I know you do this. (Also! Super Fun Friday Guessing Game!)

So let's say there's a pair of jeans in the laundry basket. Recently washed, recently partially air-dried, then finished off in the dryer on the lowest heat setting, so they don't mildew. But because they were in the hamper for a while, and then because it took a day and a half to air-dry them before I chucked them in the dryer, I haven't worn them for a bit. Five days, maybe? Six? And even though they're my absolute FAVORITE JEANS, and I have been wearing them for YEARS, I am nervous about putting them on. So I hang them up in the closet instead, and wear the same pair of jeans I wore the day before. Even though I don't love them. Even though I would rather be wearing my favorite pair.

I threw out my $7 scale over a year ago (some days I weighed 130 in the morning and 210 in the afternoon, and something about that just didn't seem right) so I mostly use my clothes to gauge whether I've gained or lost weight. And when I haven't worn something in a few days, like my favorite jeans, I start to panic that I'm going to try to put them on and not be able to pull them over my knees or something. Like perhaps I've done exactly what my scale always tried to convince me I was doing on a daily basis. And it gets exponentially worse if I've WASHED them, because it's possible they will have SHRUNK, and gotten STIFF, and I will be able to feel even the most MARGINAL OF CHANGES IN SIZE.

Am I right? The worst feeling is when I finally put them on, and they feel... off. You know? And the whole time I'm wearing them, I'm thinking, should they really feel this snug across the hips? Am I imagining that they're pulling a little across my butt? Did I dry them for too long or did my suddenly enlarged thighs turn them into DENIM LEGGINGS BEFORE MY VERY EYES? And usually I'll wear them for a couple of days, until they're all loose and baggy and should not be worn in public unless I want someone to take pity on me and hand me a sandwich and some loose change. And I feel WAY BETTER about myself when they're all stretched out and saggy; sometimes, I even FORGET that they're stretched out and saggy, and I put them on and think, “holy crap, Self? You should have a COOKIE or two! DANG but these jeans are getting WAY TOO BIG!” And then I eat those cookies, and maybe a pizza, and maybe some fries, and maybe some of Asher's fries, and then it's time to wash them again after I wipe my greasy hands on the legs, and then? After I wash them? It's time to do Paragraph One of this entry, ALL OVER AGAIN.

I do this all year round, but it's particularly painful in the winter, when the rain and the darkness and the cold keeps me from running five miles a day, or pushing the kids around the lake in the stroller. I'm trying to work up enough enthusiasm to break out my 30 Day Shred video for the days I can't get outside, but it is so hard to eat dinner and put the kids to bed and not want to just collapse on the couch with my laptop for the remainder of the night. I am trying to get up and run in the morning, but I am having this Major Sleep Issue where it doesn't matter whether the baby wakes up one time or 2500 times a night, I cannot fall back asleep. I have never struggled with this kind of thing before, so it is KILLING ME.

Also, my back hurts.

So yeah, it scares me when my favorite jeans are clean and I might have to put them on. Because I haven't been exercising like I was in the early fall, or the summer, or the spring, and exercise is my foolproof way of staying out of my old size 12 (OKAY, 14, YOU GOT ME) pants. Good eating habits are not. TRUE STORY.

I don't know how to wrap all of this up and end this entry so LISTEN TO THIS. I was over at my parents' house a couple of weeks ago, and it was a warmish kind of day, and there were bugs EVERYWHERE. (Yes, these bugs.) Mostly the bugs stayed on the outside of the screened-in porch, but some of those creepers lucked into flying through a crack or a hole or something, so there were three or four inside the living room. So I told my mom about them, and she got all irritated, you know, “WHY do we pay an exterminator if we're going to have to exterminate them OURSELVES,” and she dragged a chair over to the wall where the bugs were clinging so she could reach them and then, instead of smacking them with a rolled-up newspaper or a shoe, you know, like a normal person would, SHE SCRAPED THEM INTO A PLASTIC BAGGIE.

“Mom, what are you doing?” I asked. My first thought was that she was trying to SAVE them, which is RIDICULOUS, and I am a professed Saver of Many Animals, including mice and turtles and worms. But she wasn't. She was going to collect them and give them to my father.

