These Are. A Few Of My Least Favorite Things

I've never liked thunder and lightning. I think it stems entirely from childhood. My Buelita during a thunder and lightning storm. would have us move away from windows. Sometimes she would cover up the mirrors. She would say that the lightning could come through the window and kill us. Also, we weren't allowed to use the telephone, because she thought the electricity would come through the phone line. For the longest time, I thought lightning could come through the shower head if you were taking a shower, so I would always hurry up and get out of the shower if I heard the thunder and lightning approaching. in latter years I also heard that you don't want to be on your cellphone during an electrical storm. The worst thunder and lightning I ever experienced was when my family was vacationing and we were driving through the mountains. You could see huge lightning streaks light up the sky and the thunder was super loud. When my parents lived in the country, it was quite common to see lightning strike the grounds and fences there. It was terrifying. Also, while I was working at a school district office, we had these tall palm trees across the street at the library and those things would always get hit by lightning and burn up. One time my daughter and I had to pick up something from the district office right after she had her baby and as she was exiting the car, the palm tree next to her got struck and scared us to death. We hurried and scurried inside the building until the storm passed. I feared it for many years. Then I learned to tolerate it because I have convinced myself that God is in control of my life. It took a long time to leave things in His control.

I do not like bugs. I think it is because I've lived with people who always required me to either pick them up and throw them outside or squash them. I do not like spiders, small crickets, Jerusalem Crickets aka Potato Bugs, cockroaches, ants or June bugs. I've had some nightmarish experiences with ants. When I owned a house in Perris, CA -- it was rumored that the house we bought did not receive the usually pre insecticide treatment required when houses are first starting to be built. And we must have been on a colony of ant hills. Always in Spring and when it rained, they would find their way to my pantry and there were always lines of them going against the walls or across my carpets. I remember after having my twins, my babies would spit up there milk -- sometimes my husband wouldn't do a great job cleaning it up and then I would find these hoards of ants feasting on spit up milk. I wondered what that black spot was on my carpet and I'd check it out, it was a pile of ants. One time I picked up my baby out of his crib and there were like 10 ants that had found their way up into his crib. I immediately called Terminix. We ended up having subterranean termites and just billions of ants around our property. So the exterminators had to drill holes all over our land and fill it up with poison to kill everything. We also had to clear out so much stuff, like we were moving to have our home tented. It was a horrible experience. However after it was done, there was no longer an issue with ants. It was so bizarre, because prior to this happening, I had dreamt of these huge ants taking over a place in my dream. They were huge and they were spraying their ant attractant out of their lower body, which then attracted more ants. It was a horrible dream. One time, I went into my pantry and grabbed some chips out of a bag and they must have gotten in there, because there were a couple dead ants in the bag and the taste of the chips was horrific. When I see scouter ants where ever I live, I just panic that I will have another ant invasion. I have regular pest control always for my homes.  Just writing about these bugs makes me itchy.

Boll weevils are disgusting too. One time my BFF from middle school had visited Hawaii and had brought back some sesame candies for us to share. We were on a field trip and she split them with me. Oh they smelled wonderful as I love anything with sesame seeds and a hardened caramelized shell. They were bite sized, so I stuck the whole thing in my mouth and bit down. Before I knew it, I felt hundreds of something small crawling in my mouth and going down my throat and making me gag and choke. There were hundreds of these little boll weevils which had housed themselves inside the middles of these candies. Oh it was horrible. I tried spitting them out and they just kept crawling. Finally someone offered me some water to rinse out my mouth. I'm pretty sure some of them made their way down my throat and into my stomach. Initially it was horrifying, but then became hilarious. Another time, I had been using my bag of flour. I had just purchased it and baked with it. Within a week I needed to use it again  (I had transferred it into an air tight container) and I saw all these little brown specks in it. Evidently, sometimes the larvae of wheat boll weevils make it into the flour and then they hatched. I immediately rid my pantry of that potential nightmare.

If you have read my previous blogs you also heard of my sixth grade lice experience which resulted in my mother shaving my head bald. I was forced to be bald for about three months until I started to produce a pixie boy hairstyle. Prior to that, in order to attend school, my parents had a hairstylist design a child sized wig for me to wear, so I wouldn't be embarrassed by my baldness. If you work and have kids who attend elementary school, it is highly likely you have received the lice letters. I remember one time I was at work and felt something moving across my forehead and swiped it off. I saw it crawling across my desk and knew immediately what it was. I inspected my twins and sure enough there was an issue of these creatures in their first grade classroom. I got RID and we got rid of those along with them sporting short crewcuts. Thank goodness they were boys.

