Nebulous Mooch

“Did you put something spicy in the salad?” my husband said making a face. He spit a mouthful of salad out into his hand.

“Ugh, what are you doing?” my stepson said.

“It’s a bug,” my husband said then ran to the sink to spit out any remaining bug parts.

Upon careful examination of the former contents of his mouth, we found legs, eyes and wings.

“It must be poisonous. It stung.” He rinsed his mouth out with water.

It looked kind of like this guy. This is a stinkbug. Isn’t he cute?

In some countries, stinkbugs are used to flavor stews and soups. In Mexico, they are crushed to and used in sauces and even used as taco filling. Umm, good.

Why don’t we eat bugs? If prepared correctly, they can be quite appetitizing.

When I was studying in China, I ate at a bug restaurant. I’m sure that it had other things besides bugs, but I always just refer to it as a bug restaurant. I had ant soup, silkworms, locust, and my favorite, fried scorpions. They were quite tasty. In Korea, roasted silkworms are eaten as a snack. They’re sold by street vendors.

In Florida, there are plenty of bugs to eat. I’m sure that we’d have saved on groceries if we’d started eating the giant flying roaches, called palmetto bugs in polite circles, that we’d find in our apartment on occasion. Even though catching enough to eat would work up an appetite–they’re fast. My palmetto bug sniffing friends have told me that they smell like almonds so they might be better in a dessert than a main course or in any dish that you’d normally put almonds in.

These are just suggestions. If any readers living in Florida would like to try this, let me know how it turns out. Maybe you could remove the legs and wings and put them in a stir fry. It’s just protein. A little protein never killed anybody.

My husband took the car to a place called Kwik-Fit the other day to get the oil changed. The mechanic who has been working on the car is far away so he’s decided to try out some places nearby. We were spoiled in Florida because we had the best mechanic ever.

With a name like Kwik-Fit, we expected it to be something like Jiffy Lube. It’s a chain. It has the word quick–though strangely spelled–in the title. You would expect their service to be quick.

When my husband came home only a few minute after leaving, I knew that either Kwik-Fit really lived up to their name or there was a problem.

“I have to make an appointment,” he said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Guess when the first available appointment was.”

“When?”

“Next week.”

I was shocked and appalled but the shock and appallation (Is that a word?) grew even deeper when my husband told me that he’d have to leave the car there all day.

He asked the guy behind the counter, “If I drop it off at 9 in the morning, it should be done by 2:30, right?”

“Maybe,” the guy said.

Maybe? How long does it take to do an oil change. My husband said that when he was there, there was only one car in the whole place. Kwik-Fit should definitely change it’s name.

The walls in our place are pretty thin. I can hear the conversation the upstairs neighbors are having right now. They’re quiet neighbors so I really don’t mind. I wonder what they think of us though.

We’re the noisy neighbors. I know that and feel a bit embarrassed. My husband is a professional musician and he has to practice. I play the saxophone and my stepson slams doors–he doesn’t do it as much these days. We probably drive them nuts.

My husband bought a set of congas today. As he unpacked them from their boxes, I wanted to run upstairs and apologizes to the neighbors right away. “I’ll play them quietly,” he said, but our house is already filled with the sound of drumming.

It was about 2:30 in the morning and I had to use the bathroom. I slid out of the warm bed into the cold and wandered to the bathroom not expecting anything out of the ordinary. I’d used the toilet in the middle of the night many times before so why should this time be any different. These middle of the night ventures to the bathroom are never done with the lights on. I don’t want to wake myself up.

As I sat on the toilet, I noticed something unusual in the bathtub. It was a dark, terrifying object that shouldn’t have been there. “Oh no. There’s a rat in the bathtub,” I said aloud. My heart pounded in my chest and I tried to move as far over on the toilet seat as I could without peeing on the floor. I wanted to hurry up and get out of the bathroom, but I just kept peeing. I swear that was the longest pee ever. When I was done, I jumped up off the toilet and fled the bathroom without even washing my hands. I made sure the door was securely shut. Then I did what anyone who’d just found a rat in their bathtub would do, I went back to bed. My husband was working and I thought I’d let him deal with it when he got home. Rats are his department.

I lay in bed just thinking about the rat, wondering how it got in there, wondering what I can do from keeping more rats from getting in the house, wondering how my husband would catch the rat. I was only in bed for ten minutes when my husband came home. My stepson, who should’ve have been sleeping, came out of his room immediately to start talking. I could hear them in the hall. I didn’t know if I should warn them about the rat or just let them find it on their own. I decided the scare of finding a rat might be too much to handle, so I got up and opened the bedroom door. My husband was facing me and my stepson’s back was turned. “Hello,” my husband said.

“There’s a rat in the bathtub,” I silently mouthed the words and pointed to the bathroom door. I didn’t want to upset my stepson.

My husband looked at me with a confused expression as I started to point at the bathroom door more intensely.

“You’re up,” my stepson said as he turned to face me.

I stopped pointing.

As we moved into the living room, my stepson announced that he had to use the bathroom and headed back down the hall.

“There’s a rat in the bathtub,” I whispered to my husband, grabbing his arm. “I think it’s dead or tired.”

We heard the creak of the bathroom door opening and closing, then the click of the light going on.

“How did it get in the bathtub?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t know why he was asking me such a question. Maybe it was thirsty. Maybe it was lost. I didn’t ask it. I was sure I’d hear a hysterical scream from the bathroom any minute, but there was none.

“How do you catch a rat?” My husband picked up the colander and considered using it to trap the rodent.

The toilet flushed. The water in the sink ran. The door creaked open. The light clicked off. My stepson appeared holding a wet black sock and laughing. “Look what I dropped in the toilet.”

“Where was that?” my husband asked.

“The tub. I dropped it in the toilet and I didn’t know what to do with.”

“Put it down and wash your hands,” my husband said.

My stepson scurried back to the bathroom.

So it wasn’t a rat, but it really looked like one in the dark. Really it did.

As much as I like to exercise, I have to admit that I’m not very good at it. I tend to not exercise for an extended period of time then go overboard and do a really hard workout that makes me so sore I can’t move for days. More than anything I want to be physically fit and I’ve convinced myself that the road to physical fitness is paved with thighs that are so sore that I can’t get up off the toilet.

The mega workouts have to stop for the month of January. I’ve decided to do the WoYoPracMo Challenge. That’s yoga everyday for the month of January. That’s no room for breaks because of extreme soreness now.

At dinner, I pointed out to my husband that I’m doing a great job at sticking to the challenge so far.

“It’s only the second day,” he said.

He’s such a party pooper.

If you want to do the challenge with me, I found a great website that posts a new hour-long yoga class everyday. Even if you don’t want to do the challenge, it’s still a good site to know about.

We’ve ended another day of being awake for 24 hours and have arrived safely home to gray skies and freezing weather.

Once we’re over the jet lag, things will be back to normal.