That may come as news to some of the folks reading my blog, because as a rule, I try not to bitch about places. People live in those places, and inevitably someone gets offended. So if you live in the Low Country of the Carolinas (in North America), please stop reading now. And if you're easily offended by profanity, it'd probably be good to quit reading now, too. Though if you are I don't know what you're doing here anyway. I'm babbling. I babble when I'm pissed off.
This place is a damned swamp. What does "Low Country" really mean? SWAMP. They sell property here with 'marsh views' like THAT IS A GOOD THING. IT IS A BLOODY SWAMP, PEOPLE. My big beef with the whole swamp deal - other than major risk of flooding when tropical storms come through - is the FUCKING BUGS. I moved here from Hawaii. I'm used to cane spiders, and flying cockroaches, and rice beetles, and armored centipedes a foot long (uh, 20cm? about that), and scorpions. You know what? All that sounds like a lovely break from the unending parade of creepy-crawlies we get through here. Because here in this swamp, it's not about the size. It's about the VOLUME. The bugs get into EVERYTHING. I keep finding little almost microscopic beetle things in my yarn, my books, floating in my tea. We get hordes of anopheles mosquitos, you know, the ones that carry malaria, all over the place. We have banana spiders that make the husbeast scream like a girl and run for the blow torch.
Anyway. Anyway. Getting grip.
Today, I decided to do some baking. (Which is the trigger for the rest of this, though the cockroach later may have set me off, and I'm getting off track.) So I got into my pantry and pulled out the bread flour. You know, the SEALED UP bread flour, in the plastic container that SEALS because I've spent the last seventeen damn years in climates full of bugs and EVERYTHING IN THE HOUSE that contains food is sealed or in the fridge (which counts as sealed). Opened the bread flour container.
Full of bugs. Little worms. Whole goddamn container was moving. Reminded me of a rather traumatic video I once watched in EMT class that was full of maggots, but on a smaller scale. Lovely. Out goes two pounds of flour, at least, and I'm now trying my baking experiment with all purpose flour. (If it works, I'll share the recipe. I'm calling it Lazy Brioche.)
Then, while stomping out here into the other room to type a long bitch about how living in a swamp SUCKS OOZING RAT ASS, what do I nearly step on but an inch and a half long cockroach that Sekhmet helpfully killed for me, laying in the middle of the floor.
I hate living in a swamp.
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14 comments:
Welcome to Kerala!
*shudder* Okay - all the stuff you said lived in Hawaii and your experience today are perfect examples of why I continue to insist that I will always live somewhere with a winter kill. The bugs stay respectably small, and while the mosquitoes are still a problem,it's only for part of the year. I did my time in warmer states and countries and after living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and in Minnesota for the last 25 years, I learned that true, cold winter is a wonderful thing.
Vomit. The thought made me choke. And I'm in Australia, where bugs are normal. Yuck.
For the record, I've come to terms with not always having bread flour to hand. It can still work. I'm sure the differences are there but I live with it if I have to.
Okay, I live in NC, the state above SC. We moved here in 1968. We learned to put all flour in the FREEZER compartment of the fridge or in the Big stand alone freezer. ;) So that the Bug Eggs that are AlREADY SEALED in the flour, Won't Hatch,(room temp in the summer) before you use it ;) The US gov't allows a certain amount of bugs and bug eggs and rat hairs and rodent poop in our food. But the freezer at least keeps the bugs from hatching and reproducing ;) Now you know :)
Oh, move to higher,dryer ground if there is any to be had in SC ;)
Loved the part about the husbeast and the blow torch..my DH is the same way. The monster sewer roaches used to bother me, but now I'm just too tired to use the energy to jump! DeborahinAZ
aiiiiiiiiii!
I read that as "Lacy Brioche" and immediately thought, oh cool, Julie's knitting with bread now.
And I didn't question it for a minute.
Living in New York city with roaches taught me to put all food, of every kind, in the frig. Freezer, if possible. The bugs can't get into the frig. They most definitely can get into anything else. I used to put Borax on my shelves under shelf paper; that kept them out of my dishes.
Sekhmet is good for something after all! She just needs to do a lot more of it. She needs to terrify all those bugs away & give your home a bad rep in the insect community. ,,,,MLE
DAMN - thanks for making 100% sure I never move there and stick to the cooler climes. :)
You forgot to mention the poisonous spiders and snakes (my next-door neighbor's dog was recently bitten by a poisonous snake, possibly a copperhead), otherwise, right on.
Yuck! Even worse than SE Texas! You have my sympathy. Not that it does you any good, but you have it.
ha ha ha ha ha ha - THUD
::sound of swamp-dwelling woman laughing her head off::
Okay, having suffered through an infestation of confused flour beetles (yeah! they're really called that!), my sympathies.
All that rain we got from Ike brought us a fall mosquito hatch that's unbelievable to non-swamp-dwellers. The poor dogs are coming in with the d*** things fringing their eyes and lips.
Even winter is not guaranteed to kill off northern house mosquitoes. They've shown up in January during a blizzard.
Oh Christ...you had me at banana spiders and worms in the flower. The cockroach was just ugly icing!
Eeewwwww! Thank Dog the cat killed at least one of those crawlies! Give the Goober a rubber mallet and send her out on the hunt, too.
Wonder if frozen flour is hard to bake with?
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