Hmm...

So now I have tetanus...

I was trying to manage getting the cats inside, while keeping the dogs also inside. The cats wait outside on the porch, peering in, until they're sure there's not gonna be a dog to ambush them. However a dog tried to ambush them, and as I was yelling at said dog, I grabbed the dog by the ridiculous metal thing on our door that we have to make the door fit into the frame better (?). Anyway, it sliced open my thumb. And now I've got tetanus.

In the blogosphere, this has been a relatively short story, but it was, frankly, a rather short experience.

I'm tired.

A Raccoon Named George

I suffer from chronic adult irrational fear of shit (I just made that up). I am terrified of hippos and toilets. I know, people are always like, "How do you go to the bathroom? Durhur..." Obviously, I HAVE to go to the bathroom. And I DO use the toilet. But I check before I sit. My mom uses the bathroom with the light off. I TRY to do that, since it conserves electricity (also the fan comes on when the light's on, and it makes noises so I can't hear if orc rapists are trying to get in), but I nearly always get freaked out and have to turn on the light. It's because some guy got bit by a snake on the toilet once. Moving on...the fear of hippos is totally justified. Hippos kill more people a year than sharks. I understand that I live in North Carolina and am unlikely to encounter any hippos, but if I did, it would almost certainly kill me. What they don't tell you is that hippos are fast as shit!

Moving back to my actual story...

I get freaked out by shit. I watch a movie with something scary and it suddenly becomes the most nerve-wracking thing to turn on the light in my bedroom. And as soon as I do, I must IMMEDIATELY jump into bed so the things won't get me. When I was little, there were "snakes and alligators" in my closet and under my bed. I don't know why my child mind zeroed on those 2 creatures, but it wasn't some fictional monster, those are both REAL. And it was oddly specific. In fact, I found it oddly specific even then.

Again, I digress.

My boyfriend loves to watch weird tv shows. He watches River Monsters and I tell him he MUST change the channel or I will NEVER go swimming again. Sometimes he'll change it to something like Monster Inside Me which is about parasites.

So one day, we're watching Monster Inside Me. I guess I had my laptop and the rule is generally that if one of us has the remote, the other gets the computer and vice versa. So we're watching this segment about some parasite carried by raccoons. The only, and I do mean ONLY way to get it is to ingest raccoon feces. In large quantities. It most commonly happens like REALLY little kids, crawling around on playgrounds.

We have raccoons in my neighborhood. They like to get under our house and crawl around on the pipes. We kept catching them stealing our cat food or water and my boyfriend or I would run outside with our SWORD. We couldn't get the cleaver or a machete or a reasonable tool. We used a 2 and a half foot sword to menace 'coons. So these raccoons are nocturnal, and so am I. Meaning that just as I'm trying to go to sleep, they are clunking around and terrifying me. There isn't much of a way for them to get INTO our house, even if they were IN the furnace, but at 4 am, that does not matter. What matters is that these raccoons are going to get into the house and they are going to bite me and I am going to get the parasite (despite the fact that that isn't how it works) and I am going to die because the ONLY logical manner for me to die is being bitten by raccoon, of course. The ONLY thought that even begins to put my mind at ease is that my boyfriend will get bitten first.

Needless to say, I'm not dead. (Unless they have wifi in the afterlife. Gee, I hope they do.) I was not bitten by raccoon, though my boyfriend did eventually kill one of the raccoons (he was stuck and weak), and mostly they've stayed away since.



Editor's Note: I've now taken to keeping a tennis racket near my bed. It was the most suitable blunt object I could find in my room when people were rustling the other day.