Scorpions, you have crossed the line

Guess what I found in a box of clothes in the baby's room yesterday. A $50 bill! No, kidding. It's not that kind of house. Any guesses what I actually found, about three feet away from the baby's crib? Yeah. A scorpion.

For new readers or hopelessly optimistic longtime readers, I should clarify that, unfortunately, I am not referring here to the glamrock band who rocked us all like a hurricane with their 1984 album Love at First Sting. As terrible as that would be, I'm talking about the real, pincer- and stinger-having, hiding-in-shoes, getting-wrapped-up-in-sheets-at-night arachnids.


I mentioned here that I strongly prefer that my bedroom be a scorpion-free zone. I have been, you might say, "distressed" about seeing scorpions in my bathroom and bedroom. But when I see them in my baby's room, right by her crib, it's time to get medieval on some scorpion a**. The exterminators are coming next week, and I want them to be tearing down walls and ripping up foundation and just dumping chemicals everywhere.

Meanwhile, my husband and I have become a sort of scorpion factoid clearing house, with coworkers and friends and blog readers regaling us with their favorite scorpion trivia and offering tales of being stung. Every time I learn something new about these things it gets worse. For example, my husband was telling his assistant that one of the ones we saw wasn't all that big, which was refreshing. The assistant pointed out that that was most likely a baby, which means they're hatching in our house.

Also, well-meaning people keep trying to reassure me by telling me things that only serve to horrify me further. One popular tidbit is that scorpion stings are no worse than wasp stings. I AM TERRIFIED OF WASPS, so this information is not helpful. My mom told me that scorpions fluoresce under blacklight, so I should get one to try to find them at night. Umm...does the thought of turning off all the lights in my house and using a blacklight to illuminate a bunch of GLOWING SCORPIONS IN MY HOUSE not sound just a little too mind-bogglingly creepy to think about?! And, as I type this, I am on the phone with my dad who is telling me the story about how my grandfather (who lives a few miles from here) got one wrapped up in his pajamas while he slept. But, my dad assured me, he only got stung a few times and it really wasn't any worse than a wasp sting. Whew!

On the bright side, I have discovered an incredibly effective way to get your mother to insist on paying for the best pest control service in town to come to the house and give you their Platinum Package. When going out to dinner with your husband and leaving the kids with her, just say this, as I did last night:

"I left clean diapers and jammies in the bathroom for after bath. The baby has already eaten but DB still needs dinner. Hmm...am I forgetting anything? Oh, yeah, be sure to check the baby's crib for scorpions before you put her in. Thanks! We'll be back in a couple hours."

I promise that one day I will resume regular content and stop writing about scorpions. Although that may require setting up a separate Scorpions in My House blog since I cannot seem to stop talking about it.

Greetings from the House 'O Scorpions

So guess what was on the wall by my bed last night? A scorpion. The third one I've seen in the house in the past couple of weeks. In my bedroom. Right by my bed (where I SLEEP, that I strongly prefer to be a scorpion-free zone). Had I turned out the lights just a few moments earlier, I would not have seen it scurrying up the wall, where it would have undoubtedly gone to the ceiling and then promptly fallen off when it was right over my bed (you laugh, but this actually happened to my uncle!)

My husband suggested that we should ask around to see if our neighbors are having scorpion issues as well. What, I ask, could possibly be gained from this? What if they say no? When my nextdoor neighbor says, "Gee, no, I've never seen a scorpion in my house!" is when things start feeling all Amityville Horror around here.

As I was lying in bed awake last night, in between fits of frantically brushing myself off every time the sheet or my pajamas brushed against me, I spent some time calculating the odds that one would actually see a scorpion if it were in the house. My house is 1,900 sq. ft. The scorpions are a few inches long. According to my calculations, the odds of being in the right place at the right time to actually see one of these things is about one in a zillion. And since I've seen TWO in my house in the past THREE days, this means that our home is teeming with them.

I see even the most common household objects differently now that I know that I'm living in some sort of scorpion Four Seasons. Some examples:




One theory here is that these things were somehow planted by the local exterminator company. Because, let me tell you, I am not what the call a "price-sensitive" customer right now. As soon as I hit Publish I am going to the first exterminator whose contact info I can find and tell them to just get in their truck and start driving and I'll give them all the details while they're on the road. (Very typical me that I'd blog about before actually doing something about it).

