GROSS

I know you were thinking this post would be about poo given it's title, but it is not.

Anyone who knows me well knows how utterly petrified I am of large and fast moving bugs. My previous post about Cecelia's encounter with hordes of grasshoppers was ever the more apt because of my own tendency to completely freak when anything with more than 4 legs gets near me. Well, Brooklyn monsoon season has apparently drawn all the critters out of their dens, and a giant heaving waterbug made a b-line across the living room right for me today.

I have actually wondered what I would do in such a situation now that I have kids.  I am so terrified of especially waterbugs, which I can only attribute to a childhood in an old, rent controlled New York City apartment, that I can't even kill them.  Usually shrieking and arm flailing is all I can manage and I leave the killing and corpse disposal to whomever I am with.  If I am alone I am screwed.  I once slept on the living room sofa and let a large green katydid have my bedroom for the night because Sam was out of town.

But now am I not meant to be the defender of my children from all that is creepy and crawly? What would I do in such a situation?  The answer is this; not complete heroism since I still managed to avoid any mortal combat (thank you Sam) but I didn't run screaming from the room either. In that moment my brain managed a rather odd compromise between fight and flight:

Note that Lula is actually hooked up to the feeding pump, and she slept through the whole palava so I'm going to call this a success in parenting. Yes, I am kneeling on the armrest of the sofa.