A further dose of randomness...or... Still Life With Slugs

Having trouble of thinking of something worth writing about. Having trouble with a lot of things these days. My body is waiting for my brain to get the message that it just doesn't want to work anymore. The road trip was 2 weeks ago and I'm still worn out. Damn CFS.

Had discussions with 2 different friends and then on Pioneer Woman's blog about music of the 70's-80's. While I still listen to a lot of different things, including quite a bit of current stuff  (Halestorm rocks, BTW), I still like the music from those years. And because I spent a LOT of time listening to the radio & watching MTV, I can identify a shitload of songs by title and/or artist within the first few seconds. Even worse- I often know the words and often have to stop myself from caterwauling singing along in public. My former bookstore coworker, Scott, and I had quite the discussion about how kids today (now I feel old) don't know the thrill of browsing through record stores after waiting impatiently for an artist's new album to come out.

Switching gears for a minute- I seriously dislike insects, arachnids, and slithery reptiles. One of the things I hate about summer, besides the heat, is the amount of bugs that find their way into my house. I've been inundated with ants; the fleas that I made such effort to get rid of are popping up here & there (and being assasinated with extreme predjudice); and grossest of all are the kaza-flatching slugs. Every night I come home, walk into my bathroom, and there are slugs on my shower wall and in my bathtub. UGH. On the other hand, my tub hasn't been this clean in years, because I bleach the hell out of it daily now that those things are in it. Last night was the worst- I was pleased to only see one small slug clinging to the wall....until I looked down at the tub drain and saw a gordian knot of the digusting things around the trap.  ICK ICK ICK.

So I sounded the critter call (AIEEEEEEEEEEE! for those of you who were wondering), which was the cue for my cats to flee to my bed. After a few more shrieks, I remembered that I live alone and nobody was going to come get the icky things for me. Also, my neighbors might call the cops if I don't knock off the screaming and I don't think the code red responders would appreciate me asking them to get slugs out of my drain once they arrived. I debated the following options:

1. lay a trail of salt across the doorway, close the bathroom door and hope the disgusting things were gone in the morning (I was strongly leaning toward this one)

2. hermetically seal my arm/hand in cling film & tissue, pluck the nasty things out of the drain, and flush them down the toilet (nixed that one- hate the feel of squirming bags of snot in my hand)

3. pour an entire box of salt down the drain followed by boiling water, baking soda, & vinegar.

DING DING DING DING...WE HAVE A WINNER! Normally I wouldn't pour salt on them (time honored slug killing method that it is) because the resulting gooey mess grosses me out more than the live slugs, but this would go down the drain! I wouldn't have to touch anything! Yay! So I ran to the kitchen, put the kettle on, grabbed the salt and headed back to the bathroom. There may have been some evil chortling involved- don't judge me. Poured the salt into the drain and did the heebie-jeebie dance of grossed-outedness, and went back to wait 5 or so minutes for the kettle.

Took the boiling water into the bath, poured that down the now-mercifully-slug-free drain. Went back for the vinegar & baking soda, poured them in and let the foam settle, and then ran the hot tap for a few minutes. Yeah, it's overkill, but those things REALLY squick me out.

Huh. Guess I had more to say than I thought. Feel free to laugh at me now, if you haven't already done so. :-)