Well, my Christmas tree is finally in its box, in the garage where it belongs. It went there on Saturday.

Yes, I know it’s March. Yes, I know Christmas was 2 1/2 months ago. And I tried, I really and truly tried to put it away. December 30th I actually started pulling down all of the Christmas decorations and on January 1st I started putting them back into storage. See? I blogged about it.

But the tree was the last thing to get taken apart and stored because it is, of course, the largest and heaviest decoration I had. I figured I’d need help to take it apart (though I’d managed somehow to put it up on my own), but I could at least take all of the ornaments off of it and get the box inside, right?

Wrong.

Later that same weekend, I wanted to take a break from undecorating and head to the beach for a bit, so I opened the garage door (where the Christmas tree box is kept) to get my beach chairs….

…and was met with a wall of teeny tiny CRUNCHING-UNDER-FOOT things. As I moved they started to fly into the air… and then I got close enough to see that they were thousands upon thousands of BEETLES.

Keep in mind that I am in my BATHING SUIT (with a cover-up, of course, but STILL) and holding a beach bag and there are THOUSANDS of little insects everywhere. And then I discovered their NEST– inside my emergency supplies and snuggled up next to (and INSIDE OF) our garage furniture.

The next door neighbors had moved out that week, but the garage was opened and I assumed some workers were over there (they’d been replacing floors all week), so I walked next door to see if THAT garage had beetles. One of the other neighbors was sitting there with another guy I assumed to be one of his friends. I asked them if they’d seen any beetles. They said no, but wanted to know WHY.

So I showed them the garage.

The neighbor scooped some into a cup to take to a guy down the street who does pest control, but we had an entire conversation (again, with my IN MY BATHING SUIT and HOLDING A BEACH BAG) about the SWARMS of BUGS in my HOUSE.

Then it occurs to me to introduce myself to the new guy (since I’m already the crazy lady with the beetles).

“Hi,” I said. telling him my name and shaking his hand. “Do you live around here?”
“Yeah, I live right here,” he said, pointing at the OTHER HALF OF THE HOUSE. “I’m your new neighbor.”
“OH!’ I said. “Well, you should probably get CURTAINS. Just, y’know, because all the windows here are level with each other. And the noise isn’t too bad, but if we’ve both got our bedroom closet doors open, we can totally hear each other. Just so you know.”

And then I drove off to the beach.

Later I realized that I must’ve seemed like not-the-sharpest-knife. I mean, of all things… Neighbor lady shows up dressed for the beach and tells you her half of your shared house is INFESTED WITH BUGS and then tells you that you need CURTAINS and about how you can hear through each others’ closets?

It’s a wonder the poor guy has spoken to me since then. (He does seem nice, though, and not too thrown by the fact that I made possibly the worst first impression ever). It helps that he has a dog. Dog people are usually nice.

….

Later that week I attacked the beetles with my good bug spray. It took three applications to GET them all, but I finally managed it and this weekend (exactly two months after the whole process began), J and I put away the Christmas tree. In the garage. With no beetles.