midget maggots

I have been in a state of barely suppressed anxiety over the last few days, in part because I am realizing just how poorly I am controlling my blood sugar of late. This, you realize, is a fairly significant problem, as a lack of resolution will eventually lead to blindness, loss of limbs, irrepairable nerve damage, and -- eventually -- death.

But, you know. Beh. This isn't what's really bothering me. What's really bothering me is that last week, the Guy found a family of wee dead bugs floating in the spaghetti he was boiling for dinner.

Of course his instinctive reaction was to share the excitement of his discovery with his spouse. "Yuhri. Check this out."

We are still at that stage of our relationship where a summons from one spouse will result in the appearance of our other spouse, a condition which I think my actual family skipped over entirely during my adolescence; I do not recall ever responding to a summons from either parent or sister, feeling it unnecessary: if they wanted me enough to call my name, they could certainly put forth the effort to come get me, which would add a personal touch to an otherwise unrewarding experience. The marriage, being fresh, is accompanied by its attendant luxuries, and being able to produce a spouse at will is one of those rare treats that will doubtless fade over time.

As I say, he called, I went, looked, and was revolted. Since it was the reaction that he plainly wanted, I was willing to oblige.

"Ew."

"So what should I do?" he asked.

There are times when I wonder about him.

Side note:

"I wonder about our customers sometimes," he said. "Jane Doe at one of our sites called me to fix this name problem they're having. I fixed it on one of their computers already. She wanted me to fix the other five computers, so I started a connection to their network. Then I had to leave her a message telling her, 'I'd love to fix the computers, but they seem to be turned off so I can't.' And just now she e-mailed me with, 'What should I do?'"

"That's weird," I told the Guy, while he went about dumping out the spaghetti-and-dead-bug soup. "Where did the bugs come from?"

"No spaghetti!" he wailed. "I made the sauce! What are we going to do without noodles?"

It was our unique household management that rescued dinner. We found an unopened box of spaghetti on one of the dining room chairs. This pleased the Guy, who went about the business of making more pasta, sans bug; meanwhile, I went on a hunt through the kitchen in an attempt to find the source of the infestation.

"Where did you find the spaghetti?"

"On the dining room chair," the Guy said with exaggerated patience. Honestly. Sometimes, woman.... "You were right there."

"Not that spaghetti. The buggy spaghetti."

"Oh. In the bottom of the pantry."

"Was it open or closed?"

The Guy considered. "Open."

There were little flecks at the bottom of the pantry, like red pepper flakes. "Something spilled," I said, and groped for the flashlight. The Guy was buzzing happily to himself over the pot of pasta.

The flashlight flicked on. There weren't 'some' red flecks. There were hundreds of red flecks. With little legs. Dead. Hundreds of dead leggy wee flecks. I inhaled sharply. This was a mistake, as the dead leggy wee flecks were, as it turned out, in variable states of dessication and very, very light.

And they weren't just in the pantry.

With the newly enhanced vision of familiarity, I turned the flashlight to our kitchen floor and found it covered with dozens of tiny red flecks, mostly dead. Those that were not dead were in an enthusiastic state of dying. There was a small Jonestown congregation in front of the stove. There was another, smaller Heaven's Gate meeting below the pantry. I found them on the refrigerator, on the stove shield, and on the corners of the stove itself. I found them on the counter edges.

I found them in the glass bin we use for flour, and was moved to mine the depths of a vocabulary enriched by a lifetime's fascination with the dictionary.

Since that night, it has been an ongoing battle between me and the bugs. I have rarely seen any of them alive; the only evidence they willingly give of their passage through my kitchen is the prominent display of their corpses, a sight that is both illuminating and oddly unsatisfying. The bottom half of the pantry was emptied first, and the graveyard meticulously wiped away. The next day, I opened the pantry to find a fresh harvest of teeny-tiny bodies, mocking me. I bought a swiffer and deployed it ruthlessly on all available surfaces. The next day, materialized from who-knows-what inner spiral of space age, transporter-enabled high tech ring of hell, said surfaces were once again showered with the dregs of a massive suicide pact.

Nature is out there, and she is taunting me. In fact, just as I was writing this, a little red bug -- alive this time -- plopped out of nowhere onto my arm and sat there complacently, leering at me.

...there. Mine vengeance is mighty and swift, and will be visited unto the least of your children's children, sayeth the Yuhri.

I realize this story may not give you particularly warm feelings about my housekeeping skills. I will acknowledge the sad truth of this with what shame I have left. It is difficult to maintain a clean apartment when one's husband originally modeled his character after bacon (under the theory that bacon tastes good, so it must be doing something right), and who once thought 'ring around the collar' referred to that stain growing fuzz in his bathtub. (And, let's be honest, I'm no neat freak either.) To tell the truth, I gave up on housekeeping after he first moved in; it was a short-lived battle, against overwhelming odds. Nowadays I simply dread going home and postpone it as long as possible.

On the other hand ... bugs.

Where does one draw the line?