That's right. I said it. Earth Hour can suck it. My lights are staying on. Here's why.
Hold on a second ... before you begin reading this, go grab a coffee or a cocoa, some nice comfy p'jamas and settle in for a long, heartwarming story. There will be love, betrayal and even a chase scene! We're talkin' real Hollywood stuff here.
This is all about Earth Hour. An event, observed for the first time in 2007 in Australia. . The event is tomorrow night as a matter of fact.
Every year since then, between 8:30 and 9:30 in the evening, people have been encouraged to show their undying love for Mother Earth by turning their lights off for one hour.
And that is exactly what I did several years ago for our big bulbous globe. I turned every single light off in my house ... for 45 minutes. 15 minutes less than the amount I was supposed to. More on that technicality later.
I did this, even though I didn't have any children tugging at my skirt threatening to tell their teacher on me if I didn't. I did this because I wanted to do what I could for the greater cause.
I wanted to take a part in a candle lit global revolution. I wanted to feel like I was in a Police video circa 1983.
Also, this was something that could make me feel more highly evolved than all of my light burning neighbours, so that seemed like fun.
Earth Hour
Let me set the scene for you. The year was 2008 and the very first global Earth Hour was about to take place.
It was neither a dark nor stormy night.
This is an accurate account of how Earth Hour played out on the evening of March 29th 2008 in a small brick cottage in a small town in Ontario, Canada.
As the Earth hour festivities got underway I took a walk around the neighbourhood to see how few people were taking part. I expected to see lights blazing from every window. Maybe even someone with their furnace running while all their windows and doors were wide open. Or powering their electric toothbrushes with a Hummer.
Something to help me feel smug as I contemplated my own house swathed in darkness a block behind me.
But no.
It seemed I wasn't any more enlightened than everyone around me. The streets were dark as pretty much everyone observed Earth Hour. That was disappointing for me. What I was most hoping to accomplish with Earth Hour was an ego boost.
Even that guy a few doors down who never misses an opportunity to tell me that "recycling is for suckers" had his lights off. Of course, he could have just retired early under a blanket of beer cans while watching a Monster Garage marathon.
I got home and fumbled through the dark into my living room. I thought, it felt good to be taking just one measly little hour of my life to help the world, as I started a fire in the fireplace. And it wasn't just me ... it was the whole world taking part to help save the planet.
It was like we were all giving Mother Earth a great big, green hug. The kind you'd get on St. Patrick's Day from a large, wobbly stranger but without the fear of being vomited on. I sat down by the glow of the fire and admired my neighbours dark windows.
I was already resolving to do this Earth Hour thing every year for the rest of my life. Even if it was inexplicably cancelled in the future - because of people burning their houses down from lighting candles, for instance - I was gonna do it.
I love feeling like it's the olden days, so this "turn off the lights" thing was perfect for me. It made me feel like Laura Ingalls.
For some reason I got up to do something - maybe look for my pinafore - when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Of course, being pitch black in the house I couldn't see what it was. So I felt my way to the closet, running my hands along the walls for guidance, so I could grab a flashlight. There were 15 minutes left in Earth Hour; I didn't want to turn on a light for fear of being ridiculed by my neighbours.
As I knew I would ridicule them.
I made my way back to where I was and aimed the flash light in the general direction of where I saw something. It was around the tablecloth in my centre hall. I flicked the overhead light on and immediately felt nausea that went from the tip of my head right down to my toes. You know that feeling when you almost fall down the stairs and your feet start to tingle from the fear and then you have an actual stroke, followed by a heart attack and then an aneurysm?
I had that.
There were CENTIPEDES crawling up my floor length table cloth. Lots of them. I ran to the nearest switch and turned on a blaze of lights. There were centipedes everywhere. They were crawling up the inside and the outside of my tablecloth, they were on my stairs and making their way up the walls. The same walls I ran my hands all over making my way to the closet.
I really felt kind of ill now. My heart was pounding and my brain recognized this as a time my face should squinch up into the "Oh my God, I see a bug look" but my brain just couldn't cope with the overload so it froze, in a sort of ghastly version of the Home Alone kid before turning itself inside out.
I don't know if there's been any scientific documentation of pulling a nose muscle, but I did it that night.
Turning all the lights off for an hour wasn't only an event for me. It became a full-on festival of fun for the centipede army living in my walls. And they came out to party like it was 1999. I distinctly saw one of them was wearing a little purple satin coat.