I don't think you would ever, in a million bazillion years, guess what my father was doing with those bugs. And it just occurred to me that maybe you might want to take a stab at it? For a prize? Go ahead, guess in the comments. If anyone gets it right, I'll gladly scrape together some kind of delightful care package. But I won't have to, because OMG, you guys, WHO ON EARTH WOULD COLLECT BUGS FOR THE REASON MY DAD DOES? Dude, my family is so weird. No seriously, go on. GUESS. (I'll tell you on Monday, unless someone guesses, and then I'll just update this post with the winner and the correct answer.)

Comments

[lisa schneider]

Your dad is going to give them to the exterminator to try and get some sort of a discount. (my husband would totally do that... actually, he would make ME do that)

[DevilsHeaven]

Are they stink bugs? Some stink when you mush them. Is he going to stink himself up to go hunting or something? A non-weird answer (to me anyway) would be to use them to go fishing.

[beyond]

he used them for fishing/fly fishing bait. or! he fed them to the pet lizard/gecko/frog.

[RockyCat]

He put them in a compost pile? To, well, recycle them?

[Megan]

Heh, I'm with Lisa - my dad would totally save them, too, and then confront the exterminator with a Bag O' Bugs, all "WHY should I pay you when these things are still living in my house? Give me my money back."

Or maybe your dad is using them to get other, smaller insects?

[Kate]

he wants to take photographs of them.

[April]

I guess the fishing thing. That was my first thought!

[Swistle]

Does he make shellac?

[Julie]

My mom used to catch bugs and then freeze them (this being the nicest, most painless way we could think of to kill them) and then use them as a science display in the preschool classroom that she taught. It was never an unusual thing in our house to open the freezer and have to move a plastic container with a dead caterpillar, or a beetle in it, to get to the ice cream.

Is your Dad a teacher, by chance??

[Ambry]

I recall some non-descript distant family member with an immense [LIVE] bug collection when I was a child. He had everything from butterflies to grasshoppers to spiders. Total weirdo [imho]. So maybe he collects them?
Or, as I think someone else said, fly fishing. Although, from a fellow VA resident, I would never touch a stink bug, much less put a hook through one!

[Nothing But Bonfires]

I think he has recently learned of some sort of high-tech bug technology that prevents jeans from shrinking in the dryer when you launder them alongside the bugs. He's just putting the final touches on his plan and then he's going to market it to Target.

[Natasha]

My kids always collect dead or live bugs to give to my step father so they can all gather in his office and look at them in his cool microscope!!!! Funniest thing, i wonder if tis is what your father wants to do?
Natasha

[Mimi]

Don't tell me he's going to eat them... doubtful, but just throwing it out there!

[morgan s.]

I am kind of with Swistle on this...maybe he is going to grind them up to make some kind of ink to paint with? Might help if we knew what kind of bugs we are talking about here.

[joaaanna]

Abstract Art?

[Penny]

Mail them to the exterminator company and demand a refund?

[Miss. Blur]

Im slowly moving up to a size 14 and with my upcoming wedding I REALLY need to go the other way! Lol
And my quess with what he does with the bugs is that he uses them to...oh hell I dont know and I dont want to wait till monday to find out Lol but I guess if I must..

[Hope]

Squash them for stress relief?

[Melanie]

Does he dress them up for his train display in the basement? Or do they serve ANY role in a train display?

[Karly]

He's going to put them in a McDonald's chicken nuggets box and store them in the guest bedroom for some unsuspecting guest to discover? No? It's just my grandma that does that? Ok, then.

[Monica]

I'm guessing that he was collecting them and mailing them to Rutgers University where they are studying the spread of these bugs across the US.

And if not, nevermind, because I totally don't mail them my bugs.

[Monica]

https://njaes.rutgers.edu/stinkbug/report.asp

Just in case anyone is as weird as me.

[laura]

Woman. You are my new favorite blog. And you would believe, I found you through the creepy stalkerific virtues of Google Reader, which suggested I might "like" your blog. Who knew? They were SO RIGHT.
Point is - Yes. To everything you just said. Yes. Yes and YES! The 30 day shred, the avoidance of the clean pair of jeans, the exercise-not-good-eating-habits (I tell my husband, the only reason why I work out is so I can eat what I want, when I want. I cannot, by the way, because, I don't work out enough).
Anyway...My guess on the bugs would be feeding them to a pet...but...I don't know.
My family is weird, but not bugs-in-a-plastic-bag weird.

[twitter.com/NatalieG720]

I'm going to vote that your dad is sending them to Rutgers to be studied.... ::shudder::

[Austin]

Is he going to use them to prank somebody? Because that's totally awesome and freezer-worthy if, um, a bit odd.