So, I have a nut allergy, and I've always ignored the, like, “May be processed in a facility that might have nuts” warning because, you know, that's basically just there so you can't sue them. Like, it is the, “Do not sue us” warning. That is, that is all it is. It has no other meaning. But anyways, my roommate bought me some chocolate covered blueberries, and she was, like, being extra careful checking. Like, “Hey, this is just the Do Not Sue Us warning, right? Like, you don't care about this.” She sent me a picture of the label, and I'm like, “Yeah, those look good. Love chocolate covered fruit. That's actually so kind of you.” Um, I ate a blueberry and had an allergic reaction, and it ruined, like, the entirety of my day. So I'm not sure if, like, my allergy is getting worse, or if I should take the “Do not sue us” warning more seriously, but this is, like, the second cross-contamination based incident that I have had in recent times. 

My granddaughter -- she's a very kind-hearted girl, still is, but when she was about three, they were having, for some reason, an infestation of black -- big black ants in their house. And -- so I was over there for supper one evening, and these ants kept showing up. You know, there'd be one on the floor, there'd be one on the counter, there'd be one on -- climbing up the table leg. You know, they were just -- they were just being pesty. And so I would kill them. And she was very upset that I was killing these ants. And finally, I said to her, “This is our house. This is -- this is your house.” I said, “You don't want to share your house with ants.” I said, “Ants have their house. They do not want to share their house with you.” And after that, it seemed like it was okay. At least she didn't horribly object to me killing ants, or her parents killing ants. And by the next year, when it was time for ants again, they didn't have such a big infestation, but she had gotten over the, the theory that it's -- you can't kill ants. So yeah. Very kind. Loves all wildlife. And that's wonderful, but I draw the line at sharing my house with ants.

I'm not afraid of bed bugs like a lot of people because I know what I'm looking for. I inspect my furniture when I buy anything. I usually buy new. But I also know that, in my opinion, they are easier to get rid of because they take so long to replicate. And on a college campus, we don't get them in massive amounts because our students do not live with us long enough, or live in spaces where they're easy to survive without being found rather quickly.  So keep in mind, college housing, you have pretty standard, basic furniture. There's not a lot of nooks and crannies in the furniture for a bed bug to hide. The mattresses are generally covered in, like, a plastic fabric, which they would not wanna be on. They come with our students.  It's like -- we had a girl -- two years ago now -- adamant that the bed bugs were from us. That, you know, she moved in, and it's all over her stuff. And we came in with Terminix, and we actually located where the majority of them were, and it was a fabric box that she’d bought on clearance at At Home. And we were like, "Yeah, they're in this. Like, this is where they came from. We can see the eggs still, and you had only been here two weeks, so to have this many crawling around the apartment, like -- they've been on this container for a while.”  And she was pretty horrified. She had not noticed them because, of course, it was dark fabric box, but it was a good reminder to all of us, like, check everything you buy ‘cause you never know. But they don't give me the heebie-jeebies because they are -- I like to refer -- like, when I talk to our students, they are sloths. They do not move quickly. They do not replicate quickly. It takes 10 days for one of them to mature, and at that point, they can start reproducing.  So, I think that that's something that people need to understand. Like, they're not like fleas. Fleas reproduce crazy fast, which is part of the reason I'm terrified of them. But bed bugs? Nah. They're slow. They are super slow. So hopefully I've just educated everybody.

Coney and the bees. Coney was our wiener dog. Our black and tan wiener dog. He lived to be 15, and Coney was a character from the moment he came as a puppy, to his last few days on the Earth. Coney, when he was a puppy, was the most stubborn character in the world. And he liked the bees. There were some bees by our mailbox, and Coney knew that some other dogs had peed on the mailbox. And he was bound and determined that he was going to pee there too. I mean, he was, like, six months old. And he went to the mailbox. And he sniffed the flowers, and he sniffed, and sniffed. And he peed on the mailbox, and he bounced along, and he was very happy, and all of a sudden, a couple of bees came and stung him in the snout. His little snout -- ‘cause he was little -- his little snout just puffed up like a puff pastry, almost, and I had to take him to the vet.  We knew that he'd been stung by a bee, and we didn't know exactly what the deal was, but we picked him up. Took him to the vet. His vet was one -- it was one of the first times that he had been to the vet besides having his shots. He didn't fight going in. He went in. [Name], who is our dog's vet to this day, was fresh out of Michigan State Vet School. And she looked at him, and she started laughing, and she said, “I know it's not funny. I know he's gotta be having a hard time breathing, and all the rest of this, but he looks hilarious.” And we all agreed that Coney looked absolutely hilarious.  And so she gave him some Benadryl, and she said, “He's gonna sleep for the next -- probably sleep for almost the next 24 hours.” She says, “‘Cause I'm giving him kind of a lot of Benadryl.” She said, “He's gonna be -- I don't want him to scratch his nose.” And she said, “I don't wanna put a cone on him ‘cause he's so little.” She said, “Let's just see if he just goes to sleep, and if he just sleeps, it’ll -- you know, it'll be fine when he wakes up.”  And so we came home, and I put…