People of my Village

Well! That’s over. We had a family wedding this weekend, with houseguests, and have I ever mentioned that I love houseguests? I do. It’s a very strange thing, apparently, but a houseful of people always makes me feel warm and fuzzy and weirdly safe, like we can’t be broken into or murdered or anything strange, because there are so! many! people! Who could get away with such a thing? We have four-ish bedrooms and every last one of them was occupied by someone who would doubtless scream if intruded upon. Safety!

Plus, you know, I enjoy their company. That’s true, too. But once houseguests leave, there is the cleaning. Oh, the cleaning. Everything has three times as much dirt on it as before, because there were three more people involved and now there are toilets and laundry and maybe even bears, oh my!

It was a relatively uneventful family wedding–beautiful, loving and all that jazz. Two nights prior, however, my kid lost her shit at a family dinner in a janky-but-delicious Chinese restaurant (South Pacific in Newton, for those playing along at home–they have an original tiki room and serve scorpion bowls), and for the FRILLIONTH time, discovered that my kid bawls like a maniac whenever she’s confronted with an old(er) lady, this time being her great-aunt. There’s a juvenile prejudice that’s fun to explain! Hi! My kid hates old ladies! Yes, I’m sure YOU are lovely, but you are very clearly OLD and old ladies freak her out! So please, no no, don’t say hi to her, thanks. At all. It freaks her out. Yes, even you. YES, YOU, OLD LADY. YOU TOO.

Nice, right? Nice. My kid’s an ageist little pooper.

I am also really unclear why a restaurant, upon seeing a TABLEFUL of kids under the age of four, would refuse to deviate from their plan of offering their pu pu platters with towering flames in the center, but then again, some things defy logic, am I right? Here, kids! Let’s practice lighting our eyebrows on fire!

Anyway. Let us now discuss stink bugs. Do you guys KNOW what stink bugs are? HA HA. They look like this. (LINK TERRIFYING! WARNING!) And did you know those em effers can FLY? I did not know this. I had NO idea, in fact, until the other night when I thought I saw a fly and watched it land and NEARLY EFFING DIED. You can’t kill them, you see, because their stupid pheromones go shooting out and then you have a plague of stink bugs, not to mention they, um, STINK.

So there I am, trying to be calm and shit while I aim to trap it in two, um, cups (what?) and then … I LOST IT. AND FELT SOMETHING DOWN MY BACK. AND MADE A STRANGLED KIND OF NOISE. And God, look, there was wild running around and crazy tapdancing, and I wanted so bad to scream, but you know, MUST NOT WAKE BABY, so I just waved myself around wildly while frantically whispering, “HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME.”

HELP NEVER CAME. Or rather, it did, but HELP WAS LAUGHING TOO HARD TO ACTUALLY HELP. This went on for several minutes until I finally just locked myself on the sun porch and got buck naked, dislodging the stink bug from … oh God, from WHEREVER IT WAS, and Adam took it outside, thank you Jesus, and Amen.

GHWRLKHTHEWARTTICKETH.

I mean, RIGHT?

And now, let us cleanse ourselves with a delightful picture of my daughter, looking rather diabolical, yet adorable, in her wedding finery. Well, with strawberry stains, but whatever.

(Yes, that’s me in the background at an Unfortunate Angle, I hope, as I am looking rather PREGNANT, which is a state that I am not, I assure you.)

Happy Tuesday!

*Rusted Root

22 comments May 24th, 2010