Bits Of Fluff

You could be forgiven for thinking I'm about to lament the cat hair in our house again -- but, no, the bits of fluff are the random things floating around my head.

THE FRIDGE
I have learned that water pooling inside the fridge is better than water pooling under the fridge, and is likely to be caused by a clogged drain. The first trick is to find the drain. Ours is located JUST out of the line of sight of any human being unless that human is down on his or her knees, praying to find the drain, and happens to look up. The next trick is to figure out what is clogging the drain: ice or bits of gunk. We still haven't figured this out yet, although I'm guessing it's ice because I keep the fridge very cold. Now that we've vacuumed five pounds of cat hair (oops! I said cat hair!) off the coils at the back, hopefully all the other problems will solve themselves. (Wishful thinking is the solution most relied upon by procrastinators and un-handypeople. Sometimes it even works. I guess we'll see.)

MUSICAL EARWORMS
Technically, "musical earworms" is redundant -- the term is just "earworms" -- but I didn't want to make you think I was going to talk about earwigs or something equally shuddery. I have had an earworm for over a week now. EVERY SINGLE TIME I find myself humming (which is a lot; humming is my expression of happiness, boredom, anxiety and just about every other emotion) I am humming the SAME TUNE. It's a great tune, by talented singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran, with a surprisingly intricate melody, the kind that sticks in my head until I learn it, no matter what the lyrics are, but I need to pass it on to someone else and get myself a fresh tune to hum. Here it is and don't say I didn't warn you:

And if you want the official lyric version instead, here it is:

PLEASE SOMEBODY TAKE THIS EARWORM OFF MY HANDS!

A week is a looooooooooooooong time. Sob.

EARWIGS
I know, I know -- I made you think I wasn't going to talk about those critters, didn't I? I lied. I used to despise earwigs. I've been pinched by them: I've had them crawl out of bed when I was crawling in; I've had them holding a parade in the basement; I've poured them out of a box along with my cereal that year they were really bad. I used to stomp on them, squish them, swat them -- whatever it took to demolish their skeevy little bodies. I'm not a violent person but try telling that to the adrenaline in my veins. But then last year I read that earwigs are good for the garden. They eat garden pests. (What? Aren't THEY THEMSELVES garden pests?) And I decided they can't help what they look like, or how they crawl so creepily, or how they like to hide inside things and jump out when the things are disturbed. I took a deep breath and determined they would get the "cup and card" treatment and be picked up and put outside, just like the spiders and ladybugs and moths are, at our house. That was fine. I remembered my vow this year, and have dutifully been picking up baby earwigs and setting them free outside. The only ones I was finding on the floor were, seriously, babies. Aw! Look at the little baby earwig! Not really cute babies, but still. Then came the day (it was inevitable, really) that I went to the cupboard to get a square of chocolate, picked up the bar and BOO!!! an earwig the size of a small lobster hurried out of the package and waved, once, awkwardly ... because he probably had his mouth full of MY chocolate ... Yeah. I tossed the rest of that bar, which represents a week of chocolate because I ration it out ... Since then I've been on High Earwig Alert. Those grown-up earwigs are frightening.

SUMMER FESTIVALS
I could probably write a half a dozen posts on this topic, but I promise it will be just this one paragraph and then you won't hear about it again. We have a LOT of stuff going on in our area in the summer. It starts on Victoria Day weekend in May and keeps going until the end of August. I'm an introvert who does not like crowds, loud music, running marathons, listening to bagpipe music, or golfing, among other things, so these events do not appeal to me. Nevertheless, I wouldn't mind them taking place except that while they are on it's hard to get around town. Streets are closed off at random times and in random places. And the noise of outdoor events carries down the river to our house, filtering in through our windows (it's summer, the windows need to be open!). I am so happy when September comes and the town becomes quiet again. I feel like I am holding my breath all season and let it out when fall comes. Thank you for indulging my hermit-y rant. You are fine people.

Now that the fluff has been cleaned out, my brain is all nice and tidy :)


And since I would NEVER put a picture of an earwig on my blog, this will have to do instead:

Wishing you a nice and tidy weekend, free of bugs of all kinds. Unless you are a bug-lover, in which case -- can I interest you in a shipment of earwigs??