1.  It’s been a week.

2.  I always mean that particular phrase but somehow this time it feels extra.

3.  A high octane sort of well, THIS has been a week…

4.  And not in a good way.

5.  More like a string of mini-explosions careening through my life sort of way.

6.  Bygones.

7.  I’ve been thinking of Ally Bean this week.

8.  Particularly this post of hers from June discussing the joy of Brood 14’s arrival in her neck of the woods.

9.  Why are you thinking of the creepy orange eye bug thingies, Laura?

10.  Gee, I dunno, it might have something to do with opening my front door to find an enormous dead cicada crashed out on our front porch.

11.  It was big enough that I took one look at the package it was lying next to, thought no way, and firmly closed the door.

12.  That delivery didn’t have perishables, it could wait.

13.  Fast forward to later that day when I remembered to change out the hummingbird feed.

14.  I opened the deck door to find a giant buggy corpse lying belly up a few feet from the mat.

15.  COME ON, MAN.

16.  We’re surrounded by trees here.

17.  Yes, I get that has a lot to do with why there are cicadas. Nature and such.

18.  But wouldn’t you think the darling critters would want to take their eternal rest among their cherished trees?

19.  Not that our porch doesn’t hold its own sort of appeal, I guess.

20.  Except I’m not really on board with hosting a bug crypt.

21.  Call me mean spirited but I’m gonna need the cicadas to choose another resting place.

22.  And that’s all there is to my bug philosophy.

23.  Alrighty, what else?

24.  It’s still an ungodly hot here.

25.  I think BrightSide said it’s supposed to be cooling down some but I’ll believe it when I see it.

26.  We’ve had week after week of brutal temperatures and humidity plus heat indexes creeping up over a hundred more often than I can count.

27.  This is trash weather, man.

28.  I had to haul some stuff to the attic.

29.  I knew it was a bad idea.

30.  And by bad I mean atrocious. Horrifying even.

31.  If I’m honest it was nauseating too but whatever, it had to be done.

32.  Anyway, cue me hauling some desk sections upstairs for storage.

33.  In the dead of summer there’s a bog-like feeling at the top of the stairs.

34.  That space is a giant fist squeezing my chest like one of those squishy stress balls.

35.  Normally I pass through the muggy blip to a bedroom but this week I pivoted right to open the attic door.

36.  That’s when a thick wall of UGH hit me full in the face.

37.  More than just the face. It was like running full speed into a cloud of dense superglue.

38.  So not good.

39.  Three or four trips later I staggered back to the kitchen to suck down some water.

40.  A little worn out, a lot wilted, and dreaming of a season without 82% humidity.