Giant red-eyed bugs from outer space.

So I thought I was going to be able to deal with the cicadas.

No, not when I first realized that this was the year. Then I was threatening to stay inside the house for a month, even if it meant losing my job and starving to death. I know that doesn't count as "dealing with" them. But later...

The parking lot for my clinic in the suburbs of DC is at the top of the hill, and there's a tree-shaded flight of steps leading down to the clinic. One day, there was a cicada perched on the railing. Big, ugly black-and-red bugger, with bulging red eyes. I edged my way past and went into the clinic. By afternoon, the railings were clear. The next day, there were several more cicadas perched on the railings, and again they were gone by afternoon.

I formulated a theory, based on the various "Oh God, The Cicadas Are Coming" stories in the press. I thought that cicadas crawled out of the ground at night, molted, and climbed up the nearest vertical thing. When they found a tree, they stayed there until eventually they lay their eggs and died. I figured that, for a non-arboreal type like me, the only danger of close contact with a cicada came in that early-morning period when they were looking for a tall thing. And I figured that my several-cicada railing encounters were a product of that morning activity, sure to end when all the cicacas had emerged from the ground and made their way up the trees. I was supported in my theory by the fact that, in Iowa, I had never seen an annual cicada - just heard them. They stayed in the trees.

Everyone in a Brood X state is laughing at me now, aren't they?

Then came the day last week when I drove down to my DC clinic and found that the cicadas were everywhere. Forget six or seven bugs demurely perched on a railing - they were everywhere. Lurching about in the air like demented hummingbirds. Squashed on the sidewalk. Crawling around. Infiltrating the building in their squashed-and-repulsive form. Hundreds of them. I held my hand over my mouth every time I had to go outside.

But I was still optimistic about Baltimore. I'd heard them when I went to the grocery store, which is in a more wooded neighborhood, but my neighborhood is all brick and concrete. I felt very safe, especially after the hordes had come out in DC.

Wednesday morning I walked to the gym. I started noticing squashed cicadas on the sidewalk, perhaps one or two per block.

Today they were everywhere. Dive-bombing my window. Crawling up the side of the building. Squashed on the street, on the polished floor of the lobby, on the stairs. Creeping along the ground malevolently. Perched in my flowerpot. Detatched wings skating along in the breeze. Everywhere.

They're big enough that you can see them flying on the other side of the street.

I now know that, in fact, I'm not going to be able to deal with the cicadas at all.

(no subject)

From the hysterically funny, yet painfully sad blog Chez Miscarriage:

I was on my cell phone, but I lost the signal when I got onto the elevator. That's why I overheard the conversation between the two men who were on the elevator with me.

"My wife hasn't lost her pregnancy weight yet," one of them complained.

"That's just lazy," the other commiserated, "I mean, what's she doing all day?"

My ears began to bleed and a thousand shrieking harpies flew out of my head and violins screamed in a menacing augury of harrowing wrath.

"She's busy fabricating false rape statistics and disseminating lies about employment discrimination," I replied. The two men stared at me. The cell phone was still against my ear. "Are you talking to us?" one of them asked. I shook my head and mouthed "NO," then pointed to the cell phone. They smiled in uneasy relief.

"It's really had an impact on our sex life," the first man whispered, moving his face close to his friend's ear.

"Well," I said into the phone, "That's because you're the most boring lay imaginable."

The two men looked at me. I smiled at them and shrugged helplessly. "SORRY," I mouthed. Then I theatrically turned toward the elevator wall, covering my free ear with my hand.

"She's just gotten so big," the first man murmured.

"What do you think pregnancy is, a play date with the Betty Crocker Easy Bake Oven?" I said into the cell phone.

The two men stood there in angry silence.

"Okay," I said into the phone, "This is my floor, I have to go." I threw the phone into my bag and smiled politely at the two men as the elevator doors opened.

Then I quickly turned around before the doors closed and pointed at the man who had been complaining about his wife. "And by the way," I said sweetly, "Those rolls around your waist aren't exactly made of moneybags."

The elevator doors closed on their furious and astonished faces.

Yeah, that's right. Touché, asshat. Although your wife's best friend can't be everywhere, there are hundreds of women willing to step in for her at a moment's notice - all of whom ride elevators, and one of whom has recently had more hormone injections than an entire herd of U.S. cattle.