The work from the honey do list continues.

After the successful vinyl siding cleaning, I realized (after donning sunglasses) that our house numbers were not very easy to read.  Quite faded, they were.  Thinking back to the morning of the hubby's surgery, it's actually amazing that the EMTs managed to find our house so quickly.

So I went back to the hardware store (they're getting to know me by name)  and bought new numbers for the mailbox, as well as a nifty plaque with numbers for the house itself.  Easy to install.  And they look great.  Yay me.

Our front door really needed a bit of work that I really didn't wish to delay any further.  We needed a peep hole, for one.  And new trim.  This was kind of embarrassing, actually, as since last holiday season the only frame surrounding the front door has been cheesy holiday garland. 

No, it wasn't because we were feeling particularly festive.  Just lazy.  Er, distracted.  No, busy!  Busy!  That's it!

But it looks muuuuch better now.  And hubby was able to manage installing the peep hole while propped on a stool while I hammered in the frame.  Team work!  Yay us.

I also purchased a supply of miniblinds - about medium range expensive - for damned near every window in the house.  

This is because most blinds in our home looked like this one.  Ahem.



But now - all done!  Crisp and clean.  If someone looked at our home from the outside it would appear neat and tidy.  A fine facade.  They don't have to know that the inside still resembles the aftermath of a tornado.

But now comes the main point of this missive.

Taking out the trash.

This job generally fell to my husband.  I'd help, of course, if things were overloaded, but he usually had no difficulty wheeling the heavy dumpsters to the street.

With the doctor's lifting limitations, however, the job is now mine.  Not a big deal, I'd done this for five weeks so far.  And it had been working quite well, actually. 

Except for last Friday.

The weather had been hot, with over 100 degrees Fahrenheit heat index, and things were sticky and humid all week.

With all of the odd jobs around the house, the trash was accumulating more rapidly than normal.  So the dumpsters were unusually full.  

It was early on trash day when I tipped and wheeled the first dumpster from our backyard around to the front for pick up.  Piece of cake.

I got the second, it was especially heavy and amazingly odiferous, and it took some effort to maneuver.  When I finally managed to tilt it back I received an unexpected shower.

Not of water.  

No, it was a shower of wet trash and, um, maggots.  

Now let me stop a moment and defend my own personal ick factor.  

My brother was very fond of spiders and snakes and rodents in many forms so this was a normal part of our growing up (our poor mother).

For a time I'd planned on being a biologist, so I spent many teen years climbing trees and panning streams and turning rocks over and checking out every possible bug.

I love to fish.  I'm good.  I bait, cast, reel 'em in, kill, clean and fillet and cook whatever I catch.

Most critters do not bother me, is what I'm trying to say.  Even when we discovered one of our cats had tapeworm and we had to treat the entire bunch I managed.  (Pilling 5 squirming cats?  I still have nightmares.  And the scars from the scratches.)

I just don't do maggots.

They are quite possibly the most disgusting thing in existence.

I know their purpose.  I know if they did not exist the world would be hip-deep in rotting corpses.  I know this.  

I just don't care.

I just want them to stay far away from me.

Of course, in the interests of science, I did do a little maggot research.  Everything you wanted to know about maggots but were afraid to ask.

Life Cycle



I was surprised flies live that long, actually. 

And I had no idea that these maggot things could get so big.  (Okay, so this  isn't really a maggot.  It's still icky.)



I found out about the newest medicinal uses for maggots, and how this sort of therapy is saving lives.  In fact, a friend may have to go in for some maggot work on an ankle wound.  It is positive.   (Still, I'm not posting a picture.  Trust me.  You don't want to see.  Something about them crawling through open wounds in the feet . . .)

I found out some people cheerfully eat maggots.  Casu marzu is a cheese made by allowing maggots to eat the fementing foodstuffs (it creates a very soft cheese).  Apparently it's a delicacy.  Okay.



And I learned that science is sometimes very disgusting.  On more than one site I found teams of researchers who'd placed an animal carcass in a protected location and filmed it as maggots ate it down.  Weeks, this takes.  In some cases, months.

I've included a link to one group, Science Buzz.  It's a pretty terrific site, actually.  In Liza's Pig Cam Log they took daily web cam pictures of this poor dead pig as it succumbed to the munching mouths of tens of thousands of maggots.

[url]http://www.sciencebuzz.org/topics/forensic-entomology/lizas-pig-cam-log[/url]

For an extra treat make sure to click on the time-lapse videos.

At any rate, back to our story.  The trash dumpster, the tipping, the unexpected shower?

Apparently there was a mass of these dead- flesh-eating wrigglers on the precariously perched bag on the top of the trash, and when I tipped the dumpster, they tipped, too.

On me.

Ew.  

Ew ew ew ew ewwwwww!

Cue the early morning screams.  And me, hopping around, shaking my head, completely horrified that these things were in my hair.  And then I finally ripped off my T-shirt - luckily it was still kind of dark outside, and continued to flail.

Finally I ran inside, only to discover some of them were still on my feet and flip-flops.   The horror.

Hubby helped.

I finally sprinted into the bathroom and took the longest, hottest shower I could manage.  Better.  Still shuddering beneath the hot spray, however.

After?  I still had to take the dumpster around front for trash pickup.

To my surprise, most of the maggots that had spilled were gone.  The sun was coming up warm, and I suppose they couldn't remain on the hot patio.  And there was also a scurrying of ants everywhere.  Apparently maggots are yummy food for ants.

I set the dumpster in place out front, no surprises this time, then came inside to make breakfast for the family.

But I was too tired to cook.  Still too freaked out.  I didn't really have the energy to manage food for everyone.

So I told the kids to toss on some clothes and we'd go out for a quick bite.

I really wasn't all that hungry, anyway.  Maybe just a breakfast burrito and a side of that maggot cheese.