A bit ago we had friends for dinner. I apologized in advance to all of them for my lack of housekeeping skills, as we are in an old house and I can never seem to keep anything clean. One of my friends told me not to worry at all.
“I grew up on a farm,” he said. “We had cobwebs in our soup.”
Oh how true that is. No matter where I look or how many times I clean them up — in some corner of my house you will always find this:

And then — in the garage, we have a Charlotte’s Web scenario right now. I was looking for terms about how wondrous our pigs are, but instead only found this little guy eating his lunch:

But the ultimate bane of my existence is this godforsaken creature:

The house fly, I think, is the WORST thing about living on a livestock farm. By August, instead of playing Sudoku on my IPad, I play how many goddamn flies can I swat at once. I am up to three. I am thinking about learning that chopstick trick from “The Karate Kid.”
“It’s a healthy ecosystem,” my husband tells me.
Yum, yeah. Flies landing on everything, laying eggs that form maggots. Healthy.
One just landed on my arm as I am writing this. I want the thing to die a painful death. I guess I can never be a Buddhist now.