First Day

Holy crap, hair that is not all grody or pulled back. o.o

This was actually the tail end of a huge yawn, not the beginning of a sneeze or a spontaneous orgasm.

Really, world? Really? I am not sure I believe you.

So today was my first day at the temp thing. I just have to say, trying to call business owners the week before a big holiday is SO much fun. XD I hope I get the hang of it, because I do want to do well, and I definitely think I could be more confident on the phone. Also, still thrilled to not be working at my old job anymore. >.> And also to be able to put this on my resume. XD

I ended up staying up quite late last night, mostly nerves (I always get nervous about new experiences). There were two 15 minute breaks and an hour lunch break during the shift, so tomorrow I am going to bring my knitting and some frozen meals and maybe some snack type stuff so I don’t have to go out to find food (there is a Subway nearby, which is where I ate today, but I don’t want to buy lunch every day). I don’t like going outside during breaks, like everyone else, so knitting works best for me. Plus knitting is calming, and after constant rejection for an hour and a half I’m sure I’ll need something to calm me down. >.>

Somehow, by some miracle, I got almost 80 views yesterday, which made me go o.o at my blog stats page. I am very curious who linked me, because I can’t imagine that I got that many under my own power. XD I’ve only had this blog for a month! Fame and fortune takes longer than that!

I am a bit braindead because of not getting enough sleep last night, so that is the end of this entry. XD More thought-provoking things tomorrow, I promise.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Mah Belleh

This one's a bit washed out, but then again, my belly is sort of a blinding white.

I actually didn't mean to cut my head off in this one, but at least that's an okay view of the belly.

When I first started this blog, 29 days ago, my main thought was becoming more comfortable with my body. With how I look, with how I interact with the world. Bodies are pretty amazing things, any way you slice it, and mine is no exception. It can take plant matter that has been minimally processed by my teeth and turn it into all kinds of energy. It has a super computer that directs all movements faster than the speed of conscious thought. It has light and sound receptacles that can take in all kinds of data so the super computer can process them so they make some kind of sense. It even has all kinds of working parts inside that do more work on an average day than a racecar engine does in a month. When you get right down to it, it’s really damn amazing how well our bodies work. I mean, how many man-made machines do you think could last for 80+ years without having the parts constantly replaced? Many people can last that long with only routine maintenance, and even those who have chronic and/or lifelong diseases are remarkably resilient.

So I think it’s pretty easy to say that I’m making some progress toward loving my body. Hell, we know I’ve already got the boobs down (my boobs are one of my favorite features these days). ;D Many days I can look in the mirror and say to myself “well, you look good today” and actually mean it.

Honestly, my biggest stumbling block, however, is my belly. Loving and accepting my belly is harder than all my other body parts combined. It’s not just because my belly is the most marked part of me (stretch marks, scars from surgery, etc). Bellies are just about the most reviled body parts on any woman’s body. How many commercials, ads and magazines do you see on any given day about how to get a “flat belly”? The answer is, a whole shit-ton. Women with six-packs are incredibly rare, and those with totally flat bellies are almost non-existent, but we’re still told to strive for that ideal. And it gets worse. How many women (even fat women) do you see in popular media that actually seem to have bellies under their clothes? If a female celebrity has even the tiniest hint of a belly, she either has rumors swirling about a “baby bump” or gets made fun of for gaining weight. Even the fat women are encouraged to “shape” their bodies to get that classic hourglass look, and deny that they have any kind of belly. Boobs? The more, the merrier! Butt? We like big butts and we cannot lie! But belly? GET YE OFF OUR RUNWAY, HARLOT.

What makes it worse is, this is not how a healthy (i.e. baby-bearing) female body is meant to look. A belly on a woman is supposed to be a good thing. If you look at evolution, those with bellies tend to be the most fertile, the most likely to bear lots of healthy babies without dying or getting sick. Sure, big hips and big breasts also help, but there’s nothing about a tiny waist in most societies until you get to the modern era. It’s perfectly normal to have a belly if you’re a woman, and yet we’re assaulted from all sides with messages that THIS IS WRONG.

