Had a chance to talk to my neighbor across the street. It was the usual small talk about gardening, travel, kids, and food. He then explained they have a bat in the basement (instead of the belfry). They put on the hoodies and gloves to try to coax it out with no luck. The thought now is it found its way in, it can find its way out. As a side note, they converted their basement into a wine cellar. Getting a bottle is now an adventure.
I know bats are beneficial, I just don’t want them as roommates. What is your nope?
That video is so funny.
I do not like flies, but they like me. One of our older dogs takes forever to come inside, so flies fly in. Then they dive bomb me when I am in in bed reading the kindle; they are attracted to the only light source. And my head. Oooh (cringe) they give me the heebie jeebies.
its a bat…..bats are good
they eat all fhe bugs you hate
Did I ever tell you all about the time we were at a clothing-optional resort, I won’t say where? Better Half, despite his considerable assets and that he should be nude all the time, is very prudish. He went off to a nearby gym he had heard about and then do some shopping. NOW WAS MY CHANCE.
I stripped off and did a passable dive into the pool and was doing some laps when I noticed that I had some fellow poolmates. They weren’t naked men, though, they were struggling insects lured into the water to drink, I guess. I hopped out and gathered some leaves and dove back in to create little lifeboats for them.
While I was doing this Better Half returned to the grounds because he had forgotten his wallet. We came in from a different time zone so we were up very early.
“Mattie, what is wrong with you?”
“Oh this? The pool is chilly so this is shrinkage.”
“NO, you idiot, why don’t you have any clothes on and…I’m sure you’ll tell me about this later.”
no….you never tole me bout that one
us meeting one day could be fatal
In what sense? My caretaking of some of the smallest creatures on God’s green earth would drive you to homicidal madness?
I came by my St. Francis of Assisi “bless the beasts and the children” temperament gradually. I was a freshman in college and a caterpillar fell onto my walking companion’s head. “Jesus. Here. I’ll get it.” “No, Mattie, leave it where it is and we’ll just walk down over there and I’ll release it.” “You don’t want me to just kill it?” “No. Because that caterpillar is going to become a beautiful butterfly, and if that butterfly lands on your head it brings tremendous luck.” “I thought you told me you were an Irish Catholic from New Jersey, not some kind of incarnation of a Tibetan monk or something.”
not sure why i added that last part tbh
tho..i do suspect you would enable my least normal behaviour…
being socially adjusted is difficult for me…and i dont need a lot of encouragement to slip free of that chain
My daughter did her undergrad and grad school research on bats. She loves them and still does bat work whenever she gets the chance. But, she’d be the first person to tell you that having bats in your home is not good. They will often use basements and attics as maternity wards. So you rarely have a bat. And bat guano can cause a respiratory infection called histoplasmosis. She’s had it and it’s not fun. Your neighbor needs to call an animal removal contractor.
My personal nope, as I mentioned in a previous NOT is snakes. I know they’re beneficial and I don’t freak out about them but I’d just rather not.
Maggots. Ugh, the worst.
I have no problem with earthworms, centipedes and caterpillars. But seeing a swarm of maggots just gives me the creeps.
Maggots are so gross. Disgusting story time! (Skip the rest of this if a maggot story is going to give you nightmares.) When I was working as a vet tech, one of the worst things I saw was a cat with extreme matting all over his body, and very overweight. Between the fur mats, the skin folds, the resulting raw weeping skin, and the lack of ability to clean himself… There were so. many. maggots. Shaving that cat had pretty much everyone in back dry heaving. Poor kitty. We got him fixed up but I was very concerned that it was going to happen again given the level of neglect. Ultimately, neglect cases like that were a big part of why I decided not to go into veterinary medicine.
My nope is home improvement projects. I will either hurt myself, break something, or both so I prefer to involve a professional. This morning the fluorescent light in my bathroom burned out. 3/4 bulbs had been out since I moved in but it was adequate light so i never bothered with it until now. A few months ago my uncle “converted” my kitchen fluorescent to LEDs (nowadays you can just swap bulbs, no tools or know how required) so I thought “fuck, I can do that, and it’ll last longer now.”
