Ghost of Insects Past

It came to me in a dream: this life-sized victim of a little boy, his new magnifying glass, and a glorious summer sun. This creepy Gregor Samsa-like ghost stole me from my college dorm room and transported me back to that summer between fourth and fifth grade. I watched, floating above, as a chubby kid wearing a worn Toronto Blue Jays cap wielded a powerful new weapon of mass destruction: the magnifying glass.

He fumbled with it at first, struggling to perfect the angle, to hold that tight circle of light on a blade of grass. I heard the hiss of water molecules bursting before I saw the thin line of black smoke rise into the lazy summer air. It didn't take long for that plump pre-pubescent to train his new weapon on moving objects. I watched the crackling, sizzling slaughter of ant, spider, and rolly polly alike until I could watch no more. I turned to my Gregor Samsa ghost of insects past, and he spoke one word to me: Abzahlung!

I awakened from this dream, drenched in sweat, the late-morning sun blazing through my open drapes.

My Husband Wouldn't Hurt a Fly

Sounds pretty decent right? Except that Dave really won't kill ANY bugs and it's driving me crazy. He gets really mad if I step on an ant when we are walking down the street. If there is a spider in our house and he's not around to rescue it, he expects me to just trap it in a cup and wait until he gets home to take it out of the house. This is just ridiculous to me, but I try my best to go along with it ... at least, when he's coming right home! Unfortunately, the little people living in our house are not good at keeping things quiet, so he's definitely found out about some of my "mercy killings."

At the moment, we've been dealing with an ant infestation in our mailbox ... not to mention a wasp's nest directly underneath it. My idea for him to resolve the problem was ant traps and bug spray. Dave's idea of resolving the problem ... leave the wasp's nest alone and pour lots of water into the mailbox so the ants would flee. Now I am sure that some of the ants died in this process, but of course in his mind, this was the lesser of the two evils. Whatever ...

(Image: Isabel as a bumblebee, age 3)

My Pretty Little House

The story of my pretty little house began long ago when I was living in a one room apartment with my mother in the suburbs of NYC.  I received the book "The Little House" by Virginia Lee Burton as a gift and while I definitely didn't understand the meaning of the story, I dreamt of having a little house of our own.  We never did, but I grew up happy and healthy in a different apartment, where my mom still lives today.

I went to college and met a man who would one day become my husband; just a few weeks before we got married, we bought our very own little house right outside of Washington, DC. He bought me a copy of the book before we closed on the house, and it has always been displayed in our living room.  We were lucky enough to buy at just the right time, ride the wave of the real estate boom, and sell the house just before the market went south. 

While living in our first little house with our dog, we had two children, a daughter and a son. We decided that city life was not for us, and it was time to move to the country or at least what a city girl would consider the country ... NW Fairfield County, CT.  We found the right town and a job for my husband with little effort.  The house took a little longer, but when we found it, we knew it wasn't perfect, but it could be.  I can proudly say that two years later and with a lot less money in our pockets, it nearly is!  

This is a blog about me and my pretty little house and the husband, daughter, son, and dog that live alongside of me.