So when I say I have problems with my belly, they don’t entirely stem from the fact that it is the most be-scarred piece of landscape on my body. I have problems with my belly because even when I’m wearing cute clothes and I’m dressed up and feel great, I don’t look how I’ve been taught a woman should look. I don’t really have a waist at all (which, btw, is not an anatomical construct, but entirely based in the fashion world). I have a dip in my fat rolls that sits just above my hips, right around my belly button. That’s not where most people think the waist is supposed to sit, but if I try to wear high-waisted things, they cut into my fat and make me want to die and/or kill someone. So I let my bottoms sit on my hips, because that’s comfortable for me. But I don’t look like an hourglass. If I had to pick a shape to describe my body, I would probably draw a couple squiggly lines. Go out at the boobs, go slightly in under the boobs, go far out for the belly, dip a tiny bit in at the hips, and then from there to the bottom of my feet is a big triangle. I’m not a square, whatever that is. I’m not a triangle or inverse triangle. I’m a couple squiggly lines that don’t fit in any description of what a woman is supposed to be shaped as, according to the fashion world and popular media.

Some days, I do love my belly. They aren’t very often, but some days I can look at that pasty white expanse and actually enjoy what I see. Most days, I struggle. I can look at my face and almost always like it. I enjoy my hair, and even my arms and legs get smiles sometimes, but my belly is my biggest obstacle right now, in terms of accepting and loving my body. And right now, I don’t have any idea how to love it more. I’m not planning to ever have children, and especially not anytime soon, so I can’t love my belly for carrying life. I have digestion problems (no gall bladder + acid reflux + psychological problems always affecting my stomach first), so I can’t love my belly for being good at its job (it does its best, but that’s a lot of issues for one belly to handle). I don’t know.

Maybe I should get a huge tattoo across my belly. Make it a literal work of art, turn the scars and stretch marks into pieces of history rather than just mars on otherwise clear skin. Of course, I have no idea what I would get, and no money for anything like that right now. Ah, well. It’s an idea. ;D And my body is, in general terms, a work in progress.

Read Full Post »

Job! JOB!

This is a happy, dancing Chelsea (pay no attention to the pit stain)!

Joy to all!

I see the light!

So I have been doing okay, with what money I had remaining from my last job, as well as help from my parents, but I was rapidly approaching the “oh shit if I don’t get a paycheck soon I will not be able to eat” territory of unemployment (I quit my last job, so no in-between money for me). And I registered with a temp agency a few weeks back and have been checking regularly to see if they had anything. Well, last week they called me and said they had something, but weren’t sure if I was interested. I said “hell YES I’m interested!” because at this point I’d work almost anywhere except at my last job again. It is calling people to get them to participate in an event for charity, and though I don’t have a ton of sales experience, since I don’t have a ton of job experience period, I thought it sounded like a decent gig, and it pays enough that I will be able to save up some more money. It is a temp job, but if I do well and they like me they might keep me on and/or hire me for their next project thing (it’d be a few weeks in between).

At any rate, the interview was this morning, and I was nervous, and I actually had thought I didn’t do that well, but then I called the temp office after (they told me to), and the lady said “hey, you got the job, make sure you’re there Wednesday” and I went “OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH” and I am SO THRILLED. I will be able to pay bills! And eat! And possibly even buy the limited doll I want so much to buy! But first paying bills and eating! XD It is good. I will have to get used to getting up early again (at 7:30 AM instead of 2 PM) but I think I can handle it. I was up quite early today and have tomorrow to get into that groove as well, so. X3

I wasn’t unemployed because I don’t like working or anything like that. I don’t want to go into why I left my last job (which was my first “real” job after graduating from college), but suffice it to say there’s a reason I’m on anti-depressants these days, and it isn’t solely because of the Year of the Bed Bugs. But in this economy, finding any kind of job is tough, so even though this is a temp thing, I am totally fine with it.

