Monsters in My Basement

That’s not a euphemism…this is not a post about my butt. Before you laugh at me for being the sort of person who’d think of preemptively clarifying that, consider that I know my people well enough to know I NEED to clarify that.

Isolation, cancer, and my own emotional cycles have me in a rough couple of weeks, but this weekend I felt better overall. I found a lawn guy for the yard cleanup AND the summer mowing, and took a day or two to justify it so I no longer feel guilty. It was stressing me out, because now that I’m back at work the days I CAN work on lawn care I have no energy to do more than 10 minutes, so the leaves from last fall are still all over and it was becoming an overwhelming task. Antonio the LawnGuy (not his official title) dropped off the estimate in my door, picked it up after, and came Saturday morning before I was even up to take the bonfire-sized pile of branches away.

It was finally warm-ish (it was in the 50’s, my Houston folk who determined I’m crazy because the entire winter I lived there I never wore more than a sweatshirt), and sunny. So I took tea and a book to the deck for essentially the whole day. Ragnar thought that was super cool, and the friends who picked him up (with appropriate social distancing, of course) brought their two big dogs for an hour or so. There’s enough room on my deck to stay well away from each other, so we watched the dogs play exactly as kids would: run after each other all over the yard and use the deck as the “safe” spot. I think we all needed that.

So…if you don’t live in Minnesota, spring and fall are especially moody. Saturday I felt better some just from relaxing outside for a good long while. Sunday it was 35 degrees (F) and snowing all day. People like to bitch and fuss about it, but I LIKE living in a moody state: it fits my personality. Spring isn’t really “sprung” here until May anyway.

All of that probably seems like weird non-sequitors, but it’s leading to an issue I discovered in my house on Saturday night. Spring brings creature movements into/out of the house, just like fall does. I discovered an efficient ant highway traveling from some dog food Ragnar spilled on the kitchen floor and the wall on teh OTHER SIDE of the kitchen. Those little dudes walked the equivelent of a couple hundred miles…and sadly for them I swept up the spill along with a truckload of ants and tossed the whole shebang outside. Then I vinegar-washed the trail, added a couple more ant traps (which takes a few days to work) and grumbled about cats not being efficient hunters of ants. Can you get an anteater as a pet? Inquiring minds.

And then, I opened the basement door, and THIS motherfucker waved at me.

I live in a witch’s cottage…never mind ME, look at the actual house:

There’s even nightshade growing in the front (which was discovered last fall and will be removed this spring…kids and dogs can’t be around Belladonna). As such, I have an arrangement with spiders: eat the flies/bugs, NEVER let me see you, stay away from my person, and feel free to live as you like. It’s worked so far.

This dick has NO SUCH ARRANGEMENT, and on top of that they eat spiders, so I’m at a conundrum of reneging on my arrangement and taking away it’s food supply or dealing with demonic centipedes the size of my thumb with WAY TOO MANY GODDAMNED LEGS, skittering along the ceiling of the basement stairs.

My basement is supposed to be finished (it has some flooding issues right now that have to be fixed first, but eventntually there are two big finish-able rooms down there). I can’t have a finished basement with hellraiser creatures. That’s just…inappropriate.

So that was my Saturday night horror: it moved when I went down the steps far enough to take the picture. Therefore I left the hall light on overnight to keep the fucker in the basement, and told fAngus if that thing comes up the steps I expect him to do his cat duties. When I woke up Sunday he was lying at the top of the stairs outside my doorway, as he should be.

No, I haven’t been down there since. No, I don’t think a vacuum will take care of it (the idea of that thing crawling out of the vacuum canister or the garbage before I can get it outside…NOPE). I spent yesterday working on spring cleaning (that’ll take me a while with the whole chemo fatigue thing, so it has to be done in small chunks of effort) and avoiding even opening the basement door.

I THREW SNOWBALLS AT IT YESTERDAY to try to knock it off the wall so I could at least find a way to squish it. But sadly my aim is absolute shit so all I did was get snow on the bare basement floor, which will have to melt and dry on it’s own. Yes I know damp basements attract centipedes…I can’t get a dehumidifier down there until I can get down the stairs, can I.

So I guess I feel better, at least some, because all of this is horrifying and funny and I recognize the stupid of the entire situation.

Yes, it’s still there. I checked today. Did you know you can buy flamethrowers on the internet?