In which your intrepid heroine does mortal combat with a waterbug.

I was all mellowed out, ready to crash. Lights were mostly turned off. Pajama bottoms (worn only when I need to be out of my room) tossed onto a corner of the bed. I had just grabbed a catalogue and was headed for a comfort break when there was an unearthly shriek from Middlest's bathroom. Then a call for Fourthborn to bring a flyswatter. Stat! Then, when Fourthborn declared no flyswatter in sight, and she doesn't do flying things, a call for mom.

It was not my finest moment. I hollered, "Putting my pajama bottoms back on! Putting my glasses back on! Going for the bug spray!" in a most unRavelled tone. Middlest opened the bathroom door for me, pointed out the miscreant, and I zapped it with with two or three direct hits.

Waterbugs are not very bright. They don't know when they're dead. This one kept moving, up the cabinet, across the front of the cabinet, thunk! to the floor, and out the bathroom door, disappearing somewhere in the hall. We gingerly pulled all of the laundry out of the closet and found no nasty surprises.

I am not going to win Mother of the Year this year (again). Middlest wanted to talk until the panic attack subsided. I snapped that I wanted to write, thank you very much, until my heart rate from the unexpected activity and the ambient anxiety settled down enough to make another stab at going to bed.

It is at moments like this that I really wish Beloved were still mortal and among us. I don't need him to kill bugs for me. I'm pretty consistently lethal in that department, having had years and years of practice. It just would  be nice to have him here to calm Middlest down and soothe Fourthborn, who is [probably] freaking out silently. I checked just now. She says she's fine. Not calm, but fine.

Pretty sure that waterbugs were invented by Lucifer before he got himself booted out of Heaven. Either that, or they contain a cure for cancer, in which case I wish it could have been discovered when we were living in substandard housing all those years.

I could really use a pint of Ben and Jerry's about now.