Excuse me, I must go continue to jump around like a hyper child hopped up on Halloween candy.

Read Full Post »

The Great Flood of ’10

So for about a week now, my air conditioner has not been working properly. I tried turning it off, but it’s so miserably hot without it that I can’t even think (hot and humid, I should specify). I started noticing when I went in the back corner of the room to grab something and noticed the carpet was soaking wet. After talking to my landlords, they advised putting a plastic bin under it to catch the water, and said they would call their air conditioning guy as soon as possible. Since then, I’ve emptied the bin out twice (more than half full both times), ended up trying to put a towel behind it because it started dripping down the wall, but then noticed yesterday that the towel was soaked to dripping wet and the rug (room-sized rug over a hardwood floor) was also soaked through, and it had begun smelling very strongly of mildew. So that was a large part of my not having such a great day yesterday. The other part was trying to take my car to the shop to get fixed and having to pay $130 to replace the serpentine belt, balance the tires and get the oil changed. Which, luckily, I did have to spend, and I’m relieved that my car isn’t going to die anytime soon, but it was still stressful.

Also, I’m on my period. So, way to go, universe! Even though they’re all small things in the long run (and this year has still been waaaaay better so far than 2009 was), it was still one of those days where almost nothing went right.

Luckily, I have a friend spending the weekend with me, and she is patient with me when I’m irritable and we’ve been having a grand time talking dolls and playing video games and such, so that is very nice. She took the pics of me being insane yesterday. XD

This is my friend Casey, hiding behind the doll shirt she's sewing.

Here I am standing next to my malfunctioning air conditioner.

There's about three and a half inches of water in that container, and I just emptied it yesterday.

Now we’re going to go outside and take some pictures of dolls in some of my hand-knitted stuff, so that is also cool. X3

Read Full Post »

Gone Off The Deep End, Be Back Tomorrow

What happens when Chelsea goes insane?

She puts multiple doll knits on her head and makes crazy faces.

I have a friend staying the weekend with me, and she and I are going to take many pictures of dolls modeling hand-knitted items, so I was messing with some of the many items I’ve knit over time, and kind of went crazy. >.> All those items will end up being sold eventually.

I am very irritable because of hormones, my air conditioner being made of fail (it is dripping water into my living room, some of it I can catch in a plastic bin, the rest runs down the wall and under the bin so my carpet is soaked), and having to have my car fixed (the serpentine belt was in very bad shape). I am having a really big problem coming up with anything to write about, so today is an off day again. Sorry about that.

Have some links to fun/interesting things.

Renee Fleming sings “Porgi Amor”

Renee Fleming sings “Adieu, notre petite table”

Adorable kitty taking a bath

A comic about job hunting

Hyperbole and a Half, because it is always worth reading again.

Read Full Post »

Night and Day

Okay, this isn't so bad.

Gah, that sun is way too bright!

Are you happy, internet? This is my "I hate sun" face.

Okay, I don’t really hate sun. I just hate it directly in my face, and trying to take pictures of myself while outside invariably ends up with me looking up at the camera, and thus into the sun. Also, that plate next to the door does actually have numbers, but I erased them, because this is the internet and I am cautious. XD

I’ve never been a big fan of the sun. Oh, I need sunlight, both for vitamin D and to make sure I don’t get depressed (I believe I may have mild Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I’ve never had it actually diagnosed), but that doesn’t mean I like it. I have about four or five days a year (between spring and fall) where I get an insatiable urge to go outside and be outside for a while and soak up sunlight, and then I’m done until next year.

On the other hand, I love night time. Not just in terms of being a night owl (although I am that), but I love going outside at night. Star-gazing, or just walking around in the warm darkness of summer, is something I love doing. I’ve always been happier under the moon than under the sun. Last night I sat and looked out my window at it for a good ten minutes (the full moon is tomorrow night). And I love driving around my aunt’s house at night, as she lives very far out in the country, and on full moon nights it’s so bright out there you don’t need artificial light at all. That is heavenly (no pun intended). Several times I’ve gotten the urge to go out and watch meteor showers or other astronomical events at her place, but it was always on a work night at 3 AM or something, or the middle of winter, or both, so it never worked out.

