Yesterday evening, we returned from the evening festal liturgy to discover that Juliana had cornered a cricket in Ana’s bedroom and was taking her merry time disposing of it.  I’m not sure what it is with cats and playing with their pray before killing it.  Ana was slightly traumatized by the whole experience.  I don’t think she’s ever seen the “killing side” of a cat’s personality before.

Meanwhile, I got caught up in the whole, “getting the kids to bed a semi-reasonable time” thing and forgot all about the battle for survival going on in Ana’s room.  I’ve been pretty wiped out lately and went to bed not long after my children.  At about 5 AM, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  It was Ana, standing beside my bed, hair disheveled, her already big blue eyes were glowing and widened in fear to the point of taking over her little face, like Cindy Lou Who on steroids, “Mommy, there’s a bug in my room.”

What else was there for me to do but trudge up the stairs and go on a bug hunt.  I turned Ana’s light on and inspected the floor beside her bed.  No bug.  Ana spoke, voice, trailing up an octave in fear “No mommy, it was crawling up the wall.”  I looked up the wall, I looked down the wall, I peeked between the wall and her bed.  No bug.

This seems to be happening to me a lot lately.

“I don’t see any bugs, Ana.”  I motioned for her to get back in bed.

“Well, I thought I saw one,” she said, slowly getting herself back into bed.  I tucked her in, gave her a kiss and returned to my own bed for another hour of rest.

Later this morning, the kids found Juliana’s sport, lifeless and limp on the front door mat.  I had to dispose of the body, of course as everyone around me seems to be bug-phobic…even if the bug is already dead.

Being the weird kind of person I am, I wonder what message I’m supposed to learn from these recent attacks by mystical bugs.  Is there something I perceive to be a problem that really isn’t?  Or is there something out there that really is a problem that I’m not seeing?  Some strange combination of both?  Or perhaps, nothing at all and maybe I just like to assign meaning to stuff that’s not really important…

God bless…