Do you ever notice how hard it is to kill a bug?

I suppose it SHOULD be hard - to kill anything really. Didn't someone once say "Thou shalt not kill" ? Does that include bugs?

As a rule, I don't mind bugs.

For the most part.

Generally.

Mainly, I don't mind spiders or ladybugs, but others I do tend to mind if they are inside my house. Outside, they are welcome to come and go as they please, but inside here where we live, not so much.

Where I sit at my computer, there is a slanted wall, such that is in a Cape Cod-style house as ours is, and there is no window on this front-facing wall. I wish there were a dormer window, but there isn't. The slanted portion of the wall/ceiling is painted white and has that horrid nubbly surface they call "cottage cheese" on it. I think they put sand in the paint, and it hurts when you brush your skin against it, and sometimes you bleed from it. I hate that kind of painted surface. But it exists here. The bugs crawl around on this slanted surface, just ahead of me as I sit here, and when I see one, depending on the mood I'm in, they can either die instantly or they can escape death and go on to live another day. More often than not, they escape.

It seems easy enough to grap a tissue, which I keep right here at hand, and stand up and smoosh the bug into oblivion. But it never seems to go as planned for me. Oh, now and then I get one, but most times, I try sneaking up on him/her, and just as I'm ready to pounce with the tissue, it mysteriously senses what's happening and off it goes into the air, down to the desk - never to be found again!

The bug-escape!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now that I am in my semi-retirement, which basically means I am working two or three days a week now instead of the usual five, which I always would stretch into seven, I'm coming to the realization that having those days free has a price.

I want to read.

I have books everywhere here - books that I've been accumulating over many years - just for this opportunity - time to read them.

I've started a book this week, called THE LACE READER, and it's interesting. It is set here in Salem and written by a woman who also lives here in Salem.

After I'd been reading quietly in my living room for only about 30 minutes, or so, the tree removal men came to the woods behind our house and starting cutting down the remains of a very large tree that split apart and fell partially over in a recent storm. They had buzz-saws and a large machine that runs constantly that turns the tree, including limbs and leaves, into mulch. All that is going on approximately 50 feet from my back sliding doors, near where I read.

The noise ended at about 4 p.m. yesterday, and all was finally quiet, but then it was dinnertime, and domestic duties called.

Today I am now ready to dig in to my book again, when the buzz saws have shown up, only in a different area of the neighborhood. Buzz-sawing down some other tree. And chipping it into mulch. So loud that I can't hear a radio or the TV, never mind concentrating on my book!

Argh!

Is this what my semi-retirement will be from now on? Dealing with the noises of the outside world rather than my having to sit and work the livelong day?

One thing never changes, though.

The bugs still come and go as they please here... in through the opening and shutting screen door, or hopping a lift on the dogs' furs, until they are inside and then flying off to parts of the house unknown... only to walk across my slanted ceiling while I am sitting here typing, to be squished by a tissue...

or not.





Cheers,

Bex