What's Bugging Me Today

This morning I woke up at 6 a.m., turned on the news and sat in the living room chair, waiting for consciousness to kick in.  This is my daily routine.  This morning, however, while I was staring off into space waiting to care, I spotted a thousand-legger scurrying across the carpet.  Now… I like to name the insects I encounter, because it makes me feel guilty after I bludgeon them to death with the heel of my shoe.  I could have chased Bob down if I had been 20 years younger and my legs weren’t still sleep-frozen. Or, Miss Kitty could have pursued a new toy if she weren’t 15 years old and no longer giving a shit about anything except sleeping in the sun and mooching food off my plate.   So, without conflict, Bob darted behind the sofa and hopefully, if he knew what was good for him, committed suicide.  

Having lived in other parts of the country, I’ve come to realize not everybody gets to enjoy the company of these rotten little centipedes, so I’ve included a photo.

"Hi, I'm Bob!"

Isn’t he cute?  Now, I realize centipedes are supposed to be our friends, because they eat loads of other disgusting things, like spiders (who are all secretly plotting to kill me, by the way), flies, ants, and other assorted vermin.  But they’re nicknamed  “thousand-leggers” for a reason … they’ve got all those skinny legs flailing around, they climb on anything, and they mindlessly run around without really caring if they’re heading out the door or up my pant leg. The only thing worse than smashing Bob with a shoe (which then involves hauling out the Shop-Vac) is drenching him with something sticky. The Aussie Instant Freeze I use on my hair is effective, but then poor Bob has to slink off into the Insect Afterlife while leaving several of his stuck-to-the-floor, ghoulishly detached legs behind him.  It’s as gross as it sounds. 

For me, bugs have always been lumped into four categories: pretty bugs (like butterflies and lightning bugs), annoying bugs (like houseflies and certain unnamed male relatives), icky bugs (centipedes, bed bugs, mantises … mantii?  What’s the plural? Do you know? Do I care?) and bugs that are secretly out to kill me (spiders and anything from the bee/wasp/hornet family). 

I know I’m not alone.  Maybe you hate Bob as much as I do.  Maybe you’re sitting out there trying not to feel like something’s crawling up your back. (Oh stop ... there's nothing there.  Really.)

When I used to be an apartment dweller, it wasn’t too bad … well, okay, I’m lying, the balconies at Shoregate Towers used to be a haven for spiders.  I’m not sure if it was because the buildings were so close to Lake Erie, but I never once sat on my balcony.  My brother – who has been bitten by poisonous ants, snakes and spiders several times in his life (he made it, but I understand they all died) – would sit out there, smoke, and see how many spiders he could kill using his hand.  This was his idea of Saturday night fun.  Me, I can’t even squish one with a tissue because I’m convinced it could somehow crawl out of my grasp and kill me.

I’m not sure where the fear of bugs started.  I’ve had spider-infested nightmares ever since I was bitten as an infant, so that might be part of it.  Or maybe stepping on a bee when I was four and spending that 4^th of July watching fireworks with my foot taped up has stayed with me too long.  Oh, and then there was the time a bee stung my back while I was on the freeway driving home from work several years ago. I think, however, the worst influence had to be a horrible Saturday morning TV show I watched while growing up in the 70s.  Anybody remember this Sid & Marty Krofft classic?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bugaloos

It had these goofy people dressed up in puffy, Technicolor bug costumes complete with antennae and wings. I still remember parts of the theme song … It went something like:

“The Bugaloos!

The Bugaloos!

They’re in the air and everywhere!

On the loose …

Out of sight …

In your hair …”

(That might not be exactly right, but that’s kinda how I remember it).

I put it to you … who wouldn’t be screwed up after that kind of programming? 

Living in a house these past two years hasn’t made things much easier.  For some reason, spiders just love me.  They spin webs all over my car (even after I’ve had it washed and detailed) and the overhead beams in the basement are infested with them.  I’ve called exterminators, but then the spiders just temporarily move out to the garage where they hold block parties and laugh at my idiocy.  I always imagine a scene similar to the one from the Hitchcock angry bird move, where all the spiders are just spinning their webs and plotting my destruction.  “Okay, Lois … so…you know the plan for today? You’re going to drop on her head when she comes in for the birdseed while Richard jumps on her hand and tries to kill her.”

