June 28, 2004 ~ Ruining the Mood

Monday.

At around 11:30 last night, I was standing on my front porch completely naked, furiously waving a tissue over the bushes.

Ten minutes before, laying in bed, I had been tracing kisses down Morgan's neck as he was running his hand up my--

"AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!" Morgan screamed, flinching back and tearing at the sheets in panic.

My heart rate skyrocketed. "What?! What? What?!?!"

"There's SOMETHING in the bed!!"

"What??"

"Turn on the bright light!!"

I slid off the bed as Morgan still tore at the covers. " And it's trying to crawl up my ass!!"

Light flooded the room, and I squinted. "It's a beetle," I said, trying to keep the laughter out of my voice.

He nodded and started to smile. "An ass beetle." He paused. "Maybe it's a dung beetle. Heh."

I laughed and shook my head. "You goof."

Morgan leaned over. "He's kinda neat looking. He has a really shiny head."

"Yeah, and look at the way he walks." We both leaned over the beetle. "Way to ruin the mood, little guy," I said. But I recognized him. "That's the same beetle that landed on my head while I was talking to [Grouse] last night."

Morgan looked at me with scorn. "And you didn't put him out then?"

"Well, I set him down in the window sill so I could open the screen, but he flew away..."

"So you left him to roam free in the house, just looking for a butt to invade?"

I giggled. "Morgan, I was on the phone, and he could fly and... well..."

"Well, don't you think you should put him out now?"

"Sure. Okay. Hang on."

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for something to put him in."

"Just wrap him in a tissue."

"But he'd cling to--"

"Melissa. There's a BEETLE in our BED. Hurry up!"

"Okay, okay. Fine." I carefully wrapped the beetle in a tissue.

And that's why I found myself standing stark naked on the front porch at 11:30 at night, waving over the front bushes a tissue to which a beetle was tenaciously clinging. Not wanting to further expose the residents of my street to their insane naked tissue-waving neighbor, I carefully picked the beetle off of the tissue, set him in a bush, and ran back inside.

Back in the bed, just as I was drifting off to sleep, Morgan made me fall to giggling again as he whispered in my ear, "Don't let the bed-bugs bite."

This has been a collaboration for WordGoddess. "Ten" (minutes in my life).

Footnotes:

odds & ends: I had to correct my spelling in this entry from "Beatle" to "beetle" more than once. I'm sure that says something, but I'm not sure what...
weather: Rain. Lots of rain interspersed with sun.
bookmarked: Re-read some of Taking Charge of your Fertility. Also read The Drawing of the Three, of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It was really, really good.
writing focus: A lot of letters and personal journal entries lately. Sorry for my absence.
mail bag: A postcard from Kristin in Yellowstone, where she's doing field work. Neat!
hours hiked this year: 95
hours volunteered this year: 204
cooking: Morgan made a beans, greens, and sweet potato dish the other night that was fantastic, and last night was fresh spring pasta.
historical journal: "Today is the sixty-ninth anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, the date from which the world changed. At the time no one realized what it meant, though I often think of that prize-winning spoof headline in the New York Daily News in 1920: 'Archduke found alive, World War a Mistake.'" ~ Alan Clark in his diary, June 28, 1983.

online journals:

"I'm amazed that I have another heartbeat in my body. As we left the hospital we kept grinning at each other while holding hands. Later I found out that my husband had seen the heart before I had. 'I was going to cry, but I didn't think it was a manly thing to do." I'm so in love with my husband right now. What does it say about us that we turned to each other and cried out, 'It's Alive,' ala Dr. Frankenstein? We're made for each other." ~ Lana in this entry.

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