My favorite constellation is Orion, mostly because it’s the only one I can recognize immediately on any given night (the others require more effort). Also I adore Greek mythology and Orion’s myth is one of my favorites.

It’s actually one of the few disadvantages to living in a city, not being able to walk around at night as much. Although truthfully, your chances of getting mugged or killed on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere are no better or worse than it happening in the city, but there are definitely some sketchy places around here (my own neighborhood is a little sketchy at night, although not dangerously so) and about every day you hear about another murder or drive-by happening in a specific part of town, so it discourages me from walking around as I’d like. I was probably in more danger in my little college town (they used to call it the “meth capital of the mountains”), but preconceptions and news reports contribute to making me fear the city at night more regardless. I’m sure I’ll get over it at some point (probably after I move to New York), but it’s still something I deal with now. And let me tell you, despite what you may think, being 6 feet tall and 370 lbs doesn’t make me feel any safer than a woman who’s 5’3” and 100 lbs soaking wet. Of course, I have the lung power to scream my head off so loud half the city could probably hear it, but that’s not exactly like having the capability of actually fighting my attackers. Which is probably half the reason I want to learn a martial art, except because I’m a nerd I’m way more interested in learning, say, fencing than karate or tai chi, and carrying a big-ass sword around with me all the time isn’t exactly practical (fun, but not practical). But I digress.

If it weren’t for the fact that working late tends to cut you off from friends and family to a certain extent, I wouldn’t mind working a job that was, say, 3-11 PM. I like night time. I tend to be my most creative and alert between 6 PM and midnight. But I also like being able to actually talk to my family sometimes, so it’s a trade off.

Of course, there’s also the fact that my cat hates my not feeding him before noon. XD That’s also an important consideration, at least to him.

Read Full Post »

Rut

So I feel like I’m in a bit of a rut right now when it comes to the pictures on this blog. I’m not gonna stop posting or anything like that, but I think I need some fresh ideas on what to take.

Man, my boobs don't look that big in real life.

This is how bored I am today.

I think I need to start writing down my post ideas as well, because I remember having a good one last night, but of course now I can’t freaking remember what it was.

Anyway, since I can’t remember and can’t think of anything else and feel kind of cranky and hormonal, have a poll and some links.

Johnny Wander, autobiographical webcomic

Best Whale Macro of all time

Baby Hedgehogs

Animals with Casts

Childfree Chic, a friend’s blog

Read Full Post »

Born Free

Another morning, another me.

I have a really wide tongue.

Lately I’ve been having some trouble getting out of bed in a timely manner, or getting showered and dressed before 3 PM. >.> This makes taking “nice” pictures somewhat difficult, but since my new camera hasn’t arrived yet, I’m still basically relying on my webcam. Thankfully it is a fairly good webcam.

So I have probably mentioned once or twice that I live alone. Obviously I have a cat, and the doll, but there are no other persons living in my space, and I am quite happy about that. I was reading some roommate horror stories on a forum the other day and was reminded exactly why I don’t ever want to live with anyone I don’t know, ever again.

My very first long-term roommate was, like most people, my freshman year of college. She was actually the “cool” one out of all my roommates. Granted, we spent a bit too much time in the same room because she basically never left unless her boyfriend came to visit, but we basically just both put our headphones on and listened to our music and cruised the internet and it was fine. The only sucky thing was that she had severe insomnia, and I felt guilty because I sleep very deeply and often talk in my sleep (or sing, or even shout if it’s a nightmare) which would interfere with the few hours of light sleep she would manage to get. Still, she never got on my case about it, so we lived amicably for that first year of college.

