Pickles & Dimes

This morning, as I have every other morning since discovering the creature in our shower, I checked the tub (wearing my glasses) for any hint of non-sanctioned tub occupants. Finding none, I clamored in, took a nice long shower and as I grabbed my towel to wrap around my head like a terrycloth Tower of Pisa, I saw something sprint from underneath the shower liner.

“God!” I said out loud.

“Shit!” said my inner monologue.

“Awesome!” said Sunny, who (naturally) was drinking out of the bathroom faucet, because everyone knows drinking out of the water dish is so bourgeois.

I awkwardly leapt out of the slippery tub - still soaking wet - and scrambled frantically to dry off with one hand while reaching for my glasses with the other.

The monster was easily twice the length of the first one I saw. (Which incidentally, was the first of FOUR that have now been in our bathroom.)

(Also, I gave myself goose bumps just typing that.)

The monster was THIS:

Delightful, no? Perhaps I should have a monogrammed towel made for it?

According to this website, it’s not a silverfish as I mistakenly assumed, but a house centipede. Totally common and not dangerous. Which still makes me feel all itchy and tingly and WHERE IS THAT SHRIMP FORK FOR MY EYES?

Sunny immediately leapt into the tub, all bravado and dilated pupils, but once the centipede charged at her after finding the water-slicked tub sides inaccessible, she jumped a foot into the air and shed approximately 37% of her body weight.

Jason was downstairs and I was still naked. Fantastic. I don’t know why I don’t start every morning this way, because surely that extra jolt of adrenaline can only be good for my heart, right?

I grabbed a large clump of toilet paper (large clump = half a roll) and slammed it down on the beast, where I succeeded in removing only 90 of its legs.

(I just got goose bumps again.)

The second smash pulverized it, but for good measure, I flushed it down the toilet. And then flushed the toilet again. Just in case.

I don’t care what that website said about house centipedes not being dangerous. One fact still remains: why was this thing purposely HIDING between the shower liner and the shower curtain? Think about that, folks.

I’ll be over here trying to rid myself of these goose bumps.

Saturday night Shauna and I were like crazy teenagers: we played darts and foosball, blared the radio, and went to bed after midnight. Like I said, CRAZY! We had nothing to do the next day; I was planning on doing a little golfing with a buddy, and Shauna couldn’t wait to do some yardwork.

Sleep - who needs sleep?

At 2:15 a.m., Abby gave us a wake-up call like never before. She was wailing like I’ve never heard, and she wouldn’t stop. Shauna told me the only time Abby’s carried on like that was when she saw another cat (not counting Sunny) or an animal. Going into the kitchen to investigate, I found Abby upright, in front of the patio doors, howling at another cat as if she were looking in a mirror. And the other cat? He was answering her shriek for shriek.

I slid open the door and chased the cat away, taking only a few steps in its general direction. As I laid back down in bed, the caterwauling started up again. This time it was Shauna’s turn to rid our yard of its new, unwanted visitor.

Picture this: it’s 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning, and Shauna was running around the yard in her bathrobe and sandals, yelling at the cat and chasing it with a spray bottle. A spray bottle that does not have a solid stream mind you, but a gentle mist for our plants. I’m sure the neighbors loved the spectacle, too.

Neither of us fell asleep for a while and the cat did return (to mock Shauna) but Abby lost interest. It was still there at 7:00 a.m. when I woke up.

Annoying neighborhood cat - 1; Good night’s sleep - 0.

When I went downstairs to watch TV, the whole basement smelled of cat urine. I figured Abby and Sunny “marked” the basement to protect our home from the intruder. But upon further inspection, it turns out the cat outside sprayed our window, marking it as his own. Nothing hosing off the window and a little Pine Sol inside wouldn’t solve.

The cat returned last night around 8:00 p.m., but must’ve made its way back home. Shauna didn’t have to chase it off with the mister either.

Annoying neighborhood cat - 1; Good night’s sleep - 1.

I haven’t knitted anything lately except a cozy for Sammy, my iPod. I used a purple yarn that I bought in order to knit a squid hat for one of my online friends. (Incidentally, this squid hat pattern is bizarrely difficult to follow, but I vow to someday finish it. Preferably before my friend’s child turns 58.)

Anyway, I don’t know why I chose purple yarn for my cozy, because purple hasn’t been my favorite color since I was 11 and obsessed with unicorns, Espirit bags and jelly shoes.

But how can I explain this, then?

This is the tank top I knitted last year. With super heavy yarn. Yarn for a tank top. A tank top meant to be worn during the SUMMER.

Note to self: use brain more often.

This was the first garment I knitted. I worked laboriously on it, and when it came time to make the armhole decreases, I had to actually write out whether each stitch should be knitted or purled, because the stupid pattern had to LINE UP and if I was one stitch off, everything would be ruined. My brain ached from this pattern.

Also, my knitting needles gave me a splinter.

But I prevailed. I succeeded in making the armholes even, I made the side seams invisible and the thing actually looked like the pattern in the book.

I’ve haven’t worn it since.

Yesterday morning as I got into the shower and adjusted the water temperature, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Five thoughts simultaneously pasted themselves into my brain:

1. What is that?
2. I should really put my contacts in before showering.
3. Seriously, man…what IS that?
4. Is it a clump of hair? It’s pretty large.
5. Wait, why is it moving away from the water? Toward ME?

I scuttled out of the shower and, walking directly past my glasses on the vanity, went into the bedroom to grab my other pair of glasses (note to self: quit being a baby and just get the LASIK surgery already).

Jason heard me moving around and came to investigate.

“Are you OK?”

“What? Oh yeah, sure. Um…could you please check the shower for me? I will be right over here a comfortable distance away, not looking in the shower.”

So he got the reluctant pleasure of squishing the world’s longest silverfish, which…GOD. I mean, I kill bugs and spiders myself without an ounce of squeamishness, but silverfish make me want to stab my eyes out with a shrimp fork and then take 47 showers.

Showers not infested with silverfish, of course.

Then, last night when I got home from work, Jason was nowhere to be found.

I asked Sunny, “Where’s Jason?” (Because I am one of those people who has conversations with their pets, such as the nightly “Are you dead? Oh no, dead kitty!” conversation, where I do all the talking and Sunny plays dead with one back leg all rigor-mortised in the air.)

I figured Jason was downstairs and started to head down there when I remembered I was still wearing my coat. I then opened the coat closet to see Jason standing there all wide-eyed.

After my long-winded scream (a welcome departure from my usual impulse of shouting the f-word when startled) he said, “I knew the minute I hid in there it was going to end badly. But you should’ve seen your face!! By the way, I almost stuck my toe out from underneath the door so you would know it was me.”

Because that would have been SO MUCH BETTER. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been concerned AT ALL about a giant toe belonging to some unknown person sticking out of my coat closet.