now and then. She drove a huge gold car. I'm not sure if she lived in it or just liked to sit in it. I would frequently see her around town just sitting in her car. She was heavy set, had horn rimmed glasses that made her eyes look huge, wore lots of blue eye shadow, and had brassy hair (a wig) that was in a similar style to a beehive. She seemed a little off her rocker too. One night friends and I saw her at Village Pantry, and she said she was hiding in her car because "that thing keeps following me" and pointed to the moon. Oooookay.

Robin
This girl was a trip. She was young and rather attractive (aside from the smeared lipstick), but she had fried her brain on drugs. She would come in on Saturday or Sunday and order a donut and milk for herself, and also a donut and milk for her imaginary friend. She would set the extra donut and milk across from her in a booth and proceed to have a conversation with the invisible person. When she was done, she would throw it all away. I always had the stereo on while I was working, and one day while she was there, the song "She Talks To Angels" by The Black Crowes came on (how appropriate). Robin jumped up and said "I love this song!". She came around behind the counter and cranked up the volume on the stereo. The other customers looked around to see what was going on, and I just shrugged. Robin began dancing around the shop, her broomstick skirt flowing around her as she twirled. When the song was over she sat back down, and I turned down the volume. One of the regulars came up after she left and said "That was a little odd, huh?". I heard later that she was killed by a semi while walking down the highway. What a tragic end for her.

Roy
Every other Sunday, some mentally handicapped people were released from their institution (a house on Main Street), and they headed down to Kroger and Mr. Freshie. Roy always wore an old brown suit that appeared to be from the 60's or 70's. I couldn't quite understand most of what he said. Thankfully, he always ordered the same thing. When I gave him his change, he would tell me to hold out my hand. He would take a penny (yes, one penny) and push it into my palm for a full 30 seconds to a minute while he told me not to spend it all in once place. Um, yeah, I'll be sure not to do that.

I eventually quit working at the donut shop and went to McDonald's because they paid a dollar more an hour. McD's wasn't half as entertaining. Unfortunately, Mr. Freshie is closed now. It's up for sale along with the recipe for the donuts. Maybe someone will reopen it someday...and whole new set of characters will flock to it.

Hippity Hoppity Home

Last Monday it was snowing. The falling snow at twilight was beautiful, and it was a fitting tribute to our snow white bunny. After 14 or so long years of life, he passed away around 5 PM. His name was Bunner.

Bunner loved carrots and apples. He loved to hop around in the backyard and nibble on my flowers. He also loved digging in the dirt, which earned him the nickname "Dirty White Bun". We will miss seeing his bright white figure against the green grass in the spring. He was always excited to go outside after a long winter indoors. In his younger days, he would jump with all four feet in the air. You could almost here a "boing!" when he did that.

It is almost unheard of for a rabbit live 14 years. At the end, he had cataracts and was mostly blind. He had a mass on his chest. He may have had kidney failure. His condition rapidly worsened until he didn't bother getting up and stopped eating and drinking. We knew it was time. The vet said that the one good thing he had was his choppers. He had great teeth for an elderly bun.

We will certainly miss our Dirty White Bun!