My sophomore year was a bit more problematic. My first semester roommate was… well, she was a very nice girl, but she was one of those Christians who thought if you weren’t Christian, it was her sworn duty to convert you, and she talked about her Bible Study group all the time, and what fun projects they’d done at her church youth group that week, and on and on. I started being unfriendly to her because I don’t take kindly to that kind of behavior (after being told by Fundamentalist Christian kids I was going to hell basically every day in middle school in Missouri), and she ended up moving out at the end of the semester.

Then came the really awful roommate. I don’t remember her name, but this girl was a sorority mess waiting to happen. She had transferred from another school to be in the nursing program, and didn’t seem interested in actual schoolwork at all. I’ve always spent a lot of time in my room, I’m not the type of person to go out very often. Apparently that offended her and her asshole boyfriend, who probably wanted to have sex all the time or something. She actually used my laptop and spied on my internet activities when I wasn’t there, at least until I put a password on it (I know because there’s no other earthly way she could’ve found my LiveJournal, and to this day it’s friends-locked because of the nasty comments she left on it). She was awful, and she finally ended up moving out about halfway through the semester, which was a great big relief to me. After that I had the room to myself, which I was just fine with.

My junior year of college, I was done with dorms, so I spent the next two years living in a one bedroom apartment. It was okay, but it was a basement apartment, which meant I was sick a lot (I’ve always been very allergic to mold) and had the sniffles all the time. Still, it was cozy, if not stylish or always dry (and it had a great view). When I came to the realization that I needed to spend another year in school (for various reasons), I ended up finding a roommate for the last year, mostly because the rent on the one bedroom had become too pricey.

Oh, I forgot to mention the roommate I had for two weeks the summer between sophomore and junior year. I had already settled on moving into the basement apartment in the fall, but I wanted to stay the summer and work and save up some money, so a girl I vaguely knew from school said she needed a new roommate, and I ended up moving in with her. At first it was okay. She was a Mormon, and while she did make some attempts to evangelize me, it wasn’t as overt so I just ignored it. She had a car and I didn’t, so we went shopping a few times. Then, two weeks into our time together, she up and decided she was going to go spend the rest of the summer in Utah. Her parents still paid the rent on the apartment, but she wouldn’t be there. This was kind of a big problem for me, because this apartment was way out of town, nowhere near the grocery store or the campus (where I was working part time), and the buses didn’t run half the times I actually needed them. I ended up begging rides from coworkers half the time because otherwise I would have had to walk home (more than five miles) at midnight. So I was, understandably, more than a little pissed about that. She never apologized or anything either.

My last roommate was, for the most part, a nice girl. Had the backbone of a wet noodle, but she was nice and didn’t try to evangelize me or spy on my computer or anything. She only had a few habits that annoyed me. One, she didn’t know how to wash dishes. She would fill the sink up with water and some soap, then let it drain out and use the (completely useless) bubbles left behind to “wash” her plates and cups. She also never soaked anything, even if it had been sitting on the counter for a day or two. I dunno who neglected to teach her to wash dishes, but it drove me crazy (especially because if she used my dishes, I’d then have to go behind her and re-wash them). She also would buy meat when we went to the store, put it in the freezer, then let it thaw in the fridge, but forget about it and not cook it and then it would go bad and she would throw it away. x.x The last thing that really bothered me was that every time her boyfriend (who I believe she’s married to now) came over, he would make her cry. Not just quiet crying, I mean sobbing, weeping, loudly asking him to stop whatever he was doing/saying that was making her so upset. I never heard any sounds of a physical struggle, or else I would have intervened (consequences be damned), but it sounded pretty bad to me anyway. I rationalized by saying maybe I just didn’t know what was going on, but it was a fairly constant thing (it happened every single time he came over), so I don’t know.