And just like that I despised Mother Earth. I sunk to my knees, shook my fist at the sky and howled WHYYYYYYYY?????. I can be very dramatic when given the chance. I couldn't believe after all my work, all my effort she had done this to me. Betrayed me in this way. Because it was HER ... it was SHE who created these little monsters that were crawling all over my home (and they weren't the Lady Gaga little monsters). THEM I would have accepted with open arms.
Now, I love every animal ever made. Except centipedes. Centipedes are the Devil's phlegm and should be sprayed with the most lethal thing you have in a can.
Which this night was hairspray.
With every light on in the house I ran around spraying every centipede I could, which wasn't very many because they're quite a fast moving bug, the centipede. If they ever did decide to go the Lady Gaga monster route they'd make quite a group of dancers.
I'm sure this was quite a site for the neighbours. All of the street darkness with my house lit up like it was on fire offering a perfect view of The Scream running around with a can of hairspray, convulsing, jumping and screaming like a lunatic.
After an hour I had gone through 2 cans of hairspray, the remnants of a can of Raid and all of the pills that might act as some sort of tranquilizer - which at the time turned out to be out half a bottle of chewable Gaviscon.
Every object in my house was held in place with maximum hold, letting off the sickly stench of a hair salon fogged with death chemicals.
For the most part the centipedes had just craned their necks around, looked at me and scurried into a crack to further their party back home. I couldn't sleep for days. Obviously something had to be done.
The next weekend saw the arrival of the Great Centipede Purge of 2008. I threw out, cleaned, and sprayed my 170 year old basement with the most lethal chemicals I could find. Cans that had pictures of skulls, crossbones and upside down bugs with legs sticking straight up in the air on them.
I think you'll be surprised to find out that I do still celebrate Earth Hour. One can't be completely selfish.
I mean, sure she created centipedes but Mother Earth is also responsible for the pretty trees and flowers around in the springtime. And the butterflies I help raise every summer. Butterflies! Now there's a group of friendly, sensible bugs who would never even think of house squatting let alone having a party.
So yes, I still celebrate Earth Hour. And I still turn all my lights off. I just do it in my own special way.
From 2 to 3 in the afternoon.
Personally, I'm not afraid of bugs, except the ones that actually crawl on me! But I can see how some people could be, and that's rational.
What's not rational is turning off the lights to save the Earth by reducing carbon emissions, and then lighting candles (made of petroleum, I'll wager), which releases...
Well, you get the idea. And before you think I'm missing my Monster Garage episodes (I have a PVR), I recycle and compost. I just think playing at saving the Earth by turning off the lights for an mere hour is silly. I, and my two sons, have resolved to turn off the lights for eight hours and NOT burn candles. Not only that, but we'll make sure all the TVs, computers and other electronic toys are also turned off, and we'll do this not just one night per year, but every single night of every single year for the rest of our lives!
Last night was our first attempt at it, and while my sons have apparently decided to keep their lights off for another hour or so, I've just completed my turn at it and I have to say that I'm feeling refreshed and well rested. So I bid you all a cheery Good Morning, and will be on my way!
Symbolism, Bill, symbolism. It's very cool to see the pictures taken from the space station of the dark earth. I've become my parents in my senior citizenship and pretty much live like a mole in the dark anyway, so nobody would notice if my lights were on or off. But my candles are beeswax.
centipedes---the worst thing EVER. i actually am interested by bugs and little critters of all types-- spiders, mice, snakes don't induce any negative feeling in me at all. i don't WANT to share my house with them, but they don't freak me out. centipedes, though-- ugh, i am getting that tingly feeling and nausea in my stomach and choking in the throat just thinking about them. it's gotta be the little hairy legs. and the way they undulate when they move. ugh, i think i need to go throw up now...
Amyjk - Ditto. I was actually covered from head to toe in snakes once. (they're very heavy) Didn't bother me one bit. But these things? Blech. ~ karen
Eeeeew! Those bugs are "affectionately" called "Henry Bugs" at the school I work at. Rumour has it that a kid ate one once for $20. A live one. Makes me shudder even to think of it.
I can stand to squash the occasional Henry Bug- and yes, they are lightning fast little critters. The thing I absolutely cannot even look at, much less be anywhere near, is a caterpillar. Tomato hornworms send me into a complete shivery state of ICK.
