Moods & Links

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I have tomorrow off for Juneteenth and took Friday off as well for a long weekend. When I was thinking about this week, I wanted to go to the pool in the afternoon and get some sewing in and organize a little bit in the basement and generally just chill.

Well, WE ARE NOT CHILL over here this week (but I haven’t gotten any new bed bug bites after two nights on the air mattress, hooray!) and I’m going to be pulling everything out of every closet and letting it bake in the car and vacuuming every baseboard and laser-focusing on any speck that MIGHT be a bug and generally Cleaning Through It.

Which is all a long way of saying, here are some links for the weekend!

1. This is the sound and face I make when I think about BUGS crawling over my FACE and feeding on my FLESH in the NIGHT:

 

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2. Yep.

 

3. There is a band on TikTok that is doing covers of songs but changing the lyrics to be about discount crab legs. I’ve had “You bought crab legs! Cheap crustaceans!” in my head for days now.

@crabsmackband “Smells Like Steamed Crablegs” Live from the WhiteHart Cafe #smellsliketeenspirit #nirvana #livemusic ♬ original sound – CrabSmack

Even More Desperate Times

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That fresh bite on my shoulder yesterday? It turned into a cluster of three bites and itched like hell all day. I realized I have seen ONE mosquito all month. On a whim, I googled, “Mosquito bite vs. bed bug bite,” and reader: OH FUCK.

Bed bugs bite in a line or cluster (all of my bites) and itch and swell for even longer than mosquito bites (all of my bites) and can leave a dark mark after they finally stop being active (all of my bites). So I tore the bed apart yesterday afternoon into evening and OOOH FUUUUCK:

My brother is on his way over right now with commercial spray and all of my clothes and every piece of fabric that can’t get boiled are going to bake in my car in the sun all day (120 degrees for 30 minutes kills bed bugs and eggs. Learning!).

BUT OH MY GOD. I would be more eloquent about it all but I spent the night on an air mattress having a low-grade panic attack, so I am not at my best.

Good lord. So much nope.

Desperate Times

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When you keep getting bitten by Mystery Mosquitoes on your face and neck every night for a month, you break down and order something from Amazon:

Is this ridiculous? Maybe. But does it work? YES. I still got a bite on my shoulder at some point last night when I got up with Toby so I need to remember to cover up when I get out of bed  (and also find where these little fuckers are living, omg I am going crazy).

But I have slept under my head tent for two nights and I have NO new face bites!  Now I just need the 4 on my forehead to stop itching and get the 2 on my eyelids to fade and hope the 6 on my neck don’t leave too much of a mark, either…

Friday Links

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1. Poe should have written a horror story about mosquitos in a house where you can’t see them and don’t know where they’re coming from yet you keep getting fresh bites regardless of whether the house is closed up or not and every bite itches for at least a week and it slowly drives you mad…

2. Ahem. I’m pretty sure I have a mosquito bite allergy, but the name of said allergy enrages me almost as much as the mystery and the itching: skeeter syndrome.

3. Mysteries I can get behind: List of unexplained sounds.

How To Write Insults

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Hamilton Nolan’s newsletter this week is a masterclass in insults. Of course, it’s easy when the target is ICE “I’d rather destroy the lives of entire families than have the fellas make fun of me” agents, aka “twitchy, puffed up, goofy ass cops.”

Please, enjoy:

It can be difficult to laugh at riot cops. But we should all try. Because they’re so fucking ridiculous. Hey, nice huge helmet and body armor and fake ass gun and shield to oppose a bunch of skater kids waving around flags. You all are the most terrified group of human beings in the United States of America. You all are the types of people who open carry handguns to go to Buffalo Wild Wings. You all need to stop getting your news from idiots on idiot websites. You all need to read some fucking books and gain a minimal sense of perspective. You all need to embrace the crushing realization that for your whole lives you have been afraid and confused and have embraced a misguided set of macho enticements that have seduced you into believing that manhood depends on looking like some sort of cartoon action figure when in fact it is this look that reveals to the world the deep inadequacy that haunts you every day.

 

As he concludes, “Fuck off, losers.”

 

 

Wednesday Poem

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Well this is appropriate. Because I had to look it up: “dios del chisme,” the god of gossip.

 

poem where no one is deported
by José Olivarez

now i like to imagine la migra running
into the sock factory where my mom
& her friends worked. it was all women

who worked there. women who braided
each other’s hair during breaks.
women who wore rosaries, & never

had a hair out of place. women who were ready
for cameras or for God, who ended all their sentences
with si dios quiere. as in: the day before

the immigration raid when the rumor
of a raid was passed around like bread
& the women made plans, si dios quiere.

so when the immigration officers arrived
they found boxes of socks & all the women absent.
safe at home. those officers thought

no one was working. they were wrong.
the women would say it was god working.
& it was god, but the god

my mom taught us to fear
was vengeful. he might have wet his thumb
& wiped la migra out of this world like a smudge

on a mirror. this god was the god that woke me up
at 7am every day for school to let me know
there was food in the fridge for me & my brothers.

i never asked my mom where the food came from,
but she told me anyway: gracias a dios.
gracias a dios del chisme, who heard all la migra’s plans

& whispered them into the right ears
to keep our families safe.

Sewing Progress Report

Karen

What I’ve been sewing:

  • A pair of gym tights that’s too small (in the good fabric, too; I am so mad).
  • A pair of gym tights that’s too big (tried a new pattern but at least it wasn’t in the other cut of the good Liberty).

What I need to be sewing:

  • The quilt top, which has been arranged on the design wall in the basement since 2024 and which I refuse to move in its unfinished state, so I guess I’d better get sewing.
  • Anything using fabric from my stash??? (Can you tell I’ve been looking at everything in the house that would have to get moved?)

What I want to be sewing:

  • These exact white canvas trousers, because if I sew them I will look cool and collected and neither sweaty nor covered in mosquito bites because they’re somehow getting in and biting my arms and neck all night, and instead my life will take place in sidewalk cafes or maybe by the ocean and my trousers will remain blindingly white:

So Green!

Karen

Very specific fact: The most intense green in the world is fresh leaves on trees on a mountainside at the beginning of summer, before everything gets dry and dusty.

Moods Lately

Karen

I haven’t done a dedicated post for it yet but we started *really* looking for a new, non-HOA house last month: We met with a realtor, talked to a finance person, even applied for a loan yesterday. So yeah, the anxiety is a little ramped up lately. Contemplating a (voluntary) major life change will do that.

 

 


But at least I haven’t made it to Box 9 yet.

 

I probably just need to work out:

 

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