FemiKnitMafia

1. Bats

Not rabid. Which makes feel guilty for having them killed tested. Before my town would finally agree to have them tested for rabies, I had to trap them. This is no small task, but I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!

Clearly I’m a tough chica, because the local Health Dept. guys were still jumpy when I handed the bats to them in sealed tupperware containers. Pansies.

The Bat Exclusion company says we have a colony in the attic, and they’d be delighted to help me part with several hundred dollars to evict the colony. Shit!

2. Friends

Seriously, Fiber Revival was the best day ever. Go see Maryse, Cheryl, and Adrian’s beautiful photos. I taught a woman to knit, and while I was teaching her to cast on, she told me that she wanted to learn because her 3 year old son has muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease with a terrible prognosis, and she needs a hobby to keep her mind off his health problems. Whoah. All hail the power of wool.

3. Grad School

I got a decent score on the GMAT. I got in, as of today. They offered me a merit scholarship, and I negotiated for a shitload more. Classes start on Saturday. Yes, as in 4 days from today.

4. Wheel

I bow to the beauty of Craigslist. Antique wheel - $50. She’s wicked cranky but functional, and she has a story to tell (like me!).

I returned from the seller’s house with a fresh bantam egg, german shorthaired pointer paw prints on my capris, slate-colored arabian horse drool on my shoulder, and baby chick pee on my left hand. Her home is idyllic! More details later.

*so sorry that i’ve been so terrible about emailing lately.

Last night.

11:45 pm: Wifey wakes up to our docile kitty Grace growling and jumping around in Little Man’s bedroom. Then she hears the tell-tale sounds of a bat.

11:45 & 30-seconds pm: Yours Truly, self-appointed leader of The Feminist Mafia, and protector of pansy-ass-Wifeys worldwide, discovers TWO bats in Little Man’s room. One under Grace’s paw. One circling the new light fixture. I scream like a little girl, grab the boy, and run back to our room.

11:55pm: Heart still racing, I re-enter the war zone. I gather my courage and perform a Xena-howling-back-flip (watch from the 1 minute mark). While the cat holds the bat down, I throw a plastic washpan over it. Yes, Batilda is trapped! But where is Stellaluna? I return to base camp to assess the situation.

12:05am: After creeping around the entire house with my sword held high a broom, I hear the cat again. She’s standing on Little Man’s bed, and meowing at his curtains. If she could, she’d be standing there rolling her eyes, pointing to the window and saying, “dumb ass, it’s right over here.”

12:05-12:30am: Wifey is practically pissing herself with laughter on the -outside- of Little Man’s door while I’m engaged in mortal battle with Stellaluna. The bat circles my head, I swing the broom and shriek. The bat circles my head, I swing the broom and grunt. The bat circles my head, I swing the broom and curse. And so on. Finally, I stare deep into Stellaluna’s beady little eyes and say “I’m gonna kick your ass.” Thankfully Wifey is laughing so hard that she doesn’t hear that line.

12:30: There’s a glitch in Stellaluna’s sonar and I finally knock her out of the air and trap her under a basket. Yes! But what now?

Our local Police Department, entirely unhelpful (as usual).
Me: Can I get an Animal Control Officer over here to pick up a couple bats that I found in my son’s room so I can get them tested for rabies?
PD: Ma’am, did the bat bite your son?
Me: I don’t know, he was sleeping.
PD: Well, did you wake your son up and ask him if he was bitten by a bat?
Me: No, he was sleeping. If a bat bit him and he realized that a bat bit him, the entire neighborhood would know it.
PD: Can you see any bite marks on your son?
Me: No, but do -you- know what a bat bite looks like? [resisting the urge to say, "well let's see, there are two small circular wounds on his neck that are swollen and oozing a slightly green substance, and there's a tall pale man standing in the corner."]
PD: Ma’am, did you see the bat bite your son?
- - ad nauseum - -

Long story short, the bats are still alive and trapped in Little Man’s room (11:30 am). The local Police, Animal Control and Conservation Offices were all complete a-holes when I called them this morning, so I called the State Department of Public Health, who assured me that I did the right thing, and that Batilda and Stellaluna should both be tested for rabies.  Supposedly someone will come to my house to get the bats today.

