Attention Deficit, Community Baths, and Kamikaze Beetles

I've never had problems with Attention Deficit. That is until we started our plans to move. Now I can't finish a single task without finding myself starting something else and then forgetting that I was already in the middle of something until I get distracted from the second task due to something else pulling at my attention, and that's when I realize that I never finished the first task. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the ledge and I need someone to talk me down!

Settling in? I think it's going to be a very long while. Still trying to find stuff. Still way behind with work. Still sleep deprived.

At least I have the corner jacuzzi to de-stress myself. As long as I can convince myself that bathing with two small children can still be de-stressing. The first time I wanted to try the jacuzzi, it was already pretty late and the kids still needed to be bathed before going to bed. I was going to bathe them (in their OWN bathroom) and then enjoy a private jetted soak in my own. Of course Daughter decided she wanted to try the jetted tub as well. By this time I was too tired to argue and too tired to wait until I got the kids to bed before I had my own soak. In the end, I agreed to share my bath. Since Son had been in a "hate baths" mode for several weeks and refused to sit in the tub (he stands at the side trying to climb out and screams the entire time you try to wash him), I figured it might help to hold him in my lap to wash him while in the tub with him. The good news is the bathtub is large enough for me AND my 18 month old son AND my almost-four-year-old daughter. The bad news is that the bathtub is large enough for me AND my 18 month old son AND my almost-four-year-old daughter. *sigh* Son seemed to do well bathing in my lap, and Daughter thought the jets were the coolest thing going. As she lounged in the water, eyes closed, head tilted back in full relaxation, she stated matter-of-factly, "This is my dream come true!" Now I can't get the kids out of my tub while their own bath tub sits unused, collecting dust.

On another random note, we have bugs in this part of the country. When I lived in northern Idaho, we didn't have bugs that you could see from a quarter mile away. We didn't have bugs there that you could mistake for birds. In the sweltering southern Midwest, we have bugs like this. I hate bugs. I really really really hate bugs. Flies are a minor annoyance; spiders give me the willies; those cricket-grasshopper cross breed looking things make me shudder; the Japanese Beetles are intolerable; but we now have all those and more. We now have an infestation on our front lawn of something that are apparently called "Green June Beetles." The June Bugs I've seen in the past are brown and not all that large. These suckers are shiny green, and they are massive. They sound like 747's as they zoom past your head and they are very poor navigators. This means that they smack into random things when they fly...like the side of the house, the cars, and your head. They are especially horrifying because you can't even catch the things in the beetle bags that do wonders with Japanese Beetles. Husband was kind enough to douse the front lawn in Sevin the other night. It seems to have helped. There are fewer of them, at least. But yesterday when I was at work, I opened the back door of the family-mobile to get out supplies for my anger management group, and a huge shiny green beetle rattled from some unsuspecting crevice at the top of the door frame and to the ground. Fortunately it was dead. Even more fortunate, none have gotten into the house. Yet.

I like living in the country. I like not being able to see your neighbors right outside your windows. I like having five acres to ourselves. I like having some woods at the back of our property. I don't like the bugs. I don't like the resounding chorus they sing after dark that hums annoying refrains of, "We're bugs! We're bugs!". I don't like sitting here in my walkout basement with the windows open on this beautiful summer day when it's only 80 degrees and seeing and hearing kamikaze beetles zoom past the windows and smack against the house. I don't like opening the storage room and being greeting by a nasty cricket-grasshopper hybrid with long twitching antennae appearing to be guarding HIS turf. I quickly closed the door to the storage room last night and bravely walked away and sought out my much bigger and much braver husband, who then was commissioned to go in after him and "Don't come out until you get him!" I know it's ridiculous. I know I'm a grown woman of 35 years. But don't try logic with me when I'm being bombed by homicidal beetles and stalked by creepy crickets.

Wake me up when it's January and all the bugs are frozen in icy cocoons in the midst of an ice storm!