Bugs galore

You would imagine that after making a mistake that left you red as a lobster, peeling and then scabbing, a lesson might be learned. At least, I would assume as much...but no. I decided to go out in the burning hot sun again and work for another four hours in my tanktop, without a hat, and get re-burnt. Yes, RE-BURNT! The most disturbing part is that I was wearing sunscreen this time, even if it was only SPF 15. It must have still made some sort of difference especially since I reapplied it three times, but not a noticeable one. Oh woe is me! I geuss I asked for it, but spending 26 dollars on a tiny tube of sunscreen should at least count for something. Okay, I'm through wallowing.

Something I realized today as I was busy yanking weeds out of the ground where they were attempting to choke poor innocent blueberry bushes was that I have become immune to bugs. This is a big deal! All throughout my childhood I have hated spiders, ants, earwigs (especially after that story about them crawling into your ears and eating your brain), silverfish, wasps, worms and centipedes to name a few. The cute ones were alright, such as caterpillars, lady bugs, bumblebees and woodbugs but if I saw one of the others, it might as well be dead already. But suddenly, I find myself letting the silverfish on the bathroom floor slither away or picking a worm off the pavement to gently deposit it on a mound of cool earth or even nonchalantly flicking a spider off of my arm without so much as a shiver. This is abnormal. Of course I was still wary of the enormous wasp cruising around my bedroom but eventually I shooed it out the window as well.

However, this impartiality to insects did not come without some serious conditioning. I have stayed in a carpenter ant infested cabin for three nights, weeded for over thirty hours, cleaned an entire beach of debris and burned them, collected worms for a baby bird (that was two summers ago) and picked spiders from my limbs and hair. As you can imagine I've had my fair share of dealing with creepy crawlies over the past while, and it seems that after coming in such close contact with these multi-legged critters I have become somewhat tolerant of them. In any case, communications between us has definitely stepped up a notch.

I find this all very interesting, because when I was a young girl (two years old, I believe) I received a toy walnut shell with a spider/lady bug jiggling on a spring inside of it from a friend of my parents'. Once I had confirmed that it was indeed fake, I walked about the room to each geust and exclaimed in all seriousness, "It's a bug!" Now in my opinion that sounds as though I LIKED bugs in those days. I wonder what happened...

Anyways, I just wanted to share with you this new and exciting discovery before washing the crusted mud from my legs and brushing the dirt from my hair - I feel like a real farmer (and I look like one too)!  So goodbye for now and I'll definitely be posting again soon.