Bugs

Bugs have been on my brain lately. Not literally, thank goodness.

It seems every time I step foot outdoors, bugs of all shapes and sizes accost me, sending me into a squealing and shimmying fit (very ladylike). It makes me long for the high drifts of winter when nothing flies but the snowflakes. I'll admit it, I'm an indoors gal and I'm gonna own it.

I've probably also been hypersensitive to the abundance of bugs lately because I am editing my first manuscript about, you guessed it, bugs. The author is the coordinator of Big, Fancy University's annual "Bug Bowl" in which children come to campus to eat chocolate covered crickets and the like.

Ew.

Still, the manuscript is interesting and I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about Japanese beetles, caterpillars, and silkworms. However, I'm not completely sure that editing this manuscript hasn't somehow made me extraordinarily attractive to the insect species. As I trimmed unnecessary words and inserted missing commas the other day, a June bug flew about my office, lazily bumping into the lights in my office's ceiling. I left the room in search of a flyswatter (I'm bloodthirsty), but returned to find it had wandered away to disturb some other poor soul. Later, a Japanese beetle took up shop on my windowsill and refused to leave despite my best efforts to drown it in Clorox bleach (I couldn't find a flyswatter after all). Finally, as I left the building for the day, a wasp sent me scurrying down the sidewalk at an unnaturally fast pace.

At least none have crawled in my ear and taken residence in my brain. Yet.