So I’m making a salad. Nick is a few yards away, pacing and gesticulating, speculating about designing giant biomimetic earthworms that could tunnel back and forth under the back lawn, so that one could install geothermal heating pipes without having to drill 50-foot deep wells for the same purpose.
Such are our evenings.
Strinkley
Getting better at the photos. Though I seem to have gotten one stuck in the banner. It’s ll so mysterious to me.
So.
Strinkley: n. — A primitive wooden elephant.
One of the items I found in my emotionally charged oubliette (the one I said I’d get back to almost two months ago).
My childhood toy, made by my father for a child of his own European generation, from a time when you had wooden wheeled toys to pull about on a string. My father, who worked in a machine shop, had fitted him out with industrial wheels, awkward and toy-inappropriate, but totally dad (see below).
They were black, but this is the general effect
Anyway, Strinkley disappeared for many years, as toys do when you’ve outgrown them. Then one day, all grown up, I was visiting my parents, and there he was again. Also the way such things happen.
“Dad,” I said, “What happened to his wheels?”
He looked indignant. “What wheels?” he said. “He never had wheels.”
There I go, remembering something that never was, that never happened. As one does.
Later, though, I looked at his feet. Each one had two little holes, carefully plugged with wood filler.
Strinkley: n. — gaslighting. I don’t know why.
Mouse problem eliminated.
Unless you count finding a very alive and unconcerned mouse chewing one of Milo's wooden sticks on the bathroom floor, eventually sauntering off under Milo’s dresser (Aside: This used to be a small, cheap, but useful item of furniture, but see below.). In strategic terms, this proved to be a mistake for the mouse, since there was no way out except past me, looming at the opening. But it calculated its chances, charged me, leaped over the lip, and became invisible. Because mice can do that.
Or unless you count the one wandering casually in the back hall, which I somehow got to amble out the back door. Thereby putting it to the inconvenience of reentering the house by the adjacent basement door.
They are not clean, and they eat anything not in sealed boxes. I swear I would use snap traps, except I visualize that one time in a thousand where the mouse is not instantly dispatched, and can’t bear it. Instead, we are soft idiots and have tiny little have-a-heart traps. We discover the mice in them in the morning, bring them groggily to the graveyard about five minutes away, and then, as Nick says, race them home. It’s all completely useless, except to the cynical have-a-heart manufacturers.
n. — an olfactory hallucination, or a phantom odor; smelling an odor that is not actually there
Often associated with stroke. The opposite of what I had last week.
Stapelia gigantea. This baby measures 10" across. That the flower is that little dot in the center. The rest the split bud. In case you can’t tell, it’s hairy.
And dammit to hell, I just lost an entire post because once again I foolishly tried to load a photo—well, I loaded it, but met my doom while trying to size it. Today’s takeaways: (a) I still don’t know how to do the most elementary things anyone with a blog should be able to do, and (b) there’s no “undo” feature. This is far worse.
OK, I’m still harping on the Mouse in the Fridge Incident. Because there are always upsides.
Upside 1: I believe I mentioned a growing skill with wet dishcloths. I am now sniper grade. When I aim, I hit. I agree with you (I know what you’re thinking)—life is so sad when this is something to write home about. But my life seems to have become very small of late.
Upside upside: I no longer have to demonstrate my skills, as with the help of my spider minions, I have eradicated the lot.
Upside 2: Putrescene and cadaverine. Such lovely words. And as amino acids, also associated, though thank God in far, far, far smaller concentrations, with my beloved stapeliads, also known as carrion flowers. So named because they are pollinated by flies and dab Eau de Putrêcin et Cadaverin liberally behind their petals to get the business done. (Ha. I got to use the words putrescene and cadaverine again.) I had a gigantea (see above) next to the window in our Brooklyn apartment—you want to have these things as close to the windows as possible when they bloom—and the screen looked like the line outside Fly Studio 54.
The ones I have now (varieties pictured here) were inherited from a friend who moved across the country. I’m nursing them anxiously, but they are still too small to flower.
The original gigantea was stolen from our porch in Warren (Bastards. I’m still furious. Clearly they also attract vermin other than flies).
Such is the nature of crime in this town. Plant stealing. Forging quarters. Scratching the word “Nerd” on a plate glass window with a diamond ring. (Last two classics from the Warren Times-Gazette police blotter.) Also erratic driving. Although how they distinguish it from everyday practice in Rhode Island, I have no idea. But that is a story for another day.
Ah, hell, if this were happening abroad, I’d post instead of sit on it. I need to pretend I’m traveling at all times.
Hello, my little creative writers. A little fill-in-the-blanks exercise. (Trigger warning. Absolutely disgusting. I mean it.)
Day 1—You know how stroke victims often report smelling strange and unpleasant odors? Well—a feeling that I may be having a stroke. Perhaps I might need a shower.
Day 2—Do not need a shower. Stronger feeling that I may be having a stroke.
Day 3—Flies. Suspicion that spontaneous generation may be going on somewhere. Probably not a stroke.
Day 4
Putrescine.
Cadaverine.
Nothing on the floor under the fridge (that thing is heavy!); however, compressor vents seem quite large enough to allow mousal ingress.
Many, many flies. Many. Also lined up on the screens outside, waiting to get in.
Definitely not a stroke.
Eating out tonight.
Day 5—Breakfast in my office. Many (but not many, many) flies.
Day 6— Nice breeze. Breakfast in the kitchen. Only two flies, dispatched neatly and quickly. I have developed a professional-level skill with a wet dishcloth.
Takeaways:
Flypaper is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Oil-free eye makeup remover is excellent for getting flypaper goo off hands, hair, clothing, etc. Clinique Bi-facil is superior to Sephora brand in this regard.
I am seriously interested in learning how to use a bullwhip.
Trigger warning: If you hate spiders in bulk, there is a photo below that you may not want to be put to the trouble of unseeing. (So frustrating—as I was putting this together, I accidentally stumbled on the secret of integrating suitably sized images into text [and I repeat, I am a total idiot]. Yet for visibility purposes, I am forced to post a huge and blurry image.) Anyway…
Exciting news on the spider front, as though my previous posts on this subject have not already left you trembling and overheated. I forgot to mention that while the spider the Lady Florence Paget was crouching next to the ex-earwig, the spider Mae West was supervising a far more interesting bundle; namely, an egg sac. Today, the spider Mae West is a mother. The sac has dissolved from a smooth webby bolus into a crumbly ball of adorable little spiders (see attached image). Very exciting.
The spider Mae West is eying them closely. Sadly, I fear that this is not the eye of maternal care, but motion detecting. And that once they start to wander away, she will regard them as snacks. Perhaps, as they take their first tentative steps into the world, spiderlings are too small to be recognizable or of interest, and will thus make their escape (and so it is that spiders are allowed to continue in the world). Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so. But M&Ms are pretty damn small, and we do not disdain them. I know it’s the numbers. Only so many M&Ms you can eat at a sitting, while the rest roll frantically under the couch. I admit this will allow me to feel less of a pang than I might when, at the end of the season, the spiders inevitably fade away.
Update within update: I’m very pleased with my gory scenario, but I went online and learned that the first few days, they all stay near the ball, having their first molt and chewing their way out of the silk. Mom watches over and helps. Then “the spiderlings begin to disperse gradually away. This is necessary to avoid competition for food and prevent cannibalism among the hungry siblings.” Manners, kids. Please.
