Battle of the Weevil

So there I am last week, minding my own business, pouring a bowl of cereal in the kitchen, when I see a little black bug crawl across the counter.

Hmmmmm.... definitely suspicious, and a little undesirable, I think, "But hey. No big deal," says I. It IS July. And I DO live in Houston. Bugs are sort of in Vogue right now. And I also figured that one little black bug was NOTHING compared to ants that swarmed my CLEAN basket of laundry the other day, OR the humungo roach I found crawling across the counter in my friend's bathroom (luckily, we live in different apt. complexes).

So.... what? I have one little harmless black bug. No biggy, right? 

Muahahahahaha. 

WRONG.

After the first little black bug siting, I kept seeing more.... and MORE. They'd be crawling in the cupboard. On the floor. Over the fruit basket. And although I was--admittedly--more worried about an attack from the ant masses congregating in the walls of my apartment, the little black bug issue started to peak my interest. 

Last night, after returning home from a restocking-our-fridge-with-frozen-foods-because-we-have-no-time-to-make-real-food trip at the grocery store, I happened upon one of the little black bugs crawling across the counter. Since Hubbs was there, I says to him: "Hubbs, what kind of bug is this?"

Of course, Hubbs doesn't know that much more about bugs than I do. But he IS the big, tough man of the house, and I figured I could use his manly prowess to help me figure out the source.

We started poking around the kitchen a little bit, trying to find where they were coming from....

And oh boy... we found 'em all right.

Weevils. Congregating en mass. Inside a bag of rice. SO. GROSS.

Because of the discovery of said weevil hidey hole, I spent this morning bleaching the H-E-double you-know-what outta my pasta cupboard. I found more weevils in the lasagna noodles, in the angel hair pasta noodles, and one blasted little guy that had made his way into a box of my Mac n' Cheese. Grrr.

Now THAT's just getting personal.

For a moment I considered killing the guy and saving the Mac. But then I started wondering... what if a lady weevil circulated through my Mac and lain little baby weevil eggs somewhere in my noodles? [sigh]. I threw the whole box away after that point. Dirty rotten....

However, this whole weevil v. Mac n' Cheese battle gave me a good idea for a blog post. Why? You ask. Because it kind of reminded me of editing a manuscript.

Sometimes when battling with a really tough section of manuscript--a section I secretly know I need to just give the ax to--I draaaaaaaag my feet to the chopping block. I'll sit there trying to justify why I should save the section, thinking something along the lines of: "Self, if you just delete this one paragraph, I think you can save the section." This is usually followed by an arduous process of trying to reword the rest of the section to make it kind-of-sort-of work. I work my butt off trying to save my section, all for the sake of my measly word count.

Basically: laziness.

This is a bad habit. One I'm getting better at fixing, but is still a work in progress. I just have to keep reminding myself that a crappy section of the book can be replaced.... by something weevil-less, something that will ultimately make my book better as a whole. Word count isn't everything. In fact, its nothing compared to the overall scheme of things.

Just ax it.

This, is my new motto for crappy weevil-filled sections of my book.

Weevils, Mac n' Cheese and Editing. Yes, I may have been suffering from a bleach high when I wrote this post...