I’ll try to stay up long enough to finish this musing. It’s been a long day. I spent a wonderful weekend with Doolies and just returned on a flight this morning. Check out my Disneyland photos.

On the home front, I framed and hung up a print I ordered from exploding dog. Yes, I’m easily amused (or from the content, easily depressed).

I put my vacuum cleaner away today. This may not sound significant, but it is. A week from last Wednesday, I found two bugs on the rug near my bedroom closet. I squished them with my shoes and returned to washing and packing (I was traveling somewhere—I travel so much, I sometimes forget where I go). I didn’t give the bugs much thought, thinking that my housekeeping was to blame—even though my apartment was clean thanks to Doolies’s visit a week before.

After I finished washing up, I found a few more bugs on the rug. The bugs were black specks with two translucent wings. I crunched these bugs and began scanning the rug for more. After rubbing out a few more, I looked for the first time at the rug near the wall along my bedroom window. Hundreds of bugs congregated on the rug and wall. This freaked me out. The bugs were crawling everywhere. I threw my clothes into bags and ran to complain to the building management. They identified the bugs as termites and indicated that they were having problems with them in the communal kitchen. They eventually (after much arm twisting and threatening fingers) promised to take care of the problem in my apartment by the next day.

When I returned from my trip, an exterminator had plugged the holes and placed poison in the walls. Maintenance had vacuumed my entire apartment and there was not a termite to be found. Over the next few days, the termites returned. After complaining yet again to management, they informed me that the termites would continue to appear for about a week as they died from the poison. They suggested I vacuum them up and offered me the use of the model apartment if I didn’t want to sleep in the same room as my crawly companions. I declined, and began my quest to eradicate all bugs. My weapon: my grandmother’s vacuum cleaner. I took pride in my hunts and upon entering my apartment after work, I went into my room, turned on the vacuum cleaner, and searched the rug for moving specks.

At first, there were many bugs to vacuum. I would return to my bedroom to hunt bugs every hour. After a few days, the supply of bugs waned, and I would consider a successful hunt one or two bugs. When I returned from visiting Doolies, there were no bugs. I decided that the war of attrition was over today and stored the vacuum cleaner. It was a sad day. This isn’t my first time fighting bugs with a vacuum cleaner. I used this idea in an incomplete story (ignore the poorly chosen and inconsistent tense and dialogue to nobody).

Speaking of writing, it would be nice for me to tell you that the reason you haven’t seen any new musings in awhile is that I’ve been terribly busy putting the final touches on Lost Monster, my new short story. That was the plan, if you remember. I was going to work on the story but not share my drafts at my books on writing’s suggestion. So far, this has not happened—neither the writing nor the sharing. My writing has been infrequent at best. The drawing board for my story has filled up, but I’ve made little progress on the written story. My moods have been swinging and I’ve been visiting Doolies. Neither is conducive to writing.

But I won’t waste time consternating about writing. I’ve agreed not to do that. My writing will come in time. While my synopsizing is much stronger, I still need to work out the kinks of transforming the synopsized story to the written word. What I need, in a word, is practice. I know I will get better at this step by doing it more. For now, I’ve written the first page of the story, and while the paragraphs are coming slowly, they are coming. I just have to continue drinking caffeine and writing.

I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Sleepiness has won. I had hoped to talk about a few other things, but they’ll have to wait until next time.