Another theory is that this is God's plan to change the way I feel about roaches. Because, let me tell you, they seem like the most darling little creatures right now, perhaps something one even might want as a household pet. When we first moved in I hoped we wouldn't have a roach problem like many people around here do. Now the possibility of seeing Brother Roach on my wall seems almost charming. They don't have stingers. They don't have pincers. I'll take roaches over scorpions any day.

Women In Art

This is a beautiful, kind of hypnotic video of women in art throughout the ages. Really worth watching (via Casting Out Into the Deep).

Walking neighborhoods

Sci-fi author Orson Scott Card has some great ideas about building "walking neighborhoods" (via Dom Bettinelli). I think that this concept could be absolutely huge in terms of improving the daily happiness of women who stay at home. As I've said a thousand times, it's totally unnatural and mentally wearying for moms and their kids to be cooped up in an isolated house all the time -- it's hard on the moms and their children. I think these sorts of neighborhoods would also have a lower turnover rate, giving people the opportunity to really know their neighbors and not feel like they're surrounded by strangers all the time.

One thing I really like about this article is that Card offers specific, concrete suggestions for how to make this a reality. He notes that the idea would not work without a neighborhood store (I agree), and has some interesting thoughts on how that could work economically in the era of the Super Wal Mart:

Mixed-use neighborhoods need grocery stores or they will not work.

The trouble is, with cars ruling our lives, the giant supergroceries make us drive farther and farther because they offer a better selection at a competitive price. Nobody wants to return to the tiny corner grocery.

We don't have to. We already have all the pieces in place for a new retail model that will affect, not just grocery stores, but most retail outlets.

Computers make it possible.

At the moment, grocery stores are doing almost nothing with the data they collect using their frequent shopper cards. They know which stores we shop at and what we buy. But they still don't use that information to tailor their grocery stores to fit the neighborhood and the shoppers.

Idiotically, they still make decisions about what to stock based on the big numbers, as if they were still doing their figures on paper with quill pens. They could develop just-enough stocking practices that would allow small neighborhood stores to stock only what they actually sell to regular customers, plus a little more of the most popular items for walk-in trade.

They could make special-ordering quick and easy, using the internet, so that customers can get extra quantities for special occasions. The profitable corner grocery is easily within our reach.

Whether or not these particular suggestions are perfect, I think he's really onto something here. If a walking neighborhood opened in my area I'd start packing my boxes to move in tomorrow.

How I doubled my pregnancy wardrobe in less than $30

I'm starting a category called My Favorite Stuff where I show how materialistic I am by raving about how much I just adore certain possessions. I'll start with something I only recently purchased which has become one of my favorite things ever: the Bella Band.

Now, it took me a while to get over the facts that a) I paid $26 for a piece of spandex, and b) I did not invent said $26 piece of spandex (in which case I'd be writing this blog post from my yacht), but I quickly got over these concerns when I saw how useful the Bella Band was.

I'm about 22 weeks pregnant and am still wearing most of my pre-pregnancy stuff thanks to this handy little thing. As you can see from this picture from their website, you wear it around your tummy to hold unbuttoned pre-pregnancy pants up and/or to add coverage for pre-pregnancy shirts that have gotten too short, and it just looks like you have a tank top on underneath your shirt.

I can't believe I got through two pregnancies without one of these things. They have them in some department stores and Mom4Life also sells them (NOT a paid ad, I've just had good experiences shopping there and appreciate that it's run by a fellow stay-at-home mom).

Fast food ads vs. reality

Here is a great collection of side-by-side pictures of fast food advertisements vs. what it actually looks like when you get it home. If you just add the nutritional info under each photo I think it'd be enough to inspire me to never indulge in some McDonald's french fries again. (via Bettnet.com)

Two tips for an easy blood test

My fear of needles is legendary, so when I was diagnosed with a blood clotting disorder last year that requires careful management during pregnancy, one of the most difficult things for me to handle was the frequent blood tests.

Now that I'm expecting again, I'm back to being a regular at my hematologist's office. After about a zillion trips to the lab for bloodwork, I've discovered two key tips that make all the difference in the world -- in fact, it no longer really bothers me to have my blood taken.

The two key things to do are:

• Drink lots of water before you go. Since blood largely consists of water, it makes a huge difference to drink plenty of fluids before you have a blood test. It makes the vein easier to find and it seems like the blood flows a little better as well.
  
  
• Ask for a butterfly needle. This is a big one. Butterfly needles are smaller than regular needles and, in my experience, far less painful. A nurse told me recently that the only reason most places don't use them standard is because they're not cost effective -- but they almost always have them available and don't mind if patients request that they're used.
  

Hope that helps any fellow needle-phobics out there!