Der Fladermous

This post has nothing whatever to do with these roses, but I still have some pics of the roses in Portland so I figured I'd toss 'em in here and there. Then again, I was going to write more about those questions in life that you really know don't have any good answers, and one of those was "Do you smell that? What IS that?" The answer to that question in that format is rarely roses, or fresh-baked bread, or even ground coffee beans--but rather, that funny smell in the garbage disposal or the yogurt that got forgotten in the back of the fridge. Some other questions with predictably negative answers:

• "This wasn't your favorite sweater, was it?"
• "Was that your car illegally parked out there?" (it's the word "was" that guarantees a bad outcome here)
• "Are you going to wear that?"
• "What did you think you were doing?"
• "Don't you already have a lot of yarn?"
• "Do you know what's IN that?" when voiced by someone with very healthy eating habits, just as you're about to suck down a triple chocolate milkshake or something else with 8 jillion grams of sugar and enough fat to grease up a cadillac.
• "What are you doing Saturday?" is a good question when asked by a friend, a great question when asked by the hottie down the hall, and a really, really bad question when asked by your boss who is holding a stack of work and it's Friday afternoon.
• "Did you see what the cat did?" is somehow never followed by "he swept up the cat litter he kicked out of the box and then painted a small but perfect pastel rendering of our house" but rather "I don't have time to clean it up."
• "What's it supposed to be?" just has no good place in a conversation--particularly when applied to anything you just made and are proudly showing off.
• "Did you hear that?" is great when listening for loons by a peaceful lake, and really bad when the house is dark and still and you just watched "Friday the 13th".

You get the drift. The worst one I've heard personally in the last few weeks was this one, uttered by Mr. K at about 9:00pm as we were sitting in the hot tub in the pitch dark, looking at stars--ready for this one? "Hey, listen to that squeaking. Do you hear the bats?"

Do I hear the--did you say BATS????

This was shortly followed by another dumb question, specifically "Honey, what are you doing in the middle of the hot tub trying to completely submerge yourself?"

Okay, yes, I know that bats are interesting and cool and they eat mosquitoes and that's all great. But in the eyes of Ms. Knitingale, bats are cool primarily in theory, or on nature specials filmed on other continents where she is not. In person they are nothing more or less than winged mice which makes them no less creepy but significantly more mobile than their cheese-eating brethren. And really, the thought of mice flying blindly about the dark back yard (Mr. K blithely pointed out that they were squeaking because of the need to echolocate, since they can't see in the dark--proving that there are statements AND questions with bad outcomes) where I am unclothed and also unable to see is about as welcome to me as an invasion of moths just coming off a 7 day fast and in possession of a map of my yarn stash.

You can safely assume that the run from hot tub to bathrobe (which I had to feel for and which I put on reluctantly while imagining entirely too well what leathery wings against my back from a nestling bat would feel like) was both fast and panicked. And accompanied by the laughter of a husband who also wondered aloud if I was trying to find my "bat robe" and who should be sleeping with one eye open if he knows what's good for him.

Do I hear the bats, indeed.