Still … it could be worse.  I used to live in Florida where, let’s face it, every day was like Jurassic Park.  Alligators crossed the street, flying cockroaches dive-bombed our picnics and I spent the entire time I was there watching the ground when I walked, because Death By Fire Ant wasn't as uncommon as it damn well ought to have been.  At least in Ohio a person can walk barefoot in the grass, and there's something disturbing about a world where you can't do that.  

Hazardous Waits

Saturday, June 9^th, is a day I’ve spent months waiting for.  No, it’s not a holiday, birthday, or anniversary (although my sister’s wedding anniversary was a few days ago and, like I do every single year, I completely forgot it). 

It’s Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day here in Lake County.  Yes, on this most special of days, we all get to pile up our cars with our old household cleaners, paints, thinners, and almost anything else that might set our City of Willowick trash bins on fire. We then drive out to the Lake County Fairgrounds where we get to blow it all up.

Well, okay, that’s not true…they just take it out of our cars and do something important with it while we drive away.  (Blowing it up would have been cooler, though, so I just thought I’d throw that in there.)

Now, you might be thinking, “How pathetic are you, Brenda, that you’re looking forward to something this incredibly mundane?” Or you might be thinking that I have a special fondness for chemicals (in which case, I’m not sure I’d know how to take that!)

Truth is, I hate chemistry.  Hated it, hate it, will always and forever hate it.

No, I’m not talking about some Match.com relationship chemistry silliness – I mean actual chemistry, like the kind we all had to suffer through in high school where you had to partner with some dweeb in the science lab who couldn’t even manage to turn on the Bunsen burner.  Well, I was that dweeb.  I didn’t like fire, I didn’t like stinky stuff in test tubes that could explode if I mixed it with other stinky stuff, and I sure didn’t like my 11^th grade chemistry teacher, Mr. Hewitt.  He was a sweet old man with glasses who always called on me when he knew I wasn’t paying attention (which wasn’t hard, because that was about 100% of the time). I preferred to spend my time in science class staring out the window or writing fan fiction about my friends (I think the story I wrote about my pal Wendy and Paul McCartney was the most impressive thing I ever created in 7^th period). I spent an entire school year thanking these same friends for always shoving their text books in front of me, frantically pointing at the paragraph Mr. H. expected me to read aloud when he’d say, “Brenda, can you read the next section?” and I’d look up not knowing where in the hell I even was.  I had one brainiac friend who even used to scribble the answers to equations in the margins so I could rattle them off and fool everybody into thinking I actually gave a damn.

I would like to point out that I didn’t suck at chemistry because I was stupid; rather, my suckiness was one part boredom, one part terror.  Not only was I convinced I would one day fall asleep in the middle of an experiment, I was equally certain I would die during that sleep, expiring in a fiery blaze that would decimate Eastlake North High.

Having established that I bombed at chemistry in high school (no pun intended), I did my best to avoid it throughout my entire adult life. I would grudgingly wear lipstick when somebody would point out my deviant behavior with a kind, “Geez, Meskunas, why don’t you ever wear make-up?” (I never knew quite how to take that, but whichever way I picked, it wasn’t good).  But I’m sorry - slathering my face with the flesh-colored paint that came in the Clinique bottle repulsed me. As for house stuff … well, that was easy. I spent most of my gypsy years living in apartments, so having a gas grill was a big no-no anyway (and propane was scary – were I to ever buy a grill, I was positive the first tank would explode in my car on the way home).  As for household chemicals, I owned a bottle of Palmolive, a bottle of Tide, a bottle of Windex and a can of Comet.  That’s it.  Heck, I never even painted a room because that involved … well, paint.  Cans of it.  Paint is flammable. It could spontaneously explode within the can and somehow kill me. 

(No wonder people died young in the 1800s when they were unwashed, uneducated and relying on open flames. I’m convinced I probably caused the Great Chicago Fire in a past life when I was wearing a long skirt and couldn’t figure out how to turn on a gas light).

Anyway … when I moved into the house, I discovered  - to my great horror, I’m sure you can imagine – that Dad (who left this earth in 2010) loved to buy anything flammable, use half the container and then store the rest on a shelf in the garage, under the kitchen sink, in the bathroom or in the hallway closet. (I should add that I also found a couple bottles of Canadian whiskey stashed behind his bed.  Liquor is also flammable but, for some reason, I didn’t find it scary and disposed of it with no trouble at all.)

