…and not sure how or why I’m not having a good day, or how to articulate it, but feeling the need to, anyway. Not looking for advice or sympathy; just letting people who are interested in the question of “How am I doing?” know, and leaving myself a record for later in case there’s a pattern.

Causally, there’s a lot of stress right now relating to jury duty. It’s also springtime in Maryland, also known as vespiform hell. Our state bird is an oriole that was stung to death by wasps. I’m pretty chill about things with stingers. I know how to co-exist with them. If it was just me, I would open a window and wait for it to take a hint.

But my office is also the main cat room, and our cats… they are not mighty hunters before the Lord, but they have instincts, and these instincts might lead them to do something that might end regrettably if there’s something with a venomous stinger set on repeat trapped with them. And I’m also a bit leery about opening windows enough to encourage a bug to fly out them when the cats are around. But there’s an upper limit on how long I can shut the cats out of here, which means a wasp in the office has to be dealt with. A spray bottle of soapy water and a fly swatter to follow-up with works wonders, but it still makes things a little tense leading up to it.

Notes for those who need to deal with individual wasps or hornets indoors in a pet-safe way: get spray bottle. Put dish soap in. Fill with hot water. Shake up a bit. Test the spray bottle a few times to make sure that it’s capable of repeat squirting. Wait until the target insect is in a docile phase, sitting on a window pane or something. Spray it. If it’s clinging to a surface, it will fall. Spray it a few more times. Keep spraying it. Spray it until it looks dead. Swat it. Swat it again. Keep swatting it until it looks dead. Swat it some more. Dispose of it.

In theory, the first treatment of soapy water will kill it… eventually. But a little extra soapy water is pretty cheap to make sure.

Anyway… I’m realizing as I type this that dealing with the office wasp situation disrupted my routine enough that I didn’t take my vitamins or mood pills this morning, which is probably why I’ve been having such a waste of a day. Rectifying that now.