Home is Where the Mess Is

The Rolling Stone Gathers No Moth

June 14, 2012 By The Well Read Hostess 9 Comments

That fireball in the sky you see might just be my house. After I douse the mofo in gasoline and light it up.

Since October we’ve had uninvited guests.

Moths.

Of the pantry ilk.

You heard me.

October.

Animalia Kingdom, Arthropoda Phylum, Insecta Class, Lepidoptera Order,Pyralidae Family, Phycitinae Subfamily, Plodia Genus, Plodia Interpunctella Species.

Google that shit.

It’s simple really, getting rid of them, according to most conventional wisdom. Throw out any infested grains, clean out your shelves, vacuum. Maybe put out a few non-toxic sticky pheremone traps. Ta da! Bob’s your uncle. Problem solved.

Except not at all, as it happens.

Fast forward to June. Mother. Humpin’. June.

Moths.

Animalia Kingdom, Arthropoda Phylum, Insecta Class, Lepidoptera Order,Pyralidae Family, Phycitinae Subfamily, Plodia Genus, Plodia Interpunctella Species.

June.

Still have moths.

My cabinets are so clean you could perform surgery in them. I have thrown out enough food to feed entire third world nations. We cannot find any evidence of these bastard moths, their larvae, their eggs, nothing. Where are they coming from? No clue. They turn up in the living room. The dining room. The hallway. The bathroom. The basement. And yes, in the traps. I’ve never seen one anywhere near food, of course, because that would make sense.

I’m living in a Stephen King novel and I am slowly losing my mind.

So last night we threw the food out again – not that there was any sign that there was a single moth egg in any of it, emptied all the dishes from the cabinets, and started washing. We’ll wait a few days and then we’re going for the big chemical guns. After that’s done, we’ll wash again, and then before we bring food back into the house (hello Wawa!), we’re going to do the same in every other room of the house, being sure to wash and spray down every baseboard, floorboard, and crevice we can spot.

And if that doesn’t work…keep your eye out for the fireball in the sky.

Filed Under: Facts of Life, Home is Where the Mess Is Tagged With: moths suck

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

July 9, 2011 By The Well Read Hostess 5 Comments

I asked my daughter what I should write about. She suggested I write about the family. But since I can’t really write about THE family, lest I get all personal and reveal-y, maybe I’ll just write about A family.

Once upon a time there was a mom and a dad and a son and a daughter. They were all doing their thing. Or things, because in the summertime their things are all different. And they were all trucking along doing their things, or so the mom thought, because there were no obvious glitches or bumps or mishaps.

One day the son decided that things were not, in fact, trucking along in a way that was satisfactory to him and that he had some pretty major gripes with status quo. But he didn’t actually so much “decide” this, he more like “manifested” this in the form of disgruntlement, sadness, and twitchiness. Which was pretty hard to miss.

When the mom and dad addressed the aforementioned disgruntlement, sadness, and twitchiness with the son, the son opened up a huge bag full of WORRY that he’d been carrying around and all of his gripes about the status quo came tumbling out. What to do about these gripes gave the parents reason to WORRY. Because that’s what parents do. They WORRY. The son shared his WORRY with his parents and he felt much better. Problem is that now the parents were holding the bag full of WORRY and they’d added their own WORRY to the bag as well.

The parents spent a few uncomfortable days with their WORRY sifting through the problems and came up with some solutions. The old status quo went out the window and was replaced with a new un status quo, meaning, the mom needs to pay better attention to what’s happening day in and day out and not assume that everybody’s happy just because they’re trucking along.

So that happened. And now it’s done.

But now what am I supposed to do with this bag?

Filed Under: Facts of Life, Home is Where the Mess Is, Parent of the Year, Uncategorized Tagged With: parenting, worry

Freedom From Choice

July 6, 2011 By The Well Read Hostess 9 Comments

I had a friend who always used to say that what Americans really want isn’t freedom OF choice but freedom FROM choice.

He wasn’t talking about abortion.

And I think he was right. A trip down any major grocery store aisle confirms this. Stendahl syndrome brought on by dishsoap. Aside from the obvious point that their guacamole products are abundant and delectable, this is why Trader Joe’s is so successful; they carry one version – one excellent version – of each product. No choice. You want extra virgin olive oil, there’s one bottle of extra virgin olive oil. There’s enough drama in our daily lives without introducing tension into the olive oil selection process. On this I believe most of us can agree.

I push hard for maintaining traditions in our family, sometimes even when it seems silly or merely ritualistic. We are not of the religious persuasion, but we are of the How It’s Always Been persuasion. The 4th of July is a big holiday for us, and we are lucky in that the spouse and I grew up three blocks apart and spent the holiday in pretty much identical ways; there is no dispute about what goes down on Independence Day, no debate about which side of the family we have to spend it with, no question about “who does it right.” We are freed from the choice of how to spend the day and the ritual, the tradition, is a comfort, not to mention a delight.

There is something indescribable, and I can write that with some authority having just spent a good fifteen minutes sitting here trying to think of how the hell to describe it, about watching our children – one who looks like him and one who looks like me – riding in the bicycle races we once rode in on the same streets with the children of the people we rode with and watching the nieces and nephews and daughters and sons of our friends who were volunteer firefighters in high school, now themselves wearing the gear and lifting our kids on to the fire engines for the rides around town and handing out the free popsicles afterwards. My heart was full to bursting last night at the barbecue we attended at the home of friends who also grew up here WITH more friends who also grew up here…you see how it is, we can’t seem to leave, or we just keep coming back.

I am lucky that the place I am from affords me the luxury of a broad sweep of opportunities and people with which and whom to engage myself with, I know this, and I yesterday I felt the greater luxury of having to not make any choice about that.

Filed Under: Facts of Life, Holidays, Home is Where the Mess Is