This blog is slowly devolving into a forum about bugs. What does that say about me?

We went to my happy place this weekend, my parents' cabin in southern Utah. I love long weekends and church in Pine Valley. It's such a beautiful building.

We did many happy things this weekend. We went on a happy hike up a volcano, and it was a tougher climb than I imagined, but the view at the top was totally worth it. I love these white and red mountains. And you can't tell from these pictures (even though I do have an awesome Gollum thing going on with my bangs) but I got my hair cut a few weeks ago. It's a really cute bob, shorter than my hair has been for years. I love it, and some day I'll get around to posting a picture of it.

Sisters are happy.

We had a Foosball tournament, and it was happy. Lindsay and my dad, whose team name I won't repeat because most people don't work in the medical field and therefore don't appreciate its humor, won the tournament. They were amazing. I was impressed because we all are actually pretty dang good Foosball players.

We also played this crazy (but happy!) game that we called Around the World Ping Pong (I think that's what we called it) where you run around the ping pong table trying to hit the ball. It was fun but totally dizzying.

So overall, my happy place was happy. But the following story is not happy.

My favorite bathroom in the cabin is in the basement. It's bigger and has better water pressure and no one uses it because it's in the basement. Where the mice die in the toilet and the daddy long legs retire in the corners.

I got out of the shower the first morning, after I had done what I thought was a complete sweep of the bathroom. There, staring right across from me, was this bug. If it hadn't been on its back, things would have been really sad. And naked.

(You'll notice I again used my forensic skills to show the size of this thing.) I still used the bathroom the whole weekend, but it was a bit disconcerting to see it laying there, staring at me with its alien eyes. And no, those black things under its face aren't outlining its chin--those are its pinchers. Which it was waving at me the first time I saw it.

I was going to ask you guys if you know what bug it is (those of you from Idaho are probably shaking your heads at me, wondering why Nevadans don't know these bugs). Yesterday I contacted What's That Bug to try to figure out what this is and on their site I discovered--it's a potato bug. What?! And as my sister Lindsay so eloquently said, "Could you imagine one of those things just waving from a russet?"

Pandering, or a good political move?

I just heard about McCain's choice for VP. At first I was dismayed, because it seemed like he was just trying to pander to women voters. But the more I've heard about Sarah Palin, the more she seems like a good choice (considering that she is the choice; I won't argue about who should or shouldn't be his pick now that the decision has been made). I read this article, and she seems very conservative. Which is good, because McCain is not conservative enough to be the GOP's candidate.

Also, she has five kids. I'm always impressed by women, especially political women, who will have more than one or two children. Any amount of mothering is good, but in this day and age I am impressed by women who are busy mothers and don't apologize about a large household. It speaks volumes about her values and commitment, and I do believe a person's personal life is reflective of the type of civil servant she will be.

So, I'll still vote against Obama instead of for McCain, but at least I won't cringe when I do it.

The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize!

Sometimes I am crafty. Currently my only major crafty successes involve paint. For ceramics. Not paint to actually paint a picture.

I enjoy accessories, specifically earrings. Earrings rock and make me happy and I have a lot of them, but it's hard to pick the pairs out of my cute but small jewelry box. Especially because I have to find plastic backs so my earrings don't slide out (I wasn't smart enough to save the plastic backs when I bought most of the earrings, so I have like four roving plastic backs).

I needed a better way to find my earrings.

With inspiration from MSN Lifestyle and Anisha, I created an accessory board. I used a cork board I've had since high school (you know, the ones on which you tacked pictures of friends and Leonardo DiCaprio, funny comics, etc) and put the accessories on the board using quilting tacks. But the board looked trashy, like all my earrings were on a cork board I've had for 10+ years.

So, using my only creative talent, I painted the cork board in my current favorite color scheme (purple, green, and gold. Totally our wedding colors, totally an obsession, and totally dorky. But awesome nonetheless.). And I'm pretty excited with how it turned out. It's like a functional work of art. And it's SO easy to find my roving plastic backs now.

. . . and frightened Miss Muffet away

This post has a picture of a spider. So if that freaks you out, don't scroll to the bottom. Because spiders are gross, but I took and posted a picture of one anyway.

I have had our house bug-sprayed every month, like clockwork, since I bought it 3 1/2 years ago. So there is a pretty nice perimeter built up. Which is great, especially because this summer has been an infestation summer (see my tomato caterpillar story below) but we have been blissfully free of spiders. The first year I owned the house and started fixing my front yard, I made the perfect environment for black widows and had a major black widow issue outside (although I do hunt black widows, which Todd thinks is weird but I find highly enjoyable).

So, back to my bug-spray perimeter (I just realized this post is only about bugs, and I'm a total freak. Thanks for reading it anyway, despite the fact it might be giving you heebie-jeebies). There is a fairly large spider in our garage. It's nasty and large, but I found it dead. Which makes me really happy because that means my perimeter takes care of these types of freaky pests so I don't have to waste half a can of Raid on them (previous experience with this kind of spider, though, shows Raid has NO effect, and only the potent stuff from my bug man can affect it, which is uber nasty). This large thing was trying to live in our garage. Eew.

Caveat before spider picture: using the forensic skills I learned from The Bone Collector, I tried to show you how big this spider is, even dead. I realize some of you may live places where there are bigger spiders. And that is nasty. But if you do, please feel free to share. We'll try to make this the nastiest blog post ever. (Jess, your stories of hobo spiders in Spokane still haunt my dreams.)