We Scream for Bugs

I just finished cleaning the baby's booster chair. Some BONEHEAD designer designed it with about 2000 nooks and crannies, each of which can harbor a week's worth of discarded food that will fester and ripen to an alarming stench in no time at all. Especially when one's child does not so much eat food as tuck it under his bottom. Then some BONEHEAD novice parents bought it for their first child and couldn't bear, in their silly frugal way, to discard it and have been cursing it ever since. So this parent in particular feels she deserves a little blog break before she goes to freeze some kale and grind some wheat for her daily bread.

So the kids were all playing happily in the playhouse earlier this week while I worked in the garden. Suddenly M began to scream in her usual histrionic way that "there was a bee on my hand! there was a bee on my hand!" Well, I say her usual histrionic way, but there was in fact a true sense of urgency in her scream. I asked her over and over, "did it sting you? Did it sting you?" She didn't know, and after a few moments of back-and-forth I realized that this was not helping the situation at all and that if she was still screaming she probably had been bitten. Which she had. Stung twice on the wrist by a wasp or wasps. Ouch. So the usual remedies were applied (baking soda, frozen peas, hydrocortisone cream, kisses, lying on the couch) and the brave mama went out to investigate, trailed by two not so brave as curious and reckless boys.

I opened the door to the sink of the playhouse and saw what looked like a basketball-sized wasp nest (my skin is crawling right now as I think about it). Wasps started buzzing and whizzing around, so I picked up the baby and hustled the toddler into the house pronto.

Now, I do not believe in applying poisons all over the home for no good reason. E lectured her class about the evils of fertilizer in preschool, thanks to my evangelizing. To spiders, I say live and let live. BUT when you sting my baby, you forfeit your rights (let's not even talk about what happens when you hit my baby on the head with a baseball bat), and I keep a secret can of wasp spray in the garage for just such an occasion. So I dispatched the nest and the wasps with rapid if not entirely eco-friendly efficiency. (And when I went to remove the nest saw that it was not quite as big as a basketball but probably the size of my fist nevertheless.)

So poor M, the very next day, came running to me from riding her bike, screaming this time about a spider. On her hand. Once again, the dumb question, "did it bite you?" This time she was sure it hadn't, but while I was trying to calm her down she realized it was crawling on her leg, so she screamed some more, shook it off, and ran inside. I have to admit, it was pretty big and hairy. (We have these big hairy spiders living in our air ducts--we looked them up, and they are harmless Daring Jumping Spiders, a name you have to love.) Well, that was just too much for M. She spent the next two hours lying motionless on the couch, staring at the ceiling, no doubt thinking evil thoughts about bugs.

She is recovering nicely.

KEEP OUT

The neighbor kids drive us krrrrrazy. There's the usual annoying kid behavior. Then there's the entire lack of supervision by parents. A couple of weeks ago we were sitting down eating dinner--eating dinner, I tell you--when one of the girls said, "hey, is that a puder [special marmot language for something unmentionable that you can no doubt figure out]  on the back porch?" And indeed it was. IT WAS, I'm telling you. The youngest and most revolting neighbor child had taken off his diaper on our back porch and let it all hang out, so to speak. On another day, an awful day, this same puder-boy hit Tooie on the head with a bat (which I confiscated and still have in my pantry) and then moments later pushed over the Marmot Babe into the grass and sat on his head and bounced up and down until I grabbed him and shoved him off. This child is now banned from our home because he shoves the Babe over backwards every time he sees him.

Today the next oldest child (female, age three) pulled up about half of my onions out of our garden and broke off all the stems of the others. The children have been appalled at this shocking behavior. E decided that a fence would be the best option to keep her and her ilk out. E and M were talking at dinner about how best to fence off our yard when Tooie piped up, thoughtfully, "we should put up a sign at our house that says 'keep out.'" Then he beamed at his own sagacity while nodding repeatedly. The girls kept up their fence talk (electric or conventional? gate or no gate?). Suddenly Tooie cut in with his coup de grace: "And we should put up at sign at Ella's house that says 'keep in.'"

Would that we could, my blue-eyed boy. [Actually green-eyed, but that doesn't sound as good.]