So here’s the current inventory list:

Garage: Two bottles of ancient WD-40, an unmarked coffee can with something dark and smelly caked at the bottom, a gas can with an inch of gas, two paint cans (one full), a bottle of turpentine and a tube of caked white crap that I think used to be caulk (or something that was used to wrap mummies during the reign of the last pharaoh, not sure).

Bathroom closet, bottom shelf: one bottle of Fantastik, a bottle of Spic-and-Span (circa 1975), a bag of old make-up (okay, that was my contribution to the chaos), toilet bowl cleaner,a bottle of Lysol, two cans of Comet, a scary looking toilet bowl plunger, a box of fossilized Brillo pads, a yellow liquid resembling pee in a mystery spray-bottle and no fewer than four bottles of Drano (someday, when I share my family plumbing horror stories with you, you’ll understand why this wasn’t nearly enough).

Hallway closet: Four vacuum cleaner bags for vacuum cleaners we no longer have, two bottles of Lysol, a box of rock solid oil paints from paint-by-numbers my mother started but never finished, a bag full of yarn, two cans of Pledge, a can of RAID, a bottle of black shoe polish and a silver spray can with a label missing … so I have no clue what the hell is in there. 

Beneath the kitchen sink: Yet another box of fossilized Brillo pads (I think these were from the Pleistocene epoch), two bottles and three spray-cans of yet more Lysol, a bottle of Windex, a jar of grease, a jar of fat, a jar of greasy fat,  a moldy potato (please don’t ask), a soiled, tattered dish towel and some scary, crawly looking dead thing that could have once been a spider, a centipede or an old fake eyelash belonging to my sister back in 1969.

This Saturday (after I hug my cat and finish my will), I will drive to Painesville with my treasures and take as much care driving over train tracks as my ancestors did driving rickety wagons packed with nitro-glycerin. And maybe, on my way home, I’ll stop at the store and purchase some lemon juice, baking soda and vinegar; there are plenty of recipes on the Internet for making non-toxic cleaners using ingredients I remotely understand.  It’s difficult enough for me to find the motivation to scrub things …  sticking my hands into poison that will someday sit on a shelf and contaminate my world is not reason enough for me to get off the couch and turn off “Hell’s Kitchen.”

If you live in Lake County, you can drive your goodies out to the Lake County Fairgrounds, Route 20, Painesville Township on Saturday, June 9. 2012, from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m (rain or shine). For more information, see www.lakecountyohio.gov and click on "Solid Waste District."

You're On Radio Brenda!

I think one of the best ways to stay connected with God is to find ways to connect with my youth. 

Because, let's face it ...when I was young, I was still an open cup, open to every good gift God was willing to give me. But as I aged ... and encountered hurt and disappointment ... I built up a wall to keep the bad scary stuff out.  (Oh geez ... there goes Miss Kitty again, rubbing on my computer.  I know cats do this because they like to mark everything, but cleaning cat drool off my laptop gets old after awhile!). 

Okay ... kitty's now safely on my lap ... where was I?

I built a wall. Right.  And so did you.   We built these walls over time because we needed them to survive, but the cost of survival is accidentally shutting out the good stuff that tries to come in too.  But when I find a way to mentally time-travel back to when I was a child or teenager, that wall disappears for awhile... and the good finds its way back in.  

I'm not suggesting we go back to childhood and stay there forever, because I think a lot of addicts do this (my poor brother being a classic example). But I think it's important to not forever be an adult either...or we might become addicted to hopelessness. So, if we're smart, we time-travel once in awhile. And for each of us, the time machine looks different.  Some people time-travel every time they head out to the ballpark or attend a concert.  I do both of those.  But yesterday I found a different way to reconnect with my teen years -- I went on the radio!

Actually, not live ... it'll air in a couple of days.  106.5 here in Cleveland ("The Lake") is all about having its listeners hand-pick their play lists, and they have a really intriguing promotion.  If you want them to play your favorite songs for an entire hour, you can submit your dream play list (10 songs) and, if they pick yours, you get to go down to the station, let them record your voice, and .... from 8 - 9 p.m.... they'll play your songs.  You even get to introduce a couple of them. 