Once I finished college, I decided to move to Ohio, and since I didn’t know anyone here, there wasn’t any question of my moving in with anyone (my mother joked about my moving in with one of my cousins, but considering how mysogynistic and self-centered he is I wasn’t really interested). Of course, then I ended up moving into the bed bug-infested apartment for a year, so maybe rooming with someone I didn’t know wouldn’t have been that bad, unless they were awful AND I had bed bugs on top of it. >.>

The fact is, I like being alone. I like having my own space. I like knowing that everything is mine and I don’t have to ask permission to use anything. I like being able to invite anyone I want over and not worrying about whether anyone else likes them or not. I like keeping my own hours.

Even if I were in a serious relationship with someone, I would hesitate about moving in with them. I just need my own space. Always have, always will. Even if I do end up married or otherwise co-habitating with someone, it’ll have to include a craft room/office space for me to go to be alone. XD Which I don’t think is unreasonable.

Read Full Post »

Making Fun

This is how it starts, just a normal morning.

Then an alien tries to hack into your brain.

You scare it off with your amazing face-scrunching powers.

And then you laugh a laugh of righteous victory.

Yeah, having fun with making weird faces at my webcam. XD Something which I am quite good at, really. I am also a champion of the extreme eyebrow and other advanced facial techniques, such as touching my nose with my tongue.

As a mezzo-soprano, one of the things I liked and disliked most about the potential roles I could do were the amount of slapstick I had to do. Now, I like doing comedy. I like making people laugh, but I don’t like it when I have to do it at my own expense. Case in point, my one big acting opportunity in high school. My senior year, we did a musical called Nunsense. It’s only a five person cast (all women, what a surprise). I played the Mother Superior, who was meant to be on the large side. Most of it was a very enjoyable experience, except for the “high monologue”. You see, at one point my character was handed a bottle of inhalants that had been confiscated from a student by another nun, and she had no idea what it was and kept sniffing it, ending up making herself high. She then spouted a bunch of funny nonsense and ended up running around the stage with a Carmen Miranda fruit hat on her head, right at the end of the first act. This is all well and good, and it was pretty fun to do, just because I could act all crazy, except the line that got the biggest laugh from the audience was the line where I made fun of myself for being fat. And I hated it. I was in high school, and I didn’t have very high self-esteem, and having a bunch of strangers laugh at me for being fat didn’t make me feel good. I hid my feelings and didn’t say anything to the director, but my mother could tell how unhappy it made me, and she was angry on my behalf. This was following the year where the same director cast me as the Elephant in Children of Eden (a musical based on the biblical stories of Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark), which also made her see red on my behalf. I had several of my friends come up to me after Nunsense and tell me how much they had loved laughing at my expense, and it hurt. I knew they were trying to tell me that they’d enjoyed my performance, but I wasn’t proud of having to make fun of myself on stage.

When I got the role of Ruth in Pirates of Penzance in college, I thankfully had thicker skin. Of course, Gilbert and Sullivan are sort of famous for their blatant misogyny (how many old, unattractive women can you find in their works?), but it was mostly a fun role to play, so I sucked it up. Really the only time it was annoying was when other characters were pointing out how old and ugly Ruth was, which, since I was neither (even at the height of my body-loathing I’ve always known I have a pretty face), was rankling. I didn’t let it get to me so much, because I was older and didn’t take things as personally, but given the choice I wouldn’t want to do that role again, because I don’t like being made fun of.

I spent my first year of middle school being teased so mercilessly that my mother had weekly meetings with the principal, trying to get them to make it stop, sent my (then 6’7”) oldest brother, who’d just got his license, to pick me up from school so he could intimidate the little assholes, and eventually ended up taking me out of school and attempting to homeschool me because I was so miserable. I’ve always been a bit over-sensitive to teasing, even from my family (I’m a lot better about it these days), and I think that’s a common thing for the youngest child, that we want to be taken seriously and get angry when people poke fun at us. But that’s different from systematic emotional abuse from other students, because I was taller, and heavier, and not one of them (we’d moved there from a different state a year before). I withered and shrank into myself. It took me several years to begin trusting people again, and I’m still wary of new faces and the possibility that they might intentionally hurt me for their own amusement.

