::Cockroaches--someone eats 'em::

Cockroaches

I saw my first (live and not dead) cockroach! Put your forefinger and your thumb together if you want to know how big--yes--that big! Ew. So, I was doing the enjoyable job of unclogging the toilet (my family likes to leave that for me to find) and I hear Hannah: "There's a cockroach on my bed! EW!" And then I hear her yelling about it and "Dad, come and kill it!" And then I finish my plumbing job and come in the room and the little creep is still on her blanket.

"All right, Hannah, I'll knock it off and you kill it."

"Ok, well it's holding on for dear life... well..." We laugh, and I knock it off--it runs under my bed while me and Hannah scream.

By then, our screaming has waken Elly up, and she sits up, "What're you doing?" Elly was vastly amused by Hannah's trauma because Hannah had teased Elly earlier last year by telling her there was a cockroach on her shirt. Elly wasn't as excited as me and Hannah were, for some reason, she just enjoyed laughing at us scream.

I pulled out my suitcase, and had a broom ready to flick the devil out. My head was right by my suitcase, and then I heard click, click, click. I completely squirmed--inside and outside and verbal squirmed. So... gross... Hannah vowed she was ready to kill it when I flicked it off the suitcase and it RAN AT HER.

Hannah's jig while trying to slap the cockroach with her flip-flop was one of the best I've seen. She screamed and hopped up and down, and then jumped halfway across the floor onto my bed. Hilarious.

That's when Dad decided that was enough--it was like eleven at night. He declared the "problem solved" when we told him the cockroach had run under Hannah's bed. Hannah decided to sleep on the coach. I had a nightmare about me and my mom needing to beat a cockroach the size of two dogs to death.

Hanging Panties on the Clothesline

You know, I always thought hanging clothes out to dry on the clothesline was kind of a quaint "romantic" (in the Victorian sense of the word which is completely different from the modern sense of the word, and I admit, the Victorian meaning is the one that is more natural for me after reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's books). But it gets old after like the first time. The sun burns your eyes out, and I've had to be very careful about situating my underpants in the least visible "line of vision." I have to think how to keep it out of view from our house, our neighbor's, Krista and Lauren who are always running around in the backyard, and think about lowering the clothesline.

Being Unspectacular... Spectacularly

I had a "revelation": I have no purpose in life other than the ones I make for myself. Depressing--a little bit--but life makes a lot more sense if you look at it that way.

Percy Jackson

I saw a movie in Spanish! And I actually understood it (sortof). Favorite quotes: "Siempre son radientes..." (They are always radiant. This was a kindof, "yeah, yeah, yeah, enough romance line), and when they're drugged: "Why did we come here, anyway?"

"I don't know."

"I think we came here to.. HAVE FUN!"