Now, I know many of you who've known me a while are wondering how many Barry Manilow songs I included, because he was my teenage idol and I still follow his career (he still puts on amazing shows, by the way). But I didn't choose anything from Manilow because I felt it didn't fit in with this station's format.  However ... there is one song on my play list that is Manilow related, and I even tell a little story about it (but I don't mention his name).  But those of you who've known me awhile will "get it."

Yes, Barry is one way I time-travel. 

But I also grew up on Cleveland AM radio....WGAR, to be specific (long before it was country - it used to have pop top forty stuff).  I can even remember some of the deejays... John Lanigan, Joe Mayer, Fig Newton, Bob James.  This was long before Clear Channel owned the universe; once upon a time stations like these were independent.  I could call one of these guys, beg him to play John Denver or The Bay City Rollers and, in five minutes, there was my song.  I loved my music.  I also loved winning crap off the radio because, in my teen years, I didn't have any money.  So winning a gift certificate for bowling or an album or a tax book (which is a strange thing to win when you're 15!) was a BIG deal.  I spent about five years of my life frantically dialing the phone trying to be the fifth caller.  And no, we didn't have "redial." We didn't have cell phones.  We didn't have cordless phones.  We had phones with BUTTONS instead of rotary dials, and that was some mighty impressive technology back in the 70s.  My Dad finally put a phone in the basement so I wouldn't pound the crap out of the kitchen phone. 

And there was Casey Kasem's "American Top Forty" I'd listen to every Sunday morning...and WIXY 1260 ... and, when the skies were clear, CKLW out of Windsor (near Detroit).  Sometimes I'd lie in my bed at night and, if it was summer and all the stars were properly aligned, I'd even pick up a faint signal from Chicago, which seemed like the greatest city on earth to me.  I would go to sleep dreaming of different cities with different people and all the things I could do with them, the sort of dreams you dream when you're young. 

So ... I submitted my play list at http://www.1065thelake.com/pages/features/its-your-lake/  and I guess my list passed my imagined "songs that won't make our listeners puke" test because their extremely nice program director, Tony Matteo, emailed me and asked me when I could come in. I took some time out of my day off to drive out to Independence and was blown away when I walked in the door.  Clear Channel (which may not own the world, but sure owns a lot of local stations) has a floor that looks like somebody's radio exploded...the walls are covered with logos from The Lake, WMMS, WMJI and several others.  Tony took me into the studio and had me stand in front of a microphone saying, "This is Brenda Meskunas from Willowick, and you're on Lake Brenda!"  I introduced "Personal Jesus" from Depeche Mode, talked about why I loved Madonna's "Used To Be My Playground" and explained why so many women can relate to Joan Jett's "I Hate Myself for Loving You." (What fun therapy that one always is!)  I also said hello to a few people (maybe even you!).  I don't want to give the whole thing away, but it was SO much fun and really easy.  If I screwed up (which I did about a million times), Tony gave me a million do-overs.  And yeah, he took my picture, so, oh goody, that'll be up on their website one day this week (he thinks maybe Wednesday, but if I hear differently I'll let you know.)

Anyway ... from 8 to 9 p.m. sometimes this week, you'll get to hear 10 of my favorite songs.  You can listen live at http://www.iheart.com/live/4958/?autoplay=true

When I came home later that day and told my sister Barbara (aka: The Smart One Who Knows Everything Or At Least Thinks She Does), she said, "You are so weird - why would you want to do that?"

It was difficult to find the words to explain.  It's wasn't like I'd won a prize or money or anything like that. But how can I use mere words to describe what my favorite music means to me?  I own lots of time machines, but that one has warp drive. I can barely sing and I suck at playing instruments (just ask my high school flute teacher, who I'm sure hanged himself long ago). But I love music. It makes me feel young like nothing else can.  And visiting The Lake made me feel even younger, because radio broadcasts from as far away as Chicago are what kept me sane while my teenage hormones sabotaged my brain. I smiled all the way home in the car.  And I can't wait to hear "Lake Brenda" this week!

Maybe my time machine isn't yours ... but if you think it might be, even a little, submit your own play list and have a blast.  Go be young.