Not enough time

Okay, this is going to be short.

I made a very stupid decision last night. I decided that it would be a good idea when I went to bed at midnight to start reading a new (for me) Walter Mosley novel, Fortunate Son. What do you think happened? Go on, guess. Yes, that’s right: I sat up reading until four in the morning. I set the alarm for 11am, figuring seven hours would be plenty of sleep. Oh, ha, ha, said my body, which instinctively hit the snooze button until noon. One hour and 45 minutes to go until it would be time to leave to meet Joe and Lexi for this week’s walk. Should still be enough time to write something.

Have breakfast whilst perusing the Guardian online. One headline immediately captures my attention: Brian May taken to hospital after tearing buttock muscles while gardening. That is some heavy duty gardening. I mean, I strain my glutes every year the first full day I do in the garden, but tear them? And, man, as headlines go, this one is going to be tough to beat. Must post this on Facebook with that comment. Oh, crap, now I’m on Facebook. Any good jokes or musical parodies today? Not so much.

Oh, crap, it’s nearly one o’clock and I need to leave in 45 minutes. Still time to write something quickly? Maybe. Oh, no! That’s the sound of the recycling truck going down the other side of the road, and I haven’t put out the blue box and the yellow bag and the green waste bin. Better do that first.

Should I also water the garden? Yes, I should, as I’ve recently transplanted some things and they need regular watering for the first few days.

Oh, crap, now it’s 1:35 and I need to leave in ten minutes. Okay, I’ll write something about the walk when I get back.

We start off at Elder Cedar, a nature reserve I’ve visited a number of times with visiting friends. I used to think of this as a 45 minute walk until I did it recently on my own and discovered the loop only takes half an hour. Realised then that whenever I’ve visited with friends, they’ve always stopped to take a lot of photos, ergo the extra 15 minutes.

Well, it is pretty photogenic.

What I’ve never done before, but do with Joe today (because half an hour is nowhere near a long enough walk for energetic Lexi) is veer off onto the side trail that does a forest loop.

Come home, put the kettle on and go into the bathroom to wash my hands. Notice a brown blob on the turquoise bathmat, which I realise is a clusterfuck of flying carpenter ants. Shake them off the bathmat and onto the floor, then stomp on them all. Normally I have a fairly live and let live attitude towards insects in the house (with the exception of spiders, but they’re not technically insects).

Oh, yeah, they’re all butter wouldn’t melt on leaves, aren’t they? Not so much when they’re in your house. They turn up in fairly small numbers this time every year, but this year there are a lot more of them than usual. This year they’re a pain in the glutes. I’m not sure stomping them individually is going to be enough to get them the fuck out of my house. Ant traps? Oh, crap, Google search reveals ant traps can pose a threat to cats. What then? What? Seriously, I’m asking you. What? If you have any idea, let me know.

And now it’s gone five o’clock and I’m getting hungry.

Hasta mañana.