My sympathies on your Earth Hour experience, Karen. I am not sure I would still be sane.
you would have to commit me if that ever happened to me, seriously...i abhor centipedes...just lock me up because i would lose my marbles
Karen - your title gave away my solution when you said 'you can suck it'. Yes, mother earth has a way of thumbing her nose at us, but now I fight back with central vac!!! Yes, those centipedes are fast, but you've got a fighting chance when you have great suction power to back you up for just such an emergency. It's also saved me from a few stunned wasps (which I'm allergic to) in the fall and early spring. Though I wouldn't suggest trying to suck up anything bigger than a dime (I'm sure it has its limitations!)
Here's my centipede experience (and a few other plagues along the way).
I decided to sell my last house after putting up with a centipede infestation for 2+ years. I didn't have central vac (or a rough in) and I didn't think the repeated exposure to bug killing chemicals was too healthy for me. The last straw came when I reached for a bath towel and one was doing a jig on the towel; eeeeeeeek!!!! I swore I would do everything to avoid another house with unwanted guests, but alas, it was not meant to be.
Wouldn't you know it; the day I closed on my next house, I did a walkthrough with my sister. I got to the kitchen and there were mousetraps along all the walls; funny how they weren't there at the open house! Oh well I thought, mice can be cute (if Mickey is any indication), so how bad could it be if the house only had a few mice? But just as I was entering the family room a centipede scurried across the floor. It was like they followed me there! I hightailed it out of there and refused to go back - for about a week.
After a week, I mustered my courage and this time I took my parents with me for support. Just as we got to the upstairs level, there was an awful stench permeating the air.
Turns out the previous owner had baited the attic too and a squirrel had gotten in: it met it's demise after eating the mouse bait. It must've dropped dead within the week I stayed away. The guy I hired to fish out the body coudn't assure me that he'd find it when he got there, but thankfully he did.
It's now nine years later and I've been in the same house ever since. Now that I've got the vermin and bug timing all down to a science, I'm not so surprised when I have centipede incidents, hear mice in the attic and get wasps buzzing around the windows in the house. I can practically set a clock to it all now. As long as my trusty central vac is at hand......
Uch. I have central vac and trust me ... it wouldn't have done me a lick of good this night. By the way, for anyone who is interested in doing so ... I installed the central vac myself with a kit from Costco. It's surprisingly easy. Honestly it is. ~ karen
ROFLMAO - centipedes frightening...installing central vac easy peasy
Again ROFLMAO!! So my kind of gal!!
CJ! - I once knew a "CJ". He was in a band called the Ramones. But that's another story. Nothing illicit. I didn't see the humour in my centipede/central vac thing but yeah ... I guess you're right. :) I'm an enigma. ~ karen!
I moved to Miami for school, found an apartment, and then the next day they were forecasting Hurricane Andrew. Got a call from a friend of a friend offering that I spend the night in a sturdier (but unbeknownst to me rather neglected) house; I was alone, scared, and most grateful. Over night during the storm telephone service was cut, clean tap water disappeared, the streets became undrivable because of the fallen trees, water was full of dirt. In 99% humidity and unholy heat (it was summer) air conditioning and even stand-up fans were out of commission, no appliances work (thank g-d for battery-operated radios for news); in the residential neighborhood there reigns a supernatural silence. And then the darkness of night falls, I'm in bed, and - I CAN HEAR the BUGS WALKING across the wooden floor of my bedroom. I HAD to cope (after all - I was stuck in the house at a time when nobody had cell phones and landlines were down, roads were blocked, etc. I turned on my flashlight to dissuade the critters. Junebugs walking on my bed. I made the brilliant decision to lift my mattress to see if this is where the Junebugs were coming from. VERY GOOD IDEA. What I found was a metropolis of scurrying cockroaches. They were living IN THE FILLER of the mattress. Needless to say, the 10000 of them and I spent a friendly evening together that I'll never forget - and I couldn't even call my mummy.
The number of legs on a being isn't too important to me. What I can't stand is NO LEGS! Like snakes! Nothing should be able to move that fast without legs or wheels!
Actually bugs don't freak me out that much. I don't want a whole lot of them around and I don't like to be surprised by them. I don't like being startled. But then if that guy from the Old Spice ad suddenly popped up right in front of me I'd probably scream too. But I'd get over it pretty quick.