I do take myself a bit too seriously sometime, but I also have spent a lot of my life being made fun of and belittled. Because I’m fat, and tall, and a woman. There are societal messages everywhere that reinforce my status as a lesser human being, and without meaning to my family and friends sometimes buy into them. I don’t like playing roles where people have to laugh at my expense. I’d much rather be the lady with the biting wit who makes people laugh at the stupidity of others, or the stand-up comic who makes people laugh at some of the ridiculousness of everyday life. I don’t mind being silly and making people laugh at me for that (like in today’s pictures), and I don’t mind when people laugh at me because they don’t understand me or a hobby I like or whatnot. But I am done letting people laugh at me because of who I am. There’s nothing funny about my fatness, thank you. It’s not okay to laugh at me just because I’m different enough that you can fool yourself into thinking I’m a lesser person. I am not an object here for your amusement. I’m a person. And if I make a concerted effort to be funny, then feel free to laugh. But don’t laugh just because I slipped and fell on my fat ass, unless you would laugh at your skinny friends for the same reason. Don’t laugh when a high school girl is forced to play an Elephant simply because the director singled her out as the biggest girl in the show (and the biggest guy got to be the other Elephant, what a surprise). Don’t laugh when someone calls her old and ugly, because even if she is one or both of those things, that doesn’t mean she is an object of derision.

There’s a difference between comedy and cruelty. A lot of people don’t care to figure out where that line is, but I can tell you how much it hurts once someone has crossed it. So don’t laugh.

Read Full Post »

Bug Bytes

Last night I had to sleep in my living room because a little ball of spider eggs hatched at some point right before bed and my ceiling was covered in baby spiders. Given that my fold out chair (it’s not a sofa, the mattress is a single) is one of the most uncomfortable things ever invented, I wasn’t especially thrilled about it, and I didn’t get any decent sleep. You can imagine how happy this makes me.

These were actually the nicest ones.

I will kill you with my mind.

I wouldn’t say I have a phobia of spiders, or bugs in general. Yes, I’m hyper-sensitive to bugs these days, but it’s largely because of having bed bugs for a year. And I don’t generally mind seeing bugs around. What bothers me is that they might bite me.

Bugs are fundamentally attracted to my flesh. I don’t know why, but I’ve been a mosquito magnet since the day I was born. Inevitably, when at a summer camp, I would be the only camper to get two or three ticks on them by the end of the day. And don’t get me started on spider bites. Never had a dangerous one, thankfully, but the buggers like to bite me. Of course there’s the bed bugs as well, but they will bite anyone who lies still long enough, so that’s not exactly surprising. The fact is that bugs like biting me. I dunno if I’m that tasty, or that offensive, but they do.

I also tend to have nightmares about spiders. Mostly on hot nights when I can’t even stand to have a cover on me and the air flow of the fan blowing tickles my exposed skin, which my sleeping mind interprets as bugs crawling all over me and makes into fun dreams. Gotta love those.

Anyway, the point is that I’m not afraid of bugs or spiders in general. I really like seeing them in cases, or at zoos, or anywhere else where I know they can’t escape and bite me. I even enjoy letting non-biting bugs crawl on me (grasshoppers, crickets and ladybugs, mostly). I’ve been tempted to get a tarantula as a pet (they’re so adorably fuzzy and eight-legged). I just freaking hate bug bites. They always itch and sometimes they even end up oozing or infected and it’s just awful.

So once I’ve managed to rally my exhausted mind and body into getting showered and dressed, I’ll be heading to the store for bug spray and/or boric acid. Because I don’t really relish the thought of finding fifty baby spiders under my mattress or next to my bedside lamp or anywhere at all, really.

ETA: I forgot to mention that my bed right now is just a mattress on the floor, because of the whole bed bug debacle, I had to get rid of my old mattress and bed frame along with my armchair and sofa. So finding bugs under my mattress isn’t far-fetched at all.

Read Full Post »