Be glad you aren’t me. Today, I went into our pantry, to get out some spaghetti. There is a plastic drawer in there, in which we keep things like pasta and legumes. I opened the drawer. Out flew 1…2…3…4 moths. There in the drawer another two flapped about merrily. I looked at another shelf in the pantry. More moths, flying freely. Hmm…I pulled out the entire drawer. There I found, that the moths had NOT just come to visit. Instead, they had, how shall I say, crossed cultures and made a new home in our kitchen as expatriates from the insect world. Blast! We buy a lot of legumes at Whole Foods, because legumes are cheap, and yummy, and easy to store. We tend to just leave the legumes in the thin plastic bags that the store provides to carry them in. I thought to myself, “but the legumes are in plastic…bugs don’t like plastic!” I informed my mother of the situation, while she was watching the WORLD news in the other room. Please note that the WORLD news is my mother’s favorite kind of news. She watches it after her Novellas, and Oprah and the local news; but before Doctor Phil and I think Dance Wars or Super Nanny or whatever reality show is on that evening. To the point, my mother informed me that the “plastic” bags at whole foods are made from like rice paper or something. Ah Ha! So much for finishing The Republic today. So, I began to examine the legume bags one-by-one. Partially embedded in each bag, several times over, were what seemed to be narrow, brown egg casings. Crawl-hopping through the hills and valleys of my favorite food were numerous small, grayish moths. But let’s not forget the larva! NEVER forget the larva. The red-heads: tiny white larva doing happy slug dances along the edges of the bags, as well as at the bottom of a bin of still-bagged Basmati rice. So, of course, I had a cow. Because it’s larva! And I visualized every story about maggots I have read with children at work to visualize each summer. It’s amazing how many stories there are, maggots in cheese, maggots eating infected wounds, etc etc. THIS is becoming a long story, BUT we must remember three things. ONE-my mother is blind TWO-I am squeamish THREE-my mother was watching the WORLD news The fight began. It sounded something like this: Me: “Waaahaahaaahaah! Can you come here please?!” Mother: “No! I’m watching the WORLD news!” Me: “I’m calling you for a reason, I need your help!” Mother: “What do you want me to do? I can’t see!” Me: “I want to tell you about the situation!” Mother: “I’m watching the WORLD news, I can’t read the newspaper like you can!” (note, I don’t read the newspaper) “I need to be informed!” Me: “You don’t need to watch the WORLD news right now. You don’t need to be informed. THIS is news, I’ll inform you!” Mother: “Calm down!” Me: “I can’t calm down, these are Bugs! I hate bugs! I am squeamish! I need you for moral support ok!” (cue general noise and yelling) ETC. After about ten minutes of my mother going back and forth between the 11th plague in the kitchen and the remains of the WORLD news, Dr. Phil came on. Please note that in the meantime I am still going “WaaahWahWaaahWahhh!” over every egg, larva, moth I see. Also note that Dr. Phil tends to have certain guests appear on his show for several days in a row, thus allowing my mother to always use the excuse that she is “waiting to see the outcome of this story”. I shake my fist at Dr. Phil! So I lugged the tv into the kitchen and set it on a chair. Which was GREAT, because the show was about some Rapist/Murderer/Husband-and it was detailed, very detailed. And because my mother can’t see and thinks she can’t hear, the volume was rather deafening. Deafening! I shake my fist at Dr. Phil! So we washed and strained all the legumes, to save them. Well, the lentils didn’t make it, because they were rather eggy. So into the trash went brown AND yellow lentils. Yellow! NOT THE LEGUMES!!!!! So the next several days we will be cooking a lot. Don’t come over for dinner. | 
