Arizona's About to Piss Me OFF

Still being lazy. This time, I have a good excuse: I'm so tired I could drop and sleep for YEARS - except I can't. The following letter that I sent with a photo to family and friends a minute ago will explain.

To: ----various friends & fam back home & around the States----

I meant to send this when we got it. This is the pic us Conway brothers & sisters took when we were all together for Christmas /New Years 2005.


I have to tell you guys: I really do like it here. Really. Mike doesn't like it as much, but that's cause it's still summer.

Anyway - I have survived the heat (112 the highest so far & headed to be 121 before it's over). I have survived the 14-mile commute. That doesn't sound like much to some of you, but my Anchorage folk know that that's a lo--oong ass drive unless you're traveling with luggage.

I have survived going to a mall so huge that they had a parking lot bigger than all of South Anchorage - we used valet parking. Now, you know a parking lot is too damned big if they have to have valet parking... And, yes, I paid the five bucks so that Mike wouldn't have to walk so far.

Folks, I have even survived a run-in with a spider that looked like it wanted to box me like Ali. It would have won, so I just clocked its nasty self with a Payless shoe.

So, I can call myself a trouper, a surviver, a chick who can handle some stress and changes in life.


But.


Last night, I saw my first ever scorpion. And I didn't just see it from across the room. I damn near slowed danced with it. Nasty little thang was clinging to the side of the wall when I took my stupid Alaskan we-only-have-beetles behind into the dark walk-in closet to grab my nightgown off the hook. It was just waiting, like it hoped I hadn't seen it. I thought it was a splinter until my gown brushed it and made it twitch.

Thank God my niece was there in the house. Gabby cupped it, tossed some bleach in on it and put it outside in the heat where it has since disentegrated (I hope). And Gabby also coaxed me down out of the middle of the kitchen table (holding my nightgown up around me like some chick off of "Little House On the Praire." She calmed me down by swearing that it's RARE to see 2 scorpions in the same night. Apparently, they don't get along with each other.


All righty then.


I came down off the table, my pulse slowed to a mild gallop, and I quit twitching like a crack fiend.


Until we saw the second one.


Aw, shit, people. We had the Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston duo if scorpions.


Thank God that Mike was in the hospital (that's another story & she's out now), Chubby and Tasha were at the hospital visiting - with cell phones turned OFF... Joe was in Nevada on business. Wow. Just me and Gabby and the Scorpion King and Queen.


I called Joe on his cell and asked him to call his pest control guy. This fool LAUGHS at me. "Trudy, baby, I don't carry those kinds of numbers around with me. Plus, they're closed at night." (Closed at NIGHT??? At night. Closed... Okay - hold that thought 'cause I'm gonna get back to it in a minute.)


Now, Joe's wife & kids are in Mexico, so I could've gone on over to his house. But that's a drive in the dark, in my pajamas - which are hiked all up around my butt. Besides, leaving our house means I have to come down off the table again.



Somehow, we make it through the night (house lit up like Uncle Hotshot on some MD 20/20). In the morning, Gabby's gone to work already. I'm not trying to get in a shower where Scorpio and his pals might want to run my ass out into the street naked and wet. The solution: Ho-bath. Or "Hooker Wash-Off," if you want to be nicer. (Yep, you heard me & don't play like you don't know.) And pull out whatever clothes I can that aren't DEEP off in the closet. Took my toothbrush, hairbrush & deodorant to the office with me & got there so early, I got to park in some shade.


Joe had called and left numbers with somebody at the office & they had a pest guy meet me at work. He's coming tomorrow. (Don't ask me about tonight unless you want lessons on how to sleep while propped up on a dining table.)


Now, back to that whole deal about the pest control place being CLOSED AT NIGHT.


Jesse (the nice pest control rep) signs me up for a regular service. We chit-chat about my little run-in with the stinging little thugs of the insect world - or whatever sect of creatures scorpions belong to. Jesse tells me that they tend to REALLY come out when it gets hot. (What the hell does he call the 112-degree weather we've been having the past couple of weeks???) I'm telling Jesse what a rough night I had & tell him that it's too bad he can't get someone out to the house today so they could be there while I take a nap. Jesse says...

(.... Hang on. Wait for it...)

"Oh, go on home and take a nap if you want. The scorps" (yeah, he calls them that) "won't bother you now. They're nocturnal."


nocturnal adj 1: (biology) belonging to or active during the night; "nocturnal animals are active at night"; "nocturnal plants have flowers that open at night and close by day" [ant: diurnal] 2: of or relating to or occurring in the night; "nocturnal darkness" 3: of or during or relating to the night; "a nocturnal journey"; "nocturnal stillness"; "nocturnal predators" Source: WordNet (r) 1.7


"Nocturnal predators." Don't nobody here need to whip out Websters for "predators."


Was that mess supposed to make me feel better? "They're nocturnal." Like I don't know big words (or at least how to use a dictionary)...


Right now it's about 7:40pm. Getting a little dusky outside. I'm tired as hell, but I ain't going to be trying to cop no deep doze tonight. Them little "nocturnal" bastards are just waiting. I know it.


So. Y'all take a good look at me in that picture I attached. I'll probably look 40 years older the next time you see me.