Well, first I couldn’t get the ceiling hatch open. The little tabs were stuck. Then, the length of the fixture opening is the length of the tube, so when you unscrew them from the ends, they scrape the inside of the housing. Then, I bought two LED bulbs but only one works (out of four slots). No idea if it is a bulb or fixture problem. Lastly, I couldn’t get the hatch closed. The whole thing became out of alignment when i opened it, so the tabs wouldn’t go back into place. I’m sure my upstairs neighbor appreciated me slamming it into the ceiling and scream-crying for 20 min as my arms turned to jello.
I miss renting sometimes.
@PumpkinSpies
I agree about having people who know what they are doing. I learned my lesson years ago. There was an issue with a loose faucet in our kitchen. I crawled underneath with my wrench and proceeded to turn it from loose to broken. Now we had no running water in our kitchen. Our plumber wouldn’t be able to make it out for a couple of days. This happened the day before Thanksgiving when we were to have about 14 people over. The only plumbing I do now is when I put the blue stuff in the tank of the toilet.
@pumpkinspies that is a true story. I was cooking for 14 people. I may have melted down a tad that day. Hope that your lighting issues resolve.
@Elliecoo I got one working LED bulb and the ceiling is shut, so I’m aggravated but successful. My uncle agreed to put it on the FPL (future project list) to see why the other bulb slots don’t work.
@KeitelBlacksmith
The closest I will come to plumbing is pouring drain stuff into the hole when my shower starts to drain slow. I can’t even get the plastic snake to go into the drain more than a few inches so pfffhtfftff.
So tonight is Night 3 of no Better Half. This is really driving me a little crazy.
Based on a derogatory comment about Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” I dug out my copy of “Thomas Hardy’s England.” It’s a very old book and is kind of a pictorial album of Dorset. People sometimes think of Thomas Hardy as being very modern. His novels were advanced for when they were published, but that was before 1900, and if you know that the novels make more sense. Hardy himself was born in 1840 (so he was Good Victorian) and lived into the modern age, dying in 1928.
God I’m bored. As if anyone cares I had canned clam chowder for dinner. I can make my own clam chowder but about a month ago I came across a meat recipe that required a very creamy clam sauce, so I asked Forager-in-Chief to pick me up ONE CAN of clam chowder, preferably small-batch, that I could heat up and reduce, add herbs, and see if I could make a sauce out of it.
Naturally, because I wasn’t with him, he came back with a 12-pack of extra-large Campbell’s Extra Chunky Home Style New England Clam Chowder, or whatever they call it. Cooking for one is not much fun, so I heated up a can of this, at the last minute shaved some parmesan into the saucepan, stirred, and then poured this into a large bowl and crumbled over some herbed crackers. I normally have oyster crackers so that’s what I’d use, but we’re out.
Anyway, it was very tasty, but I’m not sure there’s a way to reduce this Campbell’s product to make the kind of sauce I’m going for. I have plenty of time to experiment; I think these canned soups have a shelf life of 200 years or something.
@MatthewCrawley
Ellie sends her sympathies.
It’s a take on Steak Oscar, which is an FYCE post to be forthcoming. Steak Oscar is steak with lump crab meat, asparagus, and a Béarnaise sauce. It’s actually really easy to do but it’s done so rarely, even in steakhouses, that it’s a showstopper. There’s a whole backstory behind this but I’ll save it for the FYCE. Let’s just say that for me it was revenge cooking for frenemies at its finest.
@MatthewCrawley you have inspired me! We could do a FYCE recipe challenge based on an ingredient that you really want to get rid of (like the clam chowder).
Oh I do that all the time, because I lost control of buying and storing food with the onset of the pandemic, and I hate to waste food. The internet is your best friend. I have these three ingredients that will turn poisonous in 48 hours. What to do? The internet always has an answer.
but so often, the answer is wrong.
like making guacamole with peas…
True. In Northern Europe they seem to throw everything on pizzas. “Here ya go gents, a pizza pie with a Stilton and cheddar cheese base, topped with broccoli, peas, and corn. Microwaved especially for you!”
I am not good with heights. Even in movies, I will have to look away from the screen during some action scenes. It’s rather silly.
And the idea of damage to the hands. I’m not big on gore to begin with, but a bloody action movie doesn’t really bother me much. But somebody getting their hand smashed with a hammer, or shot… nopitynopenope
For me it’s eye stuff. Watching hand injuries is unpleasant, but eye injuries give me full body cringe. I had to watch a video of cataract surgery in an anatomy class and I swear I watched half of it from behind my hands.