If I am ever taken out of my home in a straightjacket, it won’t be for any other reason than that I have completely lost my mind over a fly in my home.  I hate these flies.  They are big and slow and make an awful buzzing noise that drives me to distraction.  I get out my fly swatter or a rolled up newspaper and go on the hunt.  They fly right past me, taunting me to follow them with my eyes and, go ahead, just try to make contact with my weapon.  Ed the Dog gets involved so I’ve got a barking dog who is as insane as I am over the battle knocking over furniture and banging into glass doors in his attempt to protect me from the little buggers.

Last night, way past midnight, I was in the bathroom doing battle with one of these F-15s.  It hit the mirror, in the same five places, probably twenty times, never stopping to give me a chance to hit it. When it does stop, it is behind a bottle of hand cream or just on the side of the cabinet where I can’t get a good hit.  I swish the fly swatter around to flush it from its hiding spot, and then the routine begins again.  Hit the mirror, arc away, hit the mirror, arc away.  Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.  Catch me if you can.

I have had some luck in the past that when it is flying around, I just start waving the fly swatter madly back and forth in the air and, by chance, make contact and end up with a dead soldier on the floor.  Not last night.  It didn’t help that I was just using a hand towel as my weapon of choice.  He won.  I finally went to bed, closing the bathroom door behind me so he wouldn’t follow me as I went to bed.

Apparently I was not quick enough.  I heard him buzzing through my bedroom.  I put my pillow over my head and felt my blood pressure rise.  This was when I realized that at some point in the future one of my sons may be sitting in the next room, quietly explaining to the doctor what happened. “She always got annoyed by flies, doctor, but this time it was different.  She is older and slower now, and she just couldn’t kill it – it kept evading her best attempts at extermination.  Then she just lost it.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  She started throwing plates trying to hit the fly.  She thought it was on the lamp and knocked over the lamp.  In between she was holding her ears and crying and begging: ‘Make it stop that buzzing! Make it stop that buzzing!’   When I came into the room she was sobbing in a heap in the chair.  The fly was sitting on the arm of the chair but she had not energy nor desire left to try to kill it.  She was just rocking back and forth and crying uncontrollably.  That’s when I decided I’d better call 911.”

I don’t even want to leave the computer.  Right now as near as I can figure there is a corpse somewhere on the property because there are lots of them challenging my sanity. But I will go downstairs and start again.  Ed is my right hand dog ready to help me.  I shall not go down in defeat.  After a good night’s sleep (I am not certain it wasn’t my imagination that it had followed me)  – bring ’em on.