Cicada-Killer Wasps in 2024

I’m glad Andy doesn’t read my journal because he’s always been a bit fragile and I know this would hurt his feelings, but I am definitely not going to be looking in on his wall anymore. Same old stuff. God, Stevie, paintings, God, Stevie, paintings… To each their own, but while the paintings are nice, he can keep his delusions and immature celebrity infatuation that most of us outgrow in our twenties.

Speaking of celebrities, I saw an old movie with Jennifer Lopez in it. She was my kind of hottie back then, famous or not.

I’m a bit tired and I’m not sure if it’s because I had bread yesterday to make peanut butter toast with (I got so hungry at the end of my day for some reason and this was a convenient thing to have), because I took melatonin, because I woke up a lot, or all of the above.

The more I think about it and the more research I do, the more I’m convinced I don’t have sleep apnea and that my problem is caused by too many years of nasal spray use. It can cause a collapsed septum which I think is responsible for the snoring I’ve been doing. My throat structure has always been what it is and I’ve only gained a pound or two since coming here so I can’t believe it’s connected to my weight. Besides, I’m not that big. I’m kind of stuck in a catch-22 because stopping the spray means my nose is less stuffy and dried out, but the congestion then builds up in my head which causes problems with the eustachian tube in my bad ear, so I’ll have to find some other form of decongestant, preferably one that won’t leave me drowsy. If I can’t figure it out on my own, then I might have to begin the work of trying to get into an ENT.

We found out exactly what’s been burrowing at the side of the driveway, and the snake would have been the better deal. Tom noticed more digging activity and I could hear this weird sound coming and going. Well, they’re cicada-killer wasps! He flooded the hole to see what, if anything, might come up and something sure did. When I first saw what seemed like a humongous wasp, my first thought was that it was one of those killer wasps that was invading certain areas of the country and I went to run indoors, not knowing if a million more of them were going to erupt from the ground. In my panic, I fumbled with the lock code.

We immediately got to work researching and learned it’s almost certainly cicada-killer wasps which are deadly to cicadas but not humans. Still, hundreds of flying things with stingers is nothing I want to deal with so he’s been spraying the ground and today he got a special powder for wasps, ants, and similar insects. It can take a couple of weeks for the eggs to hatch and then another couple of weeks for the new wasps to emerge from the ground, so we’re going to be treating it for the next month to make sure they never make it up. He filled in the hole with dirt and it rained which helped pack it in and push the poison down, so more than likely they’re already trapped down there. The females don’t have stingers so the males fly around the opening to protect it. With any luck the female and the eggs are dead. It should storm again later and help pack it in even more.

We picked out an outdoor bench for in back. I’ll listen to music through my headphones on days when the planes fly by every few minutes, which is most days, unfortunately. I want to get about 10 minutes of sun every day that I can. It was $45 and is made of a combination of metal and plastic. It looks like it will also be easy enough to stand on its side if we need to throw it in the storeroom in the event of a cane. Funny how they said this was going to be such an active hurricane season, yet the only serious one we’ve had was Beryl. It’s still a bit early in the season, though.

I also saw a video on how to propagate lucky bamboo, so we’ll see if I have any luck with that.