Bugged by pests

My boring, bland dinner

Today, I learned some things.

I learned that the yellow jackets flying around the street-side window in Katie's room are coming from a nest under the roof.

I learned that the cabinet moths that have been flying around my kitchen have a more official name  – Indian Meal Moths – and that the worms that I found in my food  most likely came into my house from the South Hadley Big Y, causing me to think I should go tell them about the money I spent replacing the food that I threw away. Maybe they'll give me a coupon for something.

An exterminator from Terminix told me these things after he went up to get rid of the yellow jackets and extend a bee pole up to take care of the nest. I wasn't happy about calling an exterminator, so I was pleasantly surprised when he told me that Terminix has switched to  environmentally friendly products. He left me a pheromone catcher to trap the rest of the nasty moths; I have been vacuuming them up and squishing them for a couple of weeks. Sweet success: One of them wandered in there shortly after I put it on the counter.

Last night I closed Katie's door and used a towel to cover the gap at the bottom, but not before one of the yellow jackets got out, causing me to stand in my PJs in the upstairs hall, brandishing an old New Yorker. It went into hiding, so I gave up and took Maddie into my room and closed the door and put a towel at the bottom. This took until about midnight.

Another bug is in the picture, and that is the bug, probably graft vs. host and colitis, bothering my stomach for more than two weeks. Nothing I eat seems to sit well. You can see from the photo what I had for dinner: rice and homemade applesauce. This is getting me down.

You would not expect to find the words "happy coincidence" and "appointment with  gastroenterologist" in the same sentence, but those phrases paired when Melissa said them to me after I told her on the phone that I have an appointment at Western Massachusetts Gastroenterology tomorrow morning to discuss my upcoming routine colonoscopy.

It has only been three days since I started taking the new medications, cipro and flagyl, and she said she and Dr. Alyea are on board with giving them more time to work as they did last time in addition to the steroid budesinide, which I have been taking since the first time this happened in June.

I'll be interested to hear what the doctor the has to say.