No don't kill it, darling! I'm a Buddhist, I could come back as one of those.

I'm sorry to my wonderful commenters--I'm behind on responding, but I'm getting there!!! 
How are y'all doing with your tarot cards? I almost forgot all about them until a few days ago...
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As one who values all forms of life, I do not kill bugs. In general. I figure they're not really bothering you (unless of course you're squeamish when it comes to bugs), and unless they sting, bite, or destroy your clothes or the foundations of your house, I see no reason to harm them. If I see a bug in my house, I usually just leave it alone and pretend I saw nothing. If a family member sees a bug and starts screaming, then I'll put the bug outside (or in winter, in the basement so they don't freeze to death). If a spider decides to move into a corner of my bedroom, I will leave it there. Especially in summer, because spiders are quite clever and all the ones I've ever had in my room tend to build their webs directly above my reading lamp, thus catching and destroying any other insect that happens to come into my bedroom at night. 'Tis an unspoken agreement between myself and the spider--I'll leave him alone if he kills mosquitoes. 

I do have exceptions to my non-violence beliefs when it comes to bugs. Mosquitoes die because they bite and make you itchy. Ticks die because they're a bother to the kitties, and they spread lyme disease. One ant may live, but more than one ant means your house has been invaded and so they must be annihilated. House centipedes are Evil, and so they too must be destroyed. I do have the epic worm-phobia, but I don't kill them or wish them harm--they just freak me out and make me vomit. 

Other than that, I don't have a problem with bugs.

One would think that Mother Nature might look kindly upon one such as myself, for not being an arsehole. 

No, instead Mother Nature decides to send her mutant offspring to try and kill me. 

So there I was, driving merrily along Old Route 17 on my way back from just driving around to clear my head (I do that a lot--I can navigate pretty much anywhere within a 200-mile radius of home and never get lost or need to stop for directions), when something landed on my windshield with a rather alarming THUD. 

You know how sometimes when you see or experience something that cannot possibly be real, your reaction time slows down to like a 26th of its normal speed?

It took a few seconds for me to fully register what I was seeing. Because no way could that be real. 

And then

WHAT      THE      FECK         IS            THAT

I almost crashed. No joke. 

Alien? Robot?? Demon???

No. 

It was a giant wasp. That fecker's stinger was like a foot long. The wasp's body was the about the size of my hand. 

After regaining control of my vehicle, I had to pull over. The giant bug with the foot-long stinger did not show any sign of wanting to remove itself from my windshield, and I sure as hell wasn't carrying that thing back to my house so it could reproduce all up in my yard. It had to go. But how do I get rid of it?

I pulled over near the Red Apple Rest.

Sketchiest rest stop of all time.

The bug was still on my windshield.

Now what?

I wasn't getting out of the car, that's for damn sure.

I tried revving the engine. 

Bug didn't move.

Banging on the window.

Bug didn't move.

Honking the horn. 

Nope.

Flailing around like a lunatic to make the car shake. 

Negative.

I couldn't use the windshield wipers because a) it might kill the giant bug-demon and it's not the poor bug's fault it's a mutant; and b) I really didn't want a bug that size smeared all over the windshield.

So I assessed the items at my disposal. I keep a lot of crap in my car:

- 2 brush things for removing snow and scraping off ice

- hiking boots

- hiking bag containing compass, emergency food (V8 and fiber bars), and hunting knife

- 7 rolls of unused 35mm film

- 4 rolls of used undeveloped 35mm film

- toothbrush

- toothpaste samples

- umbrella

- parasol

- reusable shopping bag

- 6 almost-empty soda and water bottles

- 2 full water bottles (for emergencies)

- 2 dead cigarette lighters

- my glasses

- bag of sugar free caramel candies

- napkins

- spare compass

- Off! bug repellent

- asthma inhaler (no idea--I do not have asthma)

- large pile of Equal packets

- 2 drinking straws, still in wrappers

- 1 drinking straw, cut into 3 smaller pieces (shut up)

- eye drops

- TomTom GPS thingy

- clean underwear

- spare t-shirt

- clean sweatshirt

- pedometer

- Wimpy

- 2 car chargers for my cell phone

- 2 giant bouncy balls

- 1 length of bungee cord

- Rosary beads

- 1 pair of old Kangaroo sneakers

- 1 box tissues

I figured I could use the longer of the two ice scrapers, open the window a crack, and try to poke and bother the giant wasp until it flew away. If that didn't work, I figured I could make bug repelling spit balls with the Off! and tissues and shoot them at the wasp with one of the straws. But thankfully the ice scraper did the trick. Giant wasp flew away.

