Ow ow ow ow I am afraid to leave my house now because I (and my little dog too!) keep getting stung by yellow jackets. Today I sprayed my hat with Off! (I don't know whether yellow jackets are repelled by Off!, but that is what I had) and pinned all my hair under the hat, so a yellow jacket would not have the excuse of getting tangled in my hair, and I sprayed my t-shirt and my limbs, and I clipped on a thing that claims to repel wasps because it is saturated with peppermint and lemongrass oils, but I did not spray my hands. Bam! Poisoned lightning strike on the back of my right hand.
I put up a yellow jacket trap in the back yard, far from the house but unfortunately only ten feet away from the alley.
I found a nest in the back yard and made a plan to fill the entrance with dirt. I don't know whether that will work. Online, people talk about pouring gasoline or kerosine or pyrethrin down yellow jacket entrances, or covering them with glass bowls, but not dirt. I don't know why not. Anyway, I was waiting until my son could be here after dark, so we could try my plan and drive each other to the emergency room if we got stung too many times. Yesterday I saw that the nest had been partly demolished, with bits of its paper walls strewn around the hole. I think it must have been a raccoon. Yay trash panda!
I think there must be another nest, in front of the house, because it is near the front door that I always get stung. At least they are not
in the house.
• What are you reading?
Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi, for SF book group.
• What did you recently finish reading?
The Grammarians, by Cathleen Schine. I love words, and I love stories about female friendship, especially this kind, where each friend looks to the other as a mirror, to help her figure out who she is, and as a window, to help her figure out what the world is. These two are twins, and they're both the kind of child who makes friends with a dictionary and tries to take it to bed in order to have someone to talk to.
In school, both Laurel and Daphne often had to clarify that they were themselves and not their sister. "No," they would say, "I'm the other one."
"I'm the other one," Daphne said in third grade when a little boy who had a crush on Laurel stuck paste in her hair. "I'm the other one."
"I don't care," the boy said, but he ran away to the far end of the playground.
"I'm the other one," Laurel said to the cafeteria lady who knew Daphne's love of Sloppy Joes and was ladling an extra gelatinous spoonful onto her hamburger bun.
The cafeteria lady said, "Oh! Well, you enjoy your meal, too, dear."
"How can we both be the other one?" Daphne asked Laurel.
They looked up "other" in the dictionary.
The entry was surprisingly long. "Other" was an adjective that meant one of two. It was usually preceded by a demonstrative or possessive word. Daphne liked the idea of a demonstrative word, imagining the word hugging and kissing "other," generally making a spectacle of itself, until their father explained that a demonstrative word meant, simply, a word like "this" or "that."
Then Schine opens the next chapter demonstrating two meanings of "every other":
Uncle Don and Aunt Paula and their little boy, Brian, came for dinner every other Sunday; and every other Sunday, Laural and Daphne and their parents went to Uncle Don and Aunt Paula and Brian's house for dinner.
I was thinking that Schine reminds me of Laurie Anderson, the way she plays with overloaded words; then one character used
"O Superman" on his answering machine. When Laurel starts making poetry out of grammar samples taken from letters people wrote to the War Department, I was hoping for a reference to
John Cale's "Cordoba". That didn't show up, but still, Cathleen Schine speaks my language.
• What do you think you’ll read next?
Classics book group is back from its summer break, and we're reading
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel.
• What are you watching?
The Judge,
The Meddler, and
Hello My Name Is Doris, from the library, and then on Kanopy,
Sensitivity Training,
Small Apartments, and
Chicklit.
Chicklit was disappointing.
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