R told me a very funny story about love bugs yesterday (while we were having a nice Mother’s Day brunch) and it almost made me feel kindly toward them. For a minute or two. It didn’t last.
For those not from Florida, the bugs colloquially called “love bugs” — I have no idea what their real name is — have a brief mating season in spring and in fall. Every few years, their mating season is insanely crazy and there are bugs everywhere. You can’t go outside without breathing them in, because there are so many of them. They will crawl on you, they will get in your hair, they will fly in your face, and they will cover your vehicle. Yesterday, during my drive to Sarasota, I probably killed hundreds of them, maybe thousands. It does not make for a cheerful drive. So, so, so gross.
Fortunately (?), it’s also really rainy. Enough so that I checked the weather this morning with a wary eye. I’m not leaving Florida until R graduates from college and there’s no way I’m missing his graduation, but we actually might be looking at the first named storm of the 2018 hurricane season. About three weeks too early, but Al Gore warned us a long time ago about changing weather systems. It’s not a surprise. And it is handy for rinsing off dead love bugs.
I’m waiting on test results for Z, but she is unchanged. Yesterday afternoon, she peed on both beds, so I spent the afternoon and early evening doing laundry. The campground (Oscar Scherer Stat Park) has a nice washer and dryer, so I managed to get clean sheets on the beds, but it cost me $7 total. That’s going to be an expensive daily habit.
Meanwhile, she rejected fresh Atlantic salmon and rice for breakfast. I ate some and it was quite delicious. But she seemed hungry before I gave her the pills she’s supposed to take and it finally occurred to me to wonder whether the medication — which is not doing anything for the peeing problem — is making her nauseous. Turns out the side effects are restlessness, irritability and loss of appetite. I’m thinking we are going to stop those pills. I’ll continue with the antibiotics, at least until we get the test results. Eventually I will become nonchalant about the peeing, I suppose, if the other options are starving dog and/or dying dog. Peeing dog is fine in comparison.
I actually really wanted to make some cute flow chart graphics for this post. The first would ask, “Has Zelda peed inside?” and the answers would be, “No,” leading to “Of course not, what a bizarre idea, why would she do that?” and “Yes,” leading to “Seriously? WTF?”. The second chart would ask, “Has Zelda peed inside?” and the “Yes” response would lead to a bunch of variants, like “Did she pee on me?” and “Did it wake me up?” and “Did she pee on so many things that I must immediately do multiple loads of laundry?” and so on, with answers that would include “Great!” and “No problem,” for the lesser pee issues. Honestly, pee on the floor only bothers me now if I step in it.
However, creating a flow chart turned out to be a lot more work than one would expect. I wound up having lots of fun playing with book cover designs instead. I’m a long way away from needing any new book covers, but it was fun to try out some variations. (I was using free templates from Canva and my own photographs.)
Of course, the book I’m really working on is Grace, so I should get back to it. No progress this weekend, unsurprisingly, and this week — given the graduation and the distractions inherent in being in the same town as R — is probably not going to be my most productive, but I’m really pretty close to finishing a draft for the first time ever. And I have no current impulse to start over from the beginning, which is a good sign.
I’ve got one other distraction happening this week, though, which is pretty fun. When I was walking Z this morning, I was wondering why it felt sort of like Christmas Eve. You know the feeling, that slightly magical sense of anticipation? And then I remembered that it’s because The Penderwicks at Last
First, though, some Grace!
Good morning! I do hope you get some answers to Z’s peeing problem. Good call on putting the lack of appetite onto Z’s medication. I’m with you — stop it and see if it helps her appetite, especially since it doesn’t seem to be doing what it’s supposed to for her incontinence. BTW, we call those bugs “Noseeums” because you can’t see them until they’ve bitten you and the bite swells up and itches like crazy! And they are tiny and are EVERYWHERE! Hate them. Didn’t have them in San Diego so that was a surprise for us when we moved here.
No, these aren’t no see ‘ums! I hate those, too, and am currently very munched up by them, but love bugs don’t bite. They just mate and die and get everywhere. They’re harmless, thankfully. If they were no see ‘ums, I’d be much, much unhappier!
Gads, another tiny bug to bug us?? LOL Ah me… Are they only around areas with water or are they everywhere? I don’t remember them when I visited my half-sister Nancy in Maitland years ago. But it was in the summertime, (August), so perhaps it wasn’t their ‘season.’
They’re seasonal — twice a year, they show up for a couple weeks. And once every few years, there’s a season like this year, where it feels like there are millions of them, not just the usual hundreds. But yeah, you never see them in August. September or May, only! If they were year round, I guarantee we would fill the air with so much pesticide that we’d wipe out the species!
Thinking of you.
Thank you! She ate breakfast this morning, so I am feeling very cheerful. She even went back for seconds!
Looked em up and they look like flies. Yuck! You have some definite challenges right now. At least you have a week with R. Enjoy.
They don’t fly like flies, though. They’re slow and lazy, so it would be easy to kill them if there weren’t so darn many of them. And they wouldn’t be particularly annoying if there weren’t so many of them, either! But thanks — I will! It’s nice to see him!!
I’ve experienced love bugs. Igh indeed.
Share the funny story!
Ha! It would require pages of text and his delivery, which can be beautifully deadpan. But it involves a quirky bike race, with legs interspersed with stations hosting games. R was the host for a station and the game — his invention — involved spitting cocoa puffs into a cup from a distance. But there were a lot of love bugs around and he recklessly offered his first competitors extra points for successfully spitting love bugs into the cup. Disaster ensued, as the competitors were, well, competitive. He became increasingly worried that his game might have inadvertently turned into hazing, while trying to balance being fair to the crazy people willing to put love bugs into their mouth and not invalidate their points; not torture animals — despite them being bugs busily engaged in dying, anyway; and remind further competitors that the points were actually meaningless and didn’t have anything to do with whether they were going to win the race. But you really need his delivery to make it laugh-out-loud funny. It was, though!
Your post made me Google ‘dog diapers’… apparently such things exist.
She slithers out of them in the night! I’d love to know how, I haven’t seen her do it. But I put her in one and think she’s set and then when I wake up in the morning, the diaper is on the floor and she is elsewhere.