I made an appointment with a Bat Exclusion company for Monday.

And I’ll be buying some lumber to make a bat house this weekend. I’ll even apply a fresh coat of paint, pay for utilities, and provide free parking if they sign the lease.

And docile kitty Grace, the hero of the house, got an extra scoop of Cat Chow this morning.

She’s Baaaaaack! And happily snoozing away. Or is she a new friend?

Stay tuned … the dusk is near.

ETA: Apparently WordPress won’t let us embed You Tube videos either. If you’d like to see more of Stellaluna, click here and tip your head to the left. [sorry, I'm a first time You-Tuber.]

This is for Mel, and anyone else who’s interested in bats. Here’s what I learned tonight:

1) If you turn the light off, bats will move around. Light on: stillness. Light off: movement. and so on.

2) Bats don’t understand that bloggers need light to take pictures and video.

3) Bats wake up like the rest of us: twitch, stretch, bathe (aka lick various body parts), eat, and fly out of the house.

4) Bats clean themselves just like cats. They lick, lick, lick, and then do that cool lick-my-foot then rub-my-head thing.

5) They have five fingers on each hand/foot. Each finger is opposable. Think about that.

6) Their wings are almost translucent, and crinkly - exactly this shirt I almost bought at J. Jill.

7) My bat is named Stellaluna.

7) She’s a brunette.

I intimidate her. I left the room for one freakin’ minute and she was gone. I should’ve left the spotlight on.

G’night Stellaluna. Go find your Mommy.

If the Yarn Harlot can create verbs, so can I. I’ll see your Kinnearing and raise you one Harlotizing.

Harlotize
verb (harlotized, harlotizing)
1. The act of the Yarn Harlot linking to your blog.
2. The panic that grips a blogger when their blog stats go wild: She was so harlotized that she couldn’t even click the mouse without twitching.

3. When bloggers hide: She ran off to Alaska after she was harlotized.
4. The evil grin of the Harlot when she realizes that another blogger will face a mere 1,000,000th of the exposure that she deals with every day: She was harlotizing in glee at the thought of some blogger twitching behind the computer screen.

Here’s hoping that all the new visitors were so horrified by my irreverence that they returned to their nice normal lives unscathed. Nothin’ to see here …

except maybe a cute boy in his new Kenneth Cole suit ($20 down from $88 at Macy’s!!) that we bought for an upcoming family wedding. My boy in a suit! I’m beside myself with pride!

Now we have to convince him to wear real shoes. Maybe.

It’s like something out of a book (pg. 105) — I go to this crazy place with a bunch of wicked crazy people. I see and meet a bunch of crazy people. I drink alcoholic-bevvies with even more crazy people, and then suddenly, like I’ve been released from the clutches of boredom, Icarus is suddenly ready for the fun part!

Black hole - buh-bye!

Chart 2, here I come.

Thanks to the Harlot for a wonderful evening. And for the record, I was not involved in the panty incident. Nope, not me. I was innocently playing with precious babies in the back row the whole night.

Apparrently I’m a sucker for insanity. After receiving a recruiting call from the admissions director of a local MBA program that I’ve been looking at for years, I dropped all previous plans for starting a different graduate program next summer and started compiling an application. [what can I say? she was persuasive.] Then I scheduled myself for this little 4 1/2 hour fiesta of head-banging.

If all goes well, I’ll attend orientation in a couple weeks and start classes after Labor Day. So please pardon me if I’m absent for the next couple weeks. I’m trying to re-learn all the math I forgot in the 15(!) years since I’ve taken a math class. Also, if you see me walking around with an Algebra 1 (Grades 5- book, don’t laugh at me. You hear that Haddy? No laughing.

To prove that I still care about all things knitting, I’m going to put down the math book and go see the Harlot tomorrow night with some of my favorite people. If you’re going, please say hello. Here’s a recent photo of me so you can spot me in a crowd.

Thanks to Mel for the Simpsonize Me fun.