BUGZZZZZ

The bug season has begun in Villa Verde (I don't think it ever really stops, but it's begun for us. :)) We had our first major encounter with a bug the other night when it flew into the house. I'm pretty sure I posted a picture last year of what I fondly refer to as the 'pincer bug' - it's about five inches long with wings and nasty fang/pincers that move all over on its face. Well, one flew in and scarred everyone for life- seriously, it can be pretty traumatizing! Luckily, I dealt with having these kind of bugs in our house all the time so I was able to quite calmly capture the bug and release it back into the wild.... it was a pretty special moment for me; I feel I've grown so much :)

Back in the house, everyone had calmed down pretty well and I went to the bathroom... and found a spider just chillin on the inside of the bowl- not in the water, just crawling around on the porcelain... Luckily I had my handy-dandy bucket of water next to the toilet to flush him down. Still, I've been very careful in that area of life for the last couple days :)

I've also continued to have quite the problem with some kind of bug in my bed. I'm pretty sure it's not mosquito bites that I'm getting by the hundreds - although I'm getting quite a few of those too. I've decided there are either spiders, fleas, or bedbugs in my sheets that like to visit in the middle of the night. I've decided there's not much I can do about getting rid of the bugs (I've sprayed Raid, cleaned the sheets, aired things out... not much helps for long) so I've resigned myself to another year of unsightly legs but ... I just wish I could make them slightly more sightly :) The bites are SO ITCHY I just can't think about anything else and that is annoying. I have several kinds of lotion and itch sticks to help me out, as well as Benedryl and NOTHING helps. SO, I decided to look online for homemade remedies. Some suggestions?:

~toothpaste (tried this, it doesn't really help the itching, but it does make me not want to scratch cuz then I get blue minty paste all over my hands)

~deodorant (haven't tried yet, deodorant is on my 'ration' list so I'm not sold on wasting it just yet...)

~small vacuum pump to remove the venom (not available in Gracias haha)

~wet tobacco kept in place with a bandaid (not a huge tobacco hoarder, plus i would completely exhaust our bandaid supply in about two days)

~baking soda/water paste (this is the one I've been using for the last couple nights and seems to work pretty well, although Tyler and Maggie told me I looked like I had leprosy tonight :))

So, we'll see. If anyone has other ideas... send them my way :)

Tonight, we also found what we think is a chinche... an icky bug that makes a very annoying, loud noise when you capture it in a jar.... which I did :) We're going to bring it to the neighbors tomorrow to find out for sure if it's the bug they talk about. Catelin read up on it, so we're slowly becoming bug experts here in the mountains. :)

Although the bug situation is MUCH better than last year, it's still quite the boredom killer :) As soon as a bug comes in the house, everyone's adrenaline is up for the rest of the night :) Take that coffee! :)




PS. I just ran to the kitchen to cook up another baking soda concoction and when I poured the baking soda into the water, a dead spider fell out of the box. OH the irony!