I spent the next several minutes using the windshield washers until I could be absolutely certain that any eggs the bug might have laid were destroyed. 

In other news....

~~I have caused a rather large disturbance in my house. Step-Bro#1 was over yesterday with his son (really adorable pixie-faced 6-yr-old with anger management problems). I've talked about Step-Bro#1's status as a waste of space before. He hasn't changed--still jobless, still an alcoholic, and still a thief. Most recently, he took Step-Dad's AmEx card on holiday and maxed it out. 

Like for real? You're almost 40 years old, and you're maxing out your parent's credit card??

Yeah well he was over last night with Pixie-kid and I watched as he drank his way through SEVEN bottles of Budweiser. I told Mum on the way out to the gym that he'd had 7 beers, and if he tried to drive the kid home she should tell him he'd had too much to drink--let her or Step-Dad drive Pixie-kid home, or call me and I would have taken him home. Mum was like yeah totally.

But Mum is all talk. She let Step-Bro#1 drive Pixie-kid home. 

So when I got home, I told Step-Dad in no uncertain terms that if Step-Bro#1 ever did that again and refused to let one of us take the kid home (which he would refuse, because he's had many custody issues with kid and kid's mom), then I would call the police and Pixie-kid's mother. I don't want to be an as$hole, so I figured I'd give them fair warning in the hopes that maybe Step-Bro#1 could put the effing bottle down and NOT drive his kid while he's sh*tfaced. 

You'd think I'd just told Step-Dad I was going to shoot Step-Bro#1 myself. 

How dare I!! Who the heck do I think I am?!? He's not doing anything wrong, just having a couple beers with dinner!!

-___-

I was like yeah ok whatever dude. I'm not fighting. He tries to drive the child home again while drunk, I'm calling the cops. End of story. Because if something happens to that kid and we never did anything about it, it's on us. So Step-Dad and Step-Bro#1 can go do themselves up the butt. 

Step-Bro#1 and Pixie-kid come over a lot once we open the pool, so this should get fun pretty soon...

~~I haven't eaten anything in two days. 

~~It's weird how another person can elicit 2 completely contrary involuntary physical reactions in one's bowels. 

Paul #1 for example, makes me feel like I'm being stabbed in the abdomen with a blunt hunting knife while simultaneously having a flock of magical glittering hummingbirds floating around somewhere just to the left of my belly button. 

Someone needs to keep me away from computers when I'm drunk. Or at least away from Facebook. Upon waking my computer up yesterday morning to email myself some notes on the Fairy Queen (I'm typing and posting two new chapters just for you, Honor!), I found that I still had Chrome open on my desktop, open to my "sent" messages on Facebook. And guess what the second message down was, right underneath a message I apparently sent to Cousin Patrick informing him that I was about to mail him 50 lbs of heroin? 

I sent a message to Paul #1 at 1.28 AM. 

-___________________-

I didn't work up the balls to read it until I got to work. Thankfully it wasn't that bad--just a quick hey what's up it's been a while kind of message. 

But still--WHAT THE EFF?!?

P#1 never answered. But out of the blue, J (P1's friend who I had an affair with, and who eventually was responsible for patching things up between P1 and I) texts me this afternoon to see what I'm up to this weekend. 

(There were no blunt hunting knife reactions for J, just magical glittering hummingbirds somewhere in the vicinity of my G-spot.)

I refuse to believe that these events are unconnected. But I'll have to speak to J more to find out. 

Wow, that was kind of a long post. Sorry if you're now bored out of your tree! But I'm afraid I cannot refund your time. IT'S ALL MINE NOW. :D

Later, lovelies! Off to the gym, and then I shall spend the rest of my night doing laundry and catching up on your blogs. <3