Where the Bats and Gays Hide

Whew! A weekend at my mother's eating simple sugars, simple carbs, and lots of salt has given me little energy to write, but I do what I must. The weekend ended in a crisis because some of synthetic stuffing from Maggie's dog bed that I had washed several months ago got caught in the water pipe of the washing machine, forcing the seal around the pipe to break and water to pour out onto the floor. Luckily, this did not cause the purchase of a new machine, although I do admit I like walking along the rows of shiny, antiseptic appliances at Sears knowing that a new domestic appliance will bring me one step closer to the fitter, happier existence I so desire. I think I was a 50s housewife in a former life who died in a mysterious vacuum cleaner incident. I love to clean, although I'm not particularly anal or obsessive compulsive in other parts of my life. I just love when things, particularly my life, are in order.

So we went to my grandmother's abandoned house to wash some clothes the night of said crisis. We did a few maintenence things, like finally putting the screens in the windows so that we can open them and air the place out. While we were in the basement doing laundry and searching for said screens, we must have awakened the bat living down there, for when I went to return to the basement to check on some laundry, I saw the shadow of a large winged creature that I thought was a bird flying around before it turned the corner and began flying up the stairs at me.

"I think there's a bird in the basement," I said to K, who opened the door, immediately closed it, and said, "that's a bat!"

My elaborate plan (involving an open kitchen door and many window screens) did not impress K, so we got my grandmother's neighbor Ricky to come over and trap in using a laundry basket (not ours) and one of the aforementioned screens. He then flew out of the house like a bat out of hell and had a cigarette, commenting only that "he hated those things."

What is next at my grandmother's house of horrors? Will we discover a pygmie colony in the attic? Or maybe that's where the gay actors will be hiding during the Republican covention.

Okay, speaking of the gays (snark), K's mother is a total phobe. Of course, you already knew this, but there's this cognitive dissonance surrounding K's mom and her phobeness. You'd think, being a phobe, that she wouldn't want to be anywhere near the gays, right? So she lives with her husband in a gay summer resort (Reboboth, DE), vacations in a gay summer resort (Florida Keys), and used to work as a dresser for local theater companies passing through the Mechanic and Lyric, among others. As of this moment, I am taking up a collection to relocate K's parents to somewhere where the gays aren't: how about Wyoming or Utah? Please send as little or as much as you can spare; we havent' much time to waste!