However, probably the most nightmarish thing you'll ever read today, was when I was just a little girl. I started to feel an itch in my non mentionable buttocks region. My mother knew about these things and decided to take a flashlight under the covers of both my brother and I at night and found that we had contracted pin worms. Oh my goodness. She took us to the doctor to get a proper diagnosis. I can still remember the taste of that horrifying red medication they had us take. The worst part was not knowing these parasites were inside me, but when I started to eliminate them, it was nightmarish to see them. I had hundreds of them. It was learned that I had caught them from my dirty nail biting brother!!! Obviously there was a lack of toilet hygiene in my household!!!

I do not like when the earth moves under my feet. Usually, I get this feeling of nausea and then the earth starts shaking. You know especially growing up and being told on a monthly basis that the big one is going to happen. I wondered why my parents chose to live in California where there are frequent happenings of these earthly shakes. Then I see some of the alternative disasters that happen in other states and I think that the earth moving isn't so bad. It is annoying to me that everyone outside of California is just waiting for our state to fall off the continent and into the Pacific Ocean. That's just not very nice. I've never wished disaster on any state or country for that matter. It would be devastating.

I experienced a small tornado in Perris, CA. It actually was horrifying to see and it knocked down our entire fence boundaries. That is also the event where I lost my dog Chewy who I had owned already for 8 years. He looked like the Taco Bell chihuahua. My then husband, went outside as it hit our fencing and was trying to hold up our fence. He lost that battle and we had to purchase a new $12,000 fence replacement. I remember that day well. I remember while working at the district office, there was another time we had a tornado warning and we had to take up shelter in our brick district office building until the threat passed. I had also seen a large funnel cloud while delivering a board packet to one of our board members while living there. I asked her if we needed to take shelter. She said no that it probably will just dissolve. She was right. So I don't really care for tornados. I remember when my sons moved to Texas, I always imagined that during one of my visits I would experience one of their devastating tornadoes. I wasn't there for the one that actually touched ground in Round Rock. My son called me from inside his closet to let me know they were in the middle closet of their enormous house waiting for a tornado to hit. I watched it on TV as it crossed the freeway and was headed toward their town. That is every mother's nightmare. Thank you Jesus, they did not get sucked up into the sky and their property received no damage.

Animals can be unpredictable as well. I once had a shetland pony kick me so close to my face that my hair got stuck into the fence where his hoof hit. I was trying to saddle him up and he pinned me between a shed and the fence and ran past me and kicked. I'm so thankful he didn't hit my face or any other body part. After that experience, I wasn't able to ride a horse again. I will however pet one. Also, when I was just a little girl I was walking down the street just minding my own business after school. I heard this enormous deep bark and I turned back and Kujo (St. Bernard) was out of his yard and spotted me and started chasing me down the street. I screamed and his bark just got nearer to me. I thought for sure I was going to be mauled by this beast. Thank God my neighbors heard the commotion and saved me from getting attacked by him.

This reminds me of the time my dog Flower and I were playing and she started to get too rough and ended up biting me too hard. So I taught her a lesson and bit her back on the nape of her neck. I remember the mouthful of hair I got and her slight yelp. She never bit me that hard ever again. My overall experience with my pets has been positive, however, you certainly should never trust a strange dog or wild animal. I've had a raccoon and an opossum jump out of trashcans toward me. That is a bit unnerving.

Oh, I do not like rodents of any kind. I do not like rats and I do not like mice. Rats used to be near the Port of Bremerton in Washington, you would see them scurrying across the sidewalks and across lines and trees. I've also had my experiences with mice in a garage and one or two who get lost and scurry across the floor in my house. I call the exterminator on those guys as well. I remember several years back my parents had rats under their mobile home. I told them as long as those rats are there, I wouldn't stay over night. They said they had rid of them, but they lied. As I was sleeping I could heard them scratching in the walls in their kitchen. I packed up my things and got out of there in the middle of the night. 

I do not like scary things at all. I do not like horror of any type or form. I do not like dark Halloween costumes. I do not like movies that depict demons, monsters and legion voices. I do not like movies that have things jumping out. I remember I took my children to see the original Jurassic Park movie in the theater at their request. By the time we got out of there, my blood pressure was through the roof. I do not like watching or seeing anything with Zombies. I do not like when movies have screaming things. I don't know how people can fill their mind with such ugly things. I do not like being scared by monstrous things.

I have other things that I do not like that are evil, unfair to humanity and negatively exist in the world. But I wanted to share some of my experiences of the few of my least favorite things. As a Christian, I try to rely on God to keep the fear away (sometimes things get the best of me and are quite scary) -- as fear does not come from God.  I know He has seen me through many of the experiences I have encountered having to do with fear.

2 Timothy 1:7 -- "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind."

Matthew 24:7 -- "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places."

Genesis 3:17 -- "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life."

Psalm 91:9-11 -- 'Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; for He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you I all your ways."