You need an invitation to party at my house. If you don't have one, I'll probably blog about it angrily later.

My sickness is increasing seemingly in direct negative correlation with the volume and strength of my voice. Today I stayed home from church to rest and recuperate before work starts up again tomorrow and in doing so I realize something: none of these flies fear me.

After I tried and failed to kill any flies with my semi-nude screaming, and after Peter had composed himself and decided to help, he took to murdering the pests with his belt. We took turns hitting them and smooshing them, and tag teaming our hits, and it really seemed all sorts of effective. Here's a photo I took of Peter in action:

This morning as we were having breakfast, he noted that we seemed to have squelched the problem, cause there were no more flies. YAY! 

Then he left. AND THEY RETURNED TO TAUNT ME. 

What has happened?? I was a fearsome beast capable of striking fear into the hearts of bugs, and now I am being bullied by flies. This is uncool. It seems that my help in killing the bugs was actually incredibly limited, and they are in fact only afraid of my mighty, belt wielding husband. 

Here's a picture I took of me unhappy in bed: 

This information that flies don't fear my wrath is upsetting, but for more reasons than you might think. 

It seems the longer we are married, the more I realize that I am NOT a strong, independent woman who don't need a man (I tried to write "no" man, but the existence of a double negative on my blog, even if ironically, was too painful to permit.) I'm all about feminism, and in fact I'm 100% sure that on a later date I will write a "Feminism Guide for Dummies: Misandrists and Misogynists Need Not Apply" because I'm so constantly amazed at how many people tell me, "Well, I'm not a feminist or anything." Really? You're not? I think you may be. Do you think men and women aren't equal? I'm sincerely interested. 

Okay, hang on. Need to work out my original point again. 

Right, I'm all about feminism. Since getting married, though, I find myself foiled by things such as stubborn jar lids. 

"I. Can. Do. It." I strain, pulling on a lid. "I. Can. Do. It." chanting determinedly while a vein bursts somewhere in my skull 

"Need help?" Peter offers, 

"I. Can. Do. It." I continue to insist, until I eventually give myself a friction burn on my hand, have an aneurism, or crap my pants, whatever happens first. 

Dozens of jars that Peter has opened for me and now these dumb flies attest to me I can't survive on my own, and in fact this marriage is one of necessity, not just romance. 

Cockroches, murder, and flies, oh my!

I'm a big girl. I mean, relatively I'm actually pretty small, but I am grown up. I can also be pretty tough. Even though I often huddle in my bed and cry over social interactions, be they real or hypothetical, I am mighty against bugs.

When I lived in the Outback/Aloha house (our landlords changed the name at one point), my roommates called me The Cockroach Slayer. We would get beastly cockroaches in that house, and no matter how many times we bug bombed, or how well we cleaned, there were always plenty around. However, there was no need to fear if I was nearby. I would hear screams from the other room and run to the rescue, slaying that sucker so hard that all of its ancestors would cry and applaud simultaneously. I don't fear cockroaches, because my hatred for them overpowers any possible fear feelings.

One time, I came home from play rehearsal to an empty house. It was a Monday night and all my roommates were at Family Home Evening at our church. As I took my hair down in the mirror, I saw a cockroach the size of Texas wandering on the ceiling behind me above my roommate's bed. Now, I'm not entirely sure why I gain an accent when I slay, but like all good villains, I do monologue to my prey as I come for them. So, as I grab a shoe, I began to speak to this monstrosity,
"You theeenk you can come eento mai house, Meester Roach?"
and *WACK* I smack him. However, being a cockroach, and thus incredibly difficult to kill, it is not a kill shot, and he falls to the bed. My roommate's bed. What first started as a simple assassination, has now led to an angered cockroach in my roommate's bed, which I am pretty sure she won't appreciate. I continue to hit him, and he continues to live, and eventually escapes behind the mattress and the wall to hide. At this point, I'm enraged; I shove the mattress off the frame in order to finish my murder, and find that I can't find the roach anywhere. I continue my search, by monologuing death threats while yanking boxes and suitcases out from under the bed to find the bug.
"Yoo can rrrun, but yoo caaannot haide, aI weel find yoo, and then aI weel keel yoo." I yell while crawling under the bed.
"Uh, Melly?"
Slowly I back out from under the bed to find two of my roommates and a boy from our ward stood in the doorway to our now destroyed room.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, hi, guys!" I say, sitting in a mess of boxes, sheets, a mattress, and papers, "there was a cockroach."
Eventually I DID kill the thing. The Cockroach Slayer leaves no survivors. Oh, and I cleaned up the room again. I'm a good roommate.

Two years later and in a new home, Peter and I have found our apartment infested with flies. We are remarkably clean people, and thanks to this influx of flies, have been scouring every surface trying to destroy any source, thus are now even cleaner than before, but STILL THE FLIES REMAIN. Last night specifically, the dozens of buzzing monsters were driving me insane. In the past when faced with flies, I have used rags to whip them dead, but none of the rags in our apartment were the right size for whipping. After trying and failing over and over, while getting more and more frustrated, I ripped off my shirt, screaming profanities and continuing to flail all my limbs in an attempt to connect to anything in a death hit. As I was already sans-pants when this situation begun, I was now an underwear clad, screaming, crazy woman, thirsty for fly blood, and Peter was in hysterics to the end of tears on our couch watching me.
We still haven't solved the problem, but we've put in a work order for new screens, hoping that trapping all entrances into our home will do something good.

Bugs. I loathe thee.