It’s That Time
Well, Christmas is looming before us it seems. The shopping centres’ decorations are sprinkled with about a month and a half’s worth of dust. The music being piped through is an assortment of insipid Christmas carols. The major channels are ruining the good, old-fashioned Sunday Night In with saccharine “comedies” such as Surviving Christmas.
It’s maddening. Last weekend they wasted Christmas with the Kranks. It was the first of December! Although it’s not exactly my cup of tea, it would have made for a better Christmas Day than the 60th screening of Miracle on 34th Street.
Christmas in my family always seemed an overly enthusiastic ordeal. The Matriarch spent three days straight cooking for the hordes preparing to descend on The Farm. Maybe that’s why it holds so little appeal to me now. I don’t like spending up to an hour cooking dinner, the idea of spending as long as she does preparing “goodies” for Christmas Dinner makes my skin crawl. Or it would if my skin wasn’t as lazy as the rest of me.
But now I can, for the most part, avoid Christmas. Shopping online (including groceries) lets me avoid overcrowded, overdecorated shopping centres. Too much Christmas crap on TV? That’s what hiring DVDs is for. With the family back in New Zealand (except the one in Japan) I have no real social responsibilities. I’m not under any obligation to provide gifts for the siblings or their offspring. I suppose you’re wondering why that would even register on my lists of bonuses. Well, if I was there I’d probably provide the family with a few trinkets just because they wouldn’t expect it. Just to keep them on their toes.
Why do I still detest it so much? Because I’m in the Southern Hemisphere, that’s why. Up above the equator where Christmas = winter things are different. But down here, below the world’s belt, Christmas coincides with my least favourite time of year - summer.
The wretched cold of winter is gone, chased away by the burning sun. I like the cold. When it’s cold I can put more clothes on. When it’s hot there’s only so much you can take off before being arrested. When it’s cold at night you can turn on your electric blanket. When it’s hot at night you just have to suffer sleep deprivation.
Worse than that, though, is the fact that, with the heat comes the bugs. I’ve already declared war in my kitchen. New York City has its War on Crime. Dubya has hisWar on Terror. I have declared war on the ants that swarm over my discarded butter knives the moment they hit the bench. I’m tired of having to rinse them immediately, damn it. Unfortunately they seem to think the ant bait smells as wretched as I do. As I think it smells. I smell quite nice. Kind of vanilla-y.
But they’re not the real reason I despise this time of year. The real reason I despise this time of year are the brown beetles that come out in force. Aside from their dull colouring they’re reminiscent of the flesh eating scarab beetles of Egyptian legend. They find the weaknesses of a home, a torn fly screen, a slightly-too-large gap between a door and the floor and they exploit it, sneaking inside the house and settling onto an out-of-the way surface. There they wait until someone comes along and nearly touches them.
Today’s location was the venetian blind on the front door. When the Man of the House and I were about to leave to get some baking goods I required for Monday I saw it, right near where my hand night have been if I had planned to open the door from below and behind the blinds. Another close encounter!
As the Man of the House watched it from a safe distance to make sure it didn’t move, after all, they only move when you’re not looking at them, just like the Doctor Who Angels, I went to get the fly spray. I swear I should buy stock in that stuff. The offending beetle was spritzed, then spritzed a little more for good measure, then once more just to make sure. It fell to the ground. Right in front of the door. Shoot. Everyone knows those things aren’t safe to step over, even when they are dying.
So I sent the Man of the House for our broom, intending to sweep the creature outside. The floor and the threshold not being even made that a logistical nightmare. I very much wanted to use the broom. Its long hand was comforting to me. Instead I was forced to plan B. The dustpan. The Man of the House fetched that for me and watched as I scooped the still-twitching creature up and tossed it out into the middle of the dust bowl that passes for our lawn these days.
Truly the last of the Great White Hunters.
Tagged: domestic inconveniences, Fears & Neuroses.