I never should have gotten up yesterday. It was a complete day-from-hell for me. I’m just now getting around to posting about it because I’ve been in such a pissy mood that I haven’t been able to sit still long enough to write. This is my story…
I haven’t made any baked goods since I sold my restaurant in February and my daughter has been begging me to make oatmeal cookies. So, I caved and we made cookies Monday evening. We had a few – right out of the oven, with milk, of course, and then I packaged up the rest and left them on the kitchen counter.
As I was getting out of the shower yesterday morning I could hear my daughter yelling – at the dogs. I hurried downstairs to find that they had gotten the cookies off the counter and had proceeded to ingest almost half of them. Great. So, needless to say, my day started out quite shitily. I angrily tossed the remaining dog-spit covered cookies into the garbage as my daughter looked on in horror.
The rest of the morning was fairly uneventful except for my daughter’s constant protests and whining about having to clean her room. We accomplished some cleaning and decided to stop for lunch. And then…
All hell broke loose. I decided to throw some spaghetti together for a quick lunch. I grabbed the box of spaghetti from the cupboard and as I dumped it into the boiling water I could see some strange and unexpected ‘things’ floating in the water. Oh.My.God. Upon further inspection the ‘things’ were found to be WORMS. Yes…nasty little larvae. I gagged, choked and screamed all at the same time (which sounded something like – “gahahggrrgglrlrfcoughholyfuckohmygodeeeekoooohnoooo”) and also did a squirmy heebie-jeebie dance because this is what I saw:
Except they were all shriveled and boiled and there were at least a dozen of them. Ugh. Now, I realize that to some these may be a delicacy. But, um…I’m not going there, thanks. I tossed a heaping mound of half cooked spaghetti and worms into the garbage along with the remaining uncooked pasta – and started investigating. To my horror I found MORE, yes more of the larvae in a sealed box of soy flour, in E’s crackers, in the pancake mix, in the cake mixes, in the dog biscuits; they were in just about everything in my cupboard that was grain/flour based.
We got on the computer and started researching and found that they were Pantry Moth larvae (also known as Indian Meal Moths). Super fun. I had actually noticed that we had more of a moth ‘problem’ this year than most years but the moths were tiny…not your average garden-variety moth that you occasionally see seeking out the nearest light source as evening approaches. Here is a photo of the nasty bugger:
I don’t typically have a problem with moths. What i do have a problem with is the fact that these monsters are laying eggs (apparently 100’s at a time) in the nooks and crannies of my cupboards and in boxed food. These eggs are hatching into larvae that are INFESTING my foodstuff. GAG, GAG, GAG. On one site we read that you are to place any unopened, packaged food that you suspect to be infested in the freezer and this will kill the larvae. Um, yeah. So…I’ll have DEAD larva in my food. Clever. I opted to not go that route and tossed everything into the garbage. Dammit. I was pissed.
I ordered pheromone traps to snag these nasty critters before they can reek any more havoc in my house. I got the traps in the mail today and immediately set them up in my cupboards. HA! I caught several moths right off the bat. Apparently, I didn’t wash my hands properly and still have some moth pheromone on me because as I type this I have two tiny moths dive bombing me. Gotcha suckas!
So, now I have to empty my cupboards, clean them thoroughly and caulk any and all cracks and crevices to prevent another ‘infestation’. I really dislike that word. Bet you’re all just dying to move in with me, aren’t you?
I was exhausted and pissy. I needed something sinfully delicious to calm my nerves. And seeing as I had to throw out just about every ounce of food in the house the only thing I had left was: marshmallows, a chocolate bar and some graham crackers. Ahhhhh…s’mores. I was too lazy to start a fire in the fire pit so here is how my day ended…with this:
and this:
Oh…and with a very nice, long nap. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
And as a quick aside…my dear fellow blogger and ever-so-talented artist, bronsonfive, over at Pictures of Doom has hosted his first ever “Contest of Doom” – featuring drawings submitted by fellow bloggers. Go on…go check it out…you won’t be disappointed. You can even see my latest artistic endeavor!