Why I haven't posted in a while.

- I’m writing this week for a dog food company publication. No, really. You know what I’ve learned? Dogs like to be fed! And housed! Also: loved.

- I’m obsessing about how awful our living room is. It’s really awful. Papers are piled on every available surface, toys are scattered on every available inch of floor, our rugs are prickly with dog hair, our furniture is ugly and causes us injury, the lighting makes everyone look like they have cancer. I’m determined to change everything, make it all pretty and good and healthy and THEN I'LL BE HAPPY, RIGHT? but I haven’t the resources or know-how. I’ve heard those are two good things to have. I’m so obsessed that I actually borrowed from the library not one but two books on feng shui. So far I’ve learned that our living room is so un-feng shui that we should have developed leprosy long ago. If we don’t cover our walls in mirrors and wind chimes and scatter goldfish all about the floor, hungry ghosts will knock open our cupboards and steal our rice. I’m fairly convinced it’s all a lot of hoo-ha invented by those funny people over in the East, but I’m willing to think differently, should anyone care to convince me. As one concession to the mysteries of the Orient, I moved a (miraculously, through no effort of my own, still living) plant to a dark corner that had hitherto only housed spiders and dust bunnies (sometimes together! Spiders love company!). We’ll see if the improvement in our chi flow leads to increased riches and improved relations with our elders.

- My son is REFUSING TO NAP. Naptime is post-time. So you see. Instead of napping, Henry sits in his crib and shouts, “Mommy no! No, Mommy, no!” I’m convinced he knows that this will always get me to give up on the nap, because I’m afraid the neighbors will think I’m a child abuser. It’s only a matter of time until he’s learned “Please, Mother, not the iron! Oh, why must you drink so much?”

- You, my loyal audience of readers, have been composing such hilarious and entertaining comments that I hate to interrupt with my prattle. Really: if any of you haven’t been reading the comments, you’re missing out. Apparently everyone who reads my blog is even more beset by vermin, poop, and Jehovah’s Witnesses than I am. I’m amazed you people can do anything but lay your head in your hands and weep. So: carry on!

Why I could never be a Buddhist.

Yesterday, while Henry was napping, I was leaving my bedroom (where I work) to get a glass of water from the kitchen (where I obtain glasses of water), and there, on the floor in our hallway, was a waterbug.

For those of you lucky to never have experienced the unique horrors of the waterbug, let me tell you a little story. Once there was a cockroach who grew to monstrous proportions—say, 3-4 inches in length, 1-2 inches in width--with long spiny scrabbly legs and fucking WINGS that enabled it to FLUTTER ABOUT sickeningly and make Alice SCREAM HER HEAD OFF.

Basically, yeah, they’re gigantic, meaty cockroaches, that live in the basements and walls of NYC apartment buildings, and emerge periodically from the slimmest of cracks in the walls or around fixtures to die. It is their dying wish that before they expire, they watch humans scream and flail their limbs. Smelling our fear, they can finally die in peace. Fuckers.

So this waterbug was, thank God, on its back, which meant it had breathed its last putrid, breath, and had joined its ancestors on the shorelines of the River Styx. I ran to the kitchen to unroll the entire paper towel roll. You see, when picking up a dead waterbug—which I have done exactly one other time, and that was only because my cat had dissected it and I didn’t realize that the giant bug I thought I was picking up was actually the TORSO of a waterbug, but where was its head, OH GOD WHERE WAS ITS HEAD—sorry. Where was I? Yes. When picking up a dead waterbug, it is essential that you avoid being able to feel any of its contours or textures, be it the chitinous exoskeleton or its meaty underbelly with the legs GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF—

Okay. So you don’t want to feel it, because then you risk dropping it in horror, and then you risk it landing somewhere on your person, and that as we all know leads to death, because there’s no reason to live once that happens. So you get a whole roll of paper towels, wrap them around your hand so that you have created a Paper Mitt of Protection, and you lean over carefully, and quickly scoop it up, hoping that it wasn’t only pretending to be dead.

Which this one was. Pretending, that is. To be dead.

When I touched the thing with my PMoP, it flipped over and ran right at me, over my toes, and past me.

Let me repeat: Over my toes. My toes. Right over them.

It blindly skittered around my hallway, attempting to climb the walls, falling back, fluttering in the air for a sickening moment or two, and then climbing again. Meanwhile, I was in the kitchen, doing my best imitation of Lucy Ricardo when she had just had a waterbug's legs ambling across her toenails. What, you never saw that episode? It's a hoot, my friend. As you probably guessed, Ricky saves the day.

Now, I have never actually killed one of these things. When I lived alone, I simply ran from my home, screaming, and hoped that when I returned, it would either be 1) dead or 2) gone. As long as I have lived with my husband, he has usually been home when a waterbug has emerged for its Make a Wish Foundation moment, because I made sure I always had a JOB, so I would be out of the house as much as possible, thus limiting my chances of exposure.

