Whine.

This week is a little bit crazy, and we are trying with only moderate success to entertain our out-of-town guests. Oddly, they have decided to stay around longer than originally planned. Maybe they hope that if they wait long enough, we will be magically transformed into someone more useful. Their optimism, I fear, is unlikely to be borne out by reality. Meanwhile, Steve has to steal time from the evening to get his work done, I have a talk to give tomorrow, we won't get any weekend, I'm behind on laundry, the cat pissed on the sofa, and we have fleas. FLEAS. I think they arrived via the Thing That Scrabbled Under the Floor.

(Last week, we heard an alarming scrabbling sound under the floor. It fortunately has not returned since then, but Steve and I both reacted to it the same way, which was to daintily pull up our feet in alarm. You can perhaps imagine the scene. Very practical and butch, both of us. Despite this, and the fleas, and the cat piss, I swear to you that we appear to live in a fairly clean and charming little house, not a depressing shithole. It doesn't feel that way at the moment, however.)

We dosed the cat and I just did an elaborate and dusty nontoxic thing that is supposed to suffocate any flea eggs lurking around while leaving all the other living things in the house unscathed. But Jesus Christ. Please send cake.

Comments

[oudemia]

Did you Frontline (vel sim.) Nemo or just flea bath? Fleas tend to go away once they are deprived of a snuggly creature on whom to live.
I recommend repeated viewings of "Baby Monkey (Backwards on a Pig)."

[redfox]

Yeah, we used the latest thing in the Advantage/Frontline/whatever line. Begone, fleasies! I suppose that baby monkey probably has fleas, too.

[Gabardine Bathyscaphe]

Yeesh, what a week. If your guests are still around tomorrow and are willing to be entertained by odd creatures, take them to the tidepool touch-tanks on campus. Also there are lovely birds on the west-campus slough. It's a little early, but the monarch butterfly refuge may be starting to be exciting.

And next week we can show you the mold that is aggressively colonizing our bedroom walls, to make you feel better about the Is it is or is it ain't a shithole? question.

[snarkout]

Oh boy, mold!

[Betty m]

Well at least you don't have bedbugs too.

[Gabardine Bathyscaphe]

Indeed. IT'S MOLE!

[redfox]

Betty: Believe me, I am very very glad indeed that this is the case.

GB: I was just going to say!

My talk seemed to go over pretty well, and, more importantly, now it is over with. Thank god. Now I can eat some ramen and have a drink.

[Yer Mum]

I was thinking about sending cake, but I suspected that both the occasion and the cake would be stale before it arrived. A drink is really more to the point anyhow. Glad the talk went well.

There were 4 stinkbugs on my bed when I came in last night. I hoped the colder weather would do them in, but it seems that they have just decided to move indoors.

[uncle r]

It is indeed stinkbug season here -- hopefully the latter stages. They move inside looking for a warm place to hibernate/spend the winter. We have probably exterminated over 300 in the past couple of weeks. Their stink smells like cilantro to me.

[Lumpy badger]

Nooooo, not the fleas! And the overstaying guests! Doom! Can you set the fleas on the guests, and kill the proverbial two birds?

We seem to have bred some superfleas that are impervious to usual flea killing toxins. Which is great. They don't seem to have infested the baby, though. Yet.

I fear we probably do live in a squalid fleahole. But we're British, so maybe that's okay.

[jodi bartle]

i have lice, since we are sharing

[redfox]

I cannot tell you how cheering all this news of all your own pestilences is. Bugs, MOLE, squalor, hooray! We are not alone.