the dog, the dinner, and the infestation

Yesterday was for finishing up the Christmas decorating and filling up the cookie jar and drinking hot chocolate in front of a twinkling tree.

Yesterday was sabotaged by a puddle of pee on the kitchen floor which I found with my foot in the middle of the night. And chasing the dog in a zigzag pattern through the yard after she found a piece of trash in the woods and wouldn’t drop it.

In case you are wondering who is faster… it’s her. Our neighbors probably have video to prove it. Good thing she is so cute because she is also a little butthead.

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Last night I made Goblaki for dinner. The name of this dish should have been a clue, but I have been trying to diversify my repertoire of dishes and it looked good online. I took a picture so you don’t have to Google it:

Traditional Goblaki is meat and rice rolled in a cabbage leaf and stewed in a tomato sauce, but I made a meatless alternative which turned what might be a very simple dinner into a complicated affair. The stuff in the middle looked so much like meat that Jonathan refused to eat it. He is a serious vegetarian and anything that remotely resembles ground beef is immediately on his no-touch list. The rest of us liked it pretty well, but not enough to justify the 8 million pots and pans I dirtied just to get it on the table. In case you want to visit there are eight leftover “Gobs” in the refrigerator that on one is claiming. 

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This morning started better. I took the boys to the park and watched them shun the playground equipment in favor of a stick and some pinecones. They wanted to bring their treasures home and I agreed so we trudged back to the car with our arms full of pinecones.

I opened the back of the car and we chucked them inside. I guess the impact must have jarred loose the invisible critters inside the pinecones, because about twenty roaches chose that moment to drop off and scatter into the seats, under the floor mat, and all along the nooks and crannies of the car.

I could only stand there and gasp like a fish as I watched them scurry. Even if I were the sort of person who would catch a roach with my bare hands there was no way I could have captured them all.

“What ARE those???” Jon screamed. And because I couldn’t talk just then Jackson supplied “They’re crickets!”

I let them believe that. Because crickets are so much less awful than roaches and if they’d known the truth we might still be waiting there for Caleb to deliver us with a bug bomb. And oh. Oh. You have no concept of how difficult it was to pretend bugs in the car was no big deal, climb into the seat and drive home. All while twenty roaches are wanting to eat my eyeballs out for disturbing their pinecones.

I’ll never pick up a pinecone in the park again.

I spent the afternoon with the vacuum cleaner hose in one hand and a shoe in the other. I’d rattle the seats a little and wait for the roaches to run out. We’re just going to pretend really really hard that I got them all.

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May your weekend be less infested. Happy Saturday.