That’s how much I hate these things. I would rather spend my days in a cubicle—a nice, vermin-free cubicle—then risk encountering a waterbug. This is how sick I am. Now you know.

So! What with this gargantuan insect rushing about inside my house, I got busy! Making calls! First I called my friend Sarah, who wasn’t home. My hysterical message provided hours of entertainment at her house, I'm sure. Then I called some neighbors! Maybe they were sitting on their couches, hands folded in their laps, waiting for me to call and invite them over for some cockroach-smushing! Nope, they weren’t! Then I called my husband, who was no help at all. "Kill it!" he said, somewhat obviously.

I got out some roach spray that has been under our sink from before we moved in. Using every ounce of guts I had left, I got close enough to the thing, who was now running! Everywhere! Trying! To find! An exit! and I pressed down the nozzle—only to see that the can had no pressure left at all. Still I kept pressing, and the roach spray drip-driip-dripped down on the waterbug, who began to slow down, and then flipped over on its back to wave every single one of its horrible legs at me, and then died.

And then I ran away again. Then I went back. Then I ran away.

Finally, I managed to get it. I got it. It’s gone. But there will be another one. There’s always another one.

I would soil myself with genuine poo—just to get a big ol’ laugh out of you.

We’re almost at the other end (end!) of Henry’s Adventures in Pooping—we made it through the rapids, and now we’re wading through the occasional runlet. I just really wanted to say "runlet." Runlet! There!

You know (she writes, introducing her Theme for the Day), I used to think there was some way, when my child got sick, that I could avoid catching it. I’ll just wash my hands, I thought! Why don't other people think of that! I’ll wash and wash--and wash some more. Obviously!

This morning, after I changed Henry for the 3rd time, I continued to smell poop. I looked in Henry’s diaper, which fresh and new as a spring morning. So I looked on my hands. Nope. My shirt. Relatively unsoiled. The poop smell lingered—it was as if there was poop right under my nose. But of course we all know there was no poop there, because a poop mustache would be too much insult to endure. (Insert your "Dirty Sanchez" joke here. You know you want to. You filthy, filthy thing.)

No, the poop was not under my nose. No. It was on my nose.

I glanced in the mirror, and there! Right on the tip of my nose! Poop! Why am I admitting this in a public forum? It was only a dab. But isn’t that enough? How much poop can a person allow to sit on their nose before they flee their home in horror and disgust? How did it get there? I’ve been washing and washing with all the paranoid vigor that I imagined before I had this child, and yet somehow it managed to evade me, to travel up from my hands all the way to the center of my face.

My point is, once the poop has made it to your nose, you’re pretty much doomed. I am doomed. Unless the Birthday Fairies see fit to spare me from the sickness.

Gasp in amazement at how subtly I mention that it’s my birthday! Why do you think I’m linking to flattering pictures of myself and practically begging for reassurance that I’m not as old and haggard as I feel? I’m transparent. And 35. Thirty-five. Thirty. Five. I’m not sure I’m so happy about this turn of events. But there’s nothing I can do about it—the alternatives are so much less appealing. Anyway, it’s there already, like the poop on the end of my nose. No matter how I scrub and scrub.

The shaking will burn off all the brownie calories, right?

Can someone please, please tell me: why did I eat two brownies and drink an iced coffee, just now? Why did I do it? Do I enjoy the feeling of bugs crawling under my skin? Historically, I have not found it to be a fun-time sensation. So, knowing that this is how I will feel after I have made this kind of dietary choice, why did I soldier forth with the two-brownies-and-iced-coffee initiative?

I’m an idiot, I truly am. Why are you bothering with me?

But here’s a not-bad picture of me! And my husband! (He would want me tell you that he doesn’t always look that surprised.) And my son—wait, that’s not my son. It’s my friend’s baby. And look how cute she is! Her name is Tallulah. Could there be a better name? I don’t think so! Sweet Christ, I’m trembling from the caffeine and the sugar! Exclamation!

I thought Henry was napping, but now I hear him singing to himself. The singing is new. Once, when he was a few months old, he hummed "Ode to Joy" (I am NOT KIDDING) and we all gazed in wonderment at Henry, Child Prodigy, but then he clammed up, singing-wise. Right now he’s singing the ABC song, but he gets stuck after "d," so he just sings, "A, b, c, d, ...d, d, d....d, d, d, d, dddd...d..." I can’t figure out why he sounds so cheerful, as he’s had diarrhea and a fever all day. I would be less inclined to lie in bed crooning my favorite ditties, if I were simultaneously soiling myself with watery, burning poo.

You know what I could really go for right now? A brownie.