I don't consider myself a particularly "girly" girl.....If you see me at a party, nine times out of ten, you'll find me with the guys, shooting pool or playing darts, and telling stories and jokes. You will NOT find me in the kitchen with the catty chicks, who seem to derive some form of pleasure from ripping other women to shreds behind their backs. I've never understood how that's supposed to be "fun".

I don't particularly like to shop, unless I need something specific. If I need something specific, I want to know where in the store it is, and what the fastest path to the register and the exit is.

I can go from shower to door in under 15 minutes and I don't need 20 second opinions on which shoes to wear or if my outfit makes my butt look big. I like playing a pickup game of Nerf football just as much as I like going out for a nice meal.


All that said, there is one area where I am over-the-top girly, and that has to do with anything that crawls on eight legs or has to slither to move around. You've already read my adventures with arachnids in one of my previous posts...tonight's soliloquy revolves around the slithery side of life.

Our "drill night" this past week wasn't a drill per se, it was really a work detail (which I have no problem with, I realize it can't all be fun and games and playing on the truck). With Memorial Weekend looming, plus our involvement in a parade earlier today, we needed to get the trucks washed and waxed, the bay floor needed to be completely devoid of anything resting on it, as the floors are being re-done this week, and the whole house, in general, needed to be spiffed up. We'll play host to 90% of our village next weekend after our parade, so a little pride was at stake.

Due to a lack of interest in signing up for landscaping from the other members, I volunteered myself. Three hours of weeding and shoveling mulch later (and the screaming back-ache to prove it the following day) and we moved on to "detailing" the flower beds.

In my left hand? Hedge Trimmers to attack the more resistant roots fouling up the beds (some of those mothers were enormous). In my right hand a hand-rake.....

Envision this with me if you will........on my knees underneath some sort of shrub (I have no idea what, my thumbs are not green...one shrub looks pretty much like another to me)....leaning on my elbows to get better leverage while I hack, clip and tug at a particularly stubborn root. It finally comes free, I toss it aside and start to smooth out the dirt waaaaaay under the shrub, and then I see ANOTHER root. "What the hell?" I say to myself..."It's like they're breeding in the dark".
I reach forward with the hedge trimmers, planning on snipping it in half....which is when it started to serpentine right toward me.

Yes. It was a snake. No, I don't know what kind it was (probably a garter but that's just semantics when it's moving toward you), and I could tell you that it was HUGE, but that might have just been perspective. What I DO know is that I somehow managed to get from almost a completely prone position onto my feet in one move, and almost impaled one of the older guys on the department with the hedge trimmers when I spun around on my feet and ran, screaming....like a girl.

The two older guys I was working with were doing that completely soundless laugh...you know the kind where your mouth is hanging open, bent over with your hands on your knees, tears are streaming down your face but you don't make a sound because you're laughing too hard? Yeah, like that.

As Bill said..."I don't even think dogs could hear that scream it was so high-pitched".

I'm so glad I can provide them with their weekly dose of amusement fodder.