Right before I got pregnant, we decided we wanted to own a home. We tentatively put bids on a couple of San Francisco fixer uppers. The first one was a unit in an empty six-unit building, and we offered asking price.

We waited anxiously while the owner ignored us for a week, and then he countered $30,000 above asking. We asked our agent, “Were there other offers?” He said no. We asked our agent, “Where does this guy live?” And then we drove over and punched him in the teeth.

Next, we fell hard for the top floor of a Victorian with hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings, window seats, and wish-granting fairies who lived in the dumbwaiter. It was a tenancy in common, which means you share a mortgage with total strangers. I kid you not. In many cases, you may not even meet the people with whom you will share the house and a mortgage before you put in a bid.

If your bid is approved, you take out life insurance on each other in case something happens to one of you. Later, they hire someone to kill you so they can afford to own the whole building. Anyway, we wrote a heartfelt letter about raising our children there, bid a ludicrous amount over asking, and came in seventh out of thirteen bidders. I still feel bewildered.

It was around this time that we happened across a perfect little cabin in the wine country, and decided we could afford the modest mortgage and still pay rent on our apartment in the city. We bought a vacaaaation home. I say this with a long cigarette holder perched between my fingers as I bathe in organic cream.

The nearby town used to be a resort destination in the 1920s and ’30s, and in some ways, it still has that feel — like a big summer camp for grown ups, except most people living there are locals now. And the locals, they make life a lot more fun.

Once, on a morning walk with Hank, we noticed one of our neighbors had stuck a decaying boar’s head on a post in the driveway, Lord of the Flies style. Presumably to warn the other boars? Perhaps so they can dance around it at night chanting? I’ve been meaning to ask. Maybe I’ll take some muffins over.

Recently, we saw these excellent flyers posted everywhere:

In case you can’t make that out, it goes a little something like this:

$REWARD$
For information
Leading to the
Beatdown of
whoever tryed to
steal my G.M.C. Truck
in between 11:00 PM 5-9
And 7:30 AM 5-10-08
Call (number painstakingly obscured in Photoshop)
$REWARD$
I will find you!

Of course, this happened last month, not seven days from now, but shut up. You knew what he meant.

I’ve decided Information Leading to a Beatdown is the highest classification of information. The essence of news you can use: News you can use to assault someone.

In short, we finally found a place to call home. And if you touch our car, you know what to expect.

When we last left Mighty Girl, she was breathing into a paper bag and assuming yoga poses while Melissa gave her instructions on killing the hungry bugs in her hair. What will happen next?

Next we spent hours and hours and hours and hours washing with chemicals, combing with olive oil, blow drying with Cetaphil, rinsing with tea-tree oil, emptying our closets, washing and dry cleaning every fabric item we’ve ever owned, bagging everything else, vacuuming the entire house a hundred times, and smudging.

Bryan wouldn’t let me vacuum Hank’s head because he was all, “psychological trauma, blah, blah, blah,” but Bryan and the baby fortunately were not afflicted. After countless nights combing, and rocking in fetal position, we appeared to be bug free. Free of bugs at last!

It was about this time we decided to head up to the cabin — the blessed, lice-free cabin. We packed our lice-free clothes, invited our lice-free pals, and piled in the lice-free car.

We arrived to find the cabin infested with giant flying ants.

Flying ants chaining down from the ceiling! Flying ants, congregating on the moisturizer bottle! Flying ants playing poker and smoking tiny cigars!

I hung my lice-free head in our ant-infested living room. And after that I don’t remember anything, because I was drunk.

OK, I made that up. It took at least twenty minutes for the vodka to take effect, and in that time, Bryan suggested we crawl up in the attic to see if the ants were nesting up there or something. I nodded, considered that calmly, and then responded.

“Icannothandlethis! Icannotdealwithanymorefuckingbugsinmyhair,ormybed,orcrunchingundermyfeet! Iamcompletelylosingmyshit! I! Am! Losing! My! Shit!

…I will be out on the deck.”

So Bryan husbanded up and drove to the hardware store to explain our situation:

-We have a bunch of flying ants in the living room.

The counter guy nodded.

-Do you have anything to kill them?
-Yep. It’s that time of year.
-What the hell are they?
-Flying ants.

Bryan nodded.

Bryan returned home to kill all the crawlie things with hippie, don’t-kill-the-baby spray. It was made of organic lavender and vegan DEET. I downed a pitcher of greyhounds on the deck and apologized repeatedly to our eerily understanding guests. In addition to being extremely polite people, Bryan slipped some Valium in their drinks. Just to take the edge off.

Thanks to Bryan’s efforts, we ended up having a pretty relaxing weekend overall. And then, a few hours after our guests left, Bryan came in from the deck holding a plastic deli container.

Inside the container was a scorpion he’d found on the deck, where the baby had been crawling around all weekend. If you’ve never seen one in real life, they look kind of like this:

photo source

I’ll tell you what, friends. It’s becoming clear that my karma is aaaaaall out of whack. I clearly need to spend the next month meditating on wrongs I may have committed in past lives. It’s possible I offed some prophets or something.

Anyway, when we got home, we found our apartment had been overtaken by locusts and frogs. Weird, right? I guess it’s that time of year. Fortunately, I hear tea-tree oil is a natural repellent.

I’ll let you know how it goes.