Apartment Adventures

You know, when I first came to Carlsbad, I thought to myself, "This'll be great. I'll got out walking and hiking around the caves every weekend and explore the state and national parks around here and all that. I'll make my own food and it'll be delicious and nutritious and awesome. Nothing can possibly go wrong!" Pssh. Every day I come home from work and make something easy. At first I did a bit of cooking - pork and rice, sausage onna bun, chicken fajita...now it's just limited to stuff I can microwave once again, although I did make a delicious egg and ham scramble last weekend that I ate in two "breakfast" burritos that were both eaten for non-breakfast meals. Chicken patties, instant meals - the technology has improved for frozen meals by quite a bit since I started microwaving my own meals years ago. They have steamer things now!

But I digress. Every day I come home, microwave something, sit down at the computer and attempt to watch something entertaining. The internet doesn't always oblige, but I usually manage. And then I play games and facebook and completely brainless useless crap. On the weekends, I sleep in to some ridiculous hour and then enjoy a lazy day on Saturdays, meaning I have to do all of my cleaning on Sundays.

But why pay an entrance fee to some park when I have a jungle of creatures here at home? lol. Okay it's not quite a jungle. Those who have been following my facebook statuses and picture updates may have some idea of what I've been through. First it was the moths. The moths seemed to be all over my front curtains in a matter of days, and I had no idea where they came from. Now that I don't keep the superbright front room light on at night, they're not so prevalent, but I still see them now and then. Then it was the ants. The ants are a continuing problem. It used to be just the odd ant that I'd smush as soon as I saw it, but now it seems like every morning there's a few meandering around the baseboard around the dining room and/or kitchen, which I smush on sight.

Last Wednesday night, I think, was ridiculous. First, there was a giant brown beetle-lookin' thing, probably around an inch long and a third of an inch wide, which I smashed with my shoe. Then there was a giant wolf spider in my bathtub, which I contained with a plunger while I duct-taped a flat piece of cardboard to a long narrow cardboard box. I then used my device to smash the spider until I was absolutely sure it was really quite completely dead. Then, after cowering in my bed for a while, I came out of my room only to find another big brown thing crawling around, which I also smashed with my device. For big brown things, a shoe works better.

Since then, it's only been ants, moths, and smaller beetle-lookin' things, all of which I can smush easily with a napkin or paper towel.

And I do plan on getting out and about to the parks eventually, and perhaps walking around Carlsbad in the mornings or evenings, when it's not quite so hot. And I will hopefully get into some sort of rhythm of making my own food again. I just haven't really found a good pattern yet to fall into. Once I get a routine going, I should be able to stick to it pretty well - even if I am occasionally distracted by bugs.