East Coast Living

I had thought about breaking this up into 3 different parts, but that is going to take entirely to much effort and I have shit to do. Read some now, and come back later and read the rest if you can't stand to read it all in one go. (lazy ass)


I love living here on the east coast. Really I do. I've lived further inland and have visited as far west and north as Montana - and it was beautiful, but I like living here. Lots of trees, lots of green shit all over the ground (the animals have upset stomachs) and I can grow an ass load of flowers and shit if I can ever manage to keep the friggin Japanese Beetles from killing every damn thing (notice how I blame them).

There are a few disadvantages to living over here:

1 - Inbreeding. Laugh if you must, but it's a friggin reality. You know the story of somebody's cousin gettin' hitched to one of his cousins? Yeah well, I have a distant cousin that did that. I'm not kidding. They are second cousins and they have offspring. No shit. They were fully aware when they tied the knot. Apparently, it didn't matter. Their kids have 6 toes (okay, NOW I'm joking - or maybe not - I've never met their kids or seen their feet - of course, If I had seen their feet with out actually meeting them that would imply that they are detachable or they've been severed and either thought is just a little to "out there" for further contemplation)

2 - The BUGS. Oh My God. I have wolf spiders around my house that are as big as my palm. I'm not kidding or exaggerating. It's plain nasty.

We also have Japanese Hornets, Yellow Jackets, Bumble Bees, Carpenter Bees, Honey Bees, Wasps, stinging flies, biting flies, horseflies, gnats, mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, a BILLION species of moth, Black Widow spiders, Brown Recluse Spiders (I just found out the other day from one of my clients that there have been a rash of those biting people here lately), red backed spiders, regular black spiders, garden spiders, Japanese Beetles, cicadas, Katiedids, June Bugs, Beetles, cockroaches, termites, grasshoppers, crickets, camel crickets and any other kind of insect that "The Big Cheese" decided he wanted to torture me with. (Thanks for that God - 'preciate it).

I live in a cloud of DEET, go through endless cans of bug spray and I'm starting to seriously consider having an affair with "Bubba" (cause that is one guy the can chew some Hubby Bubba - even if he only has one tooth) the pest control guy to cut down on the monthly costs of treatment. Hey, it's all about home economics and tightening the budget belt. This is just one of ways they don't teach you in school or talk about in expose magazine articles. I mean, I've already seen his crack - you'd think he was a damn plumber with the way he shows it off or something, and you really know a lot about a guy after you've seen his crack.

3 - Storms. I hate storms. I'm scared of Thunderstorms. (insert wussy jokes here) I hate it when the storms roll in with low hanging clouds and the thunder shakes the house. I'm constantly walking to all the windows in the house - back and forth, back and forth, to look out of the windows. My x-bastard said I looked like a caged puppy - to wit I responded that I wouldn't be waggin' my ass in his direction anytime soon.

Hurricanes and all Tropical Storms suck big donkey dicks. They throw out tornados for fun and that just doesn't endear them to me. I want to keep my shit thank you. I won't appreciate having to crawl out from underneath the ruins of my homestead and walking a mile down the road with the baby on my hip to pick up old bank statements and deny that any of the other rubbish is mine so I don't have to pay to have it removed.

Ernesto the Pesto hit here this past friday. It wasn't to bad. I was expecting worse to be honest. It turned east before we got the full wallop and so we were spared the horribleness of the eye of the storm.

I worked all day and left at exactly 5pm. I was worried about some of the low spots flooding out on the roads for me to get home, so I drove as fast as was safely possible and beat feet to the house. I stopped by the little country store that is 2 1/2 miles away from my house and picked up a gallon of milk and a couple packs of cigs and went home. No worries.

I walked in the house and there was no power, no phones, no nothing. DAMN.

You may remember that Charles has been out of town in NC. We were also still expecting the worst of the storms in a couple of hours. So there I was, in the house with Lauren (who is also scared of storms) and with super baby, a dog, three cats, and I'm sure an endless variety of creepy-crawlys that had managed to squirm, wriggle and bore their way into my sactuary to get out of the rain. Did I mention it was starting to get dark? Yeah, the fun factor went right off the scale.

Like I said, it wasn't to bad. We got a lot of rain - which we needed and that was about it...except there were no lights and no phones. Super kid had mercy on me and went to sleep for the night at 7pm - an unheard of phenomenon. Lauren and I made a great big pallet on the living room floor and I read her some of The Hobbit until the lighting was bad enough I had to stop before my eyes exploded.

We made shadow puppets in the flickering candle light and watched the storm whip the trees around a bit.

The lights came on about 9ish and Lauren jumped up and down and yelled "MOVIE!" - so that was the end of the quality mother-daughter time.

The phones didn't come back on until about 6 or so Sunday night. Did I mention I have dial up? Did I mention that I read blogs EVERY DAY???? I was about to DIE. Hello, my name is Nikki, and I'm addicted to the internet.

I was FORCED - do you hear me? - FORCED to spend quality time with my family. Now they think I love them or something.