Everything was wet when I woke up. It had rained while I was sleeping, and, then this morning, the rain started again, but only for a short while.

The day is cold and dark, even bleak. It is a day for staying warm at home. I have chores to do here like finish putting presents into individual bags, maybe a half hour chore, then wrapping them, an endless chore.

My friend Peg and I spoke on the phone yesterday and laughed a lot, mostly about bugs. Bill, Peg and I lived in a duplex together on school grounds in Ghana. We used to have cockroach hunts in the outside kitchen. Peg remembered knocking on the wooden kitchen door and hearing the cockroaches scurrying at the sound before we went in armed and ready . They were big. I told Peg about one of my favorite movies, the original In-Laws. Peter Falk, a CIA agent, was at the dinner table with his son’s soon to be in-laws when he talked about the six months he spent in the bush, and the giant tsetse flies which picked children up with their beaks and took them away. The flies were called the Jose Grecos de Muerte, the flamingo dancers of death. That they had beaks was questioned. Faulk swore those flies had beaks and was sorry his slides couldn’t be processed. I’m telling you now I saw giant bugs in Ghana. I’m not sure about the beaks.

Peg and I laughed again about the flour. We had to buy giant bags of it which we stored in the kitchen we didn’t use because of no gas for the stove. The bags enticed what I think were weevils because we could see them in the flour, but that was no big deal. We just sifted the flour to catch the larger bugs. The smaller ones got baked into whatever we were making and were rendered harmless.

Peg and I couldn’t think of a bug which scares us either there or here. The centipede was impressive, and I did let it have his way, assuming it was male for no reason.

I am not a lover of flies. I know they do have a couple of redeemable factors, but I don’t care. Chase that fly. Either whack it with a magazine or swat it with an old fashion swatter. Jack eats flies thereby earning his keep.