I prefer wood floors to carpet; I keep my dry goods like corn meal, sugar, etc. in glass containers; and I throw handfuls of bay leaves into all my cupboards. But if the odd bug sneaks through I can live with it easier than a mega dose of chemicals. Let's face it, if it can kill a cockroach -- designed to last forever -- I can just imagine what it is doing to puny me.
Visually, the insect world is actually kind of interesting. There's such a variety. Now try this -- look at the second pictures above. Come on -- you've done harder things than this! Pretend you don't know what you're seeing & look at that lacey pattern of legs along the sides. Isn't it lovely?!
Jo...
I don't think they're listening. ;)
no. it's not lovely.
One bug, two maybe, even three are no big deal. But an army? CREEPY! I was sure you were going to say this was an early April fool's joke....but no....it's real. I would have been in a hotel that night!
I'm hearing you!
As you may know I am in Australia and we have loads of poisonous things here, but my *shiver* *vomit* *panic attack* is ... r...a....t..s..
See? can't even put the letters together!
And I can't even stand anyone mentioning them either.....
This is apparently from a past life where I was thrown down a well and was eaten by them.....I am supposed to be over this now, but somehow, don't think I am.....
Not sure how I would cope with having a crawling mass of those little things running all over the place.....ikky!
You are a brave woman! I wouldn't have laughed at you if I was a neighbour....
My sister in law goes all to pieces over moths!
We all have our thing that makes us go nutso!
Entomophobia. That's me. To a T.
And as such, I want to thank you for posting not one, but TWO pictures of those hideous looking cretins. And what made it worse was they were on opposite side of the page.
As any bug-a-phob would do, I covered the screen that had the bug with a piece of paper. Yes, because using my hand would bring me much too close to the "ick" factor.
It's okay. Breathe. Relax. The picture is almost at the top of the screen. Who cares if you miss a few lines of Karen's post ... she hates bugs, she's killing bugs. I get it. Then, WHAM. Another freaking bug picture. I thought about trying to hold two pieces of paper up and using my nose to scroll down the page, but it didn't work.
It's a good thing it's Saturday. I'll need all day to recover.
Those are disgusting little monsters.... but I hate to break it to you, but you cancelled the lights out by "driving around the block" I think mother earth would have wanted you to use a bike... I'm just saying! Maybe it was your punishment?!? jk I would still be sleeping in a hotel if that was my house! AND FOR YOUR REASONS RIGHT THERE.... I'm glad it gets to -45 here to kill those SOB's off!!
Scorpions ... OMF. I was telling my boyfriend about my irrational fear of scorpions and I worked myself into such a frenzy I started to bawl. I've never seen a scorpion outside of a pet store. Nor do I have the desire. Centipedes on the other hand, probably fall a short distance from scorpions in my book of critter hating. Did they actually look like those pictures you posted? Because those pictures made me puke in my mouth a bit. Thems are what nightmares are made of!
Yeah, they actually look like that. We had them in Michigan.
They are quite elegant and beautiful - but they bring up every atavistic fear known to man.
*shudders*
OMH I laughed SO hard at this! Karen, I just love you! We could be BFFs! LOL I don't think I've ever seen a centipede in my entire life, but if I see a spider I just go apeshit.
When I was single, I would slam a book as hard as I could on top of a spider until someone came over, and then I'd ask them to help me out by wiping spider guts off my book. When my children were little, I put a bounty on spiders in our house - ten cents per killed spider and all my little boys ran to help me out whenever I shrieked! Now that they're older, they roll their eyes at me and pretend that I'm just a princess... but I know they hate those dastardly critters as much as I do.
We live in southern British Columbia, and in the fall our basement is inundated with "wolf" spiders. They are huge. My eldest son came to me with an ashen pallor the other day saying, "Mom, I just killed a spider the size of my FACE!"
Anyway... back on topic. I love your blog!!
We get Tx bark scorpions in the house in the summer. I started hollering for something to kill them with whenever I spot one in the bathroom, under the couch, in MY BED!...etc.
I tasked my husband to, "Go get a can of Hot Chemical DEATH!" to use on them.
Personally, I think that would be a great brand name!
(Yes, I've had one crawl across me in bed before. My reaction was not pretty. That said, we have not been stung so far.)
$%#@! bark scorpions. I was living on a ranch in southeastern Arizona two summers ago and we used to get them in the house all the time. The one that got me was in the MAILBOX...the tightly sealed, couldn't-possibly-have-bugs-in-there-unless-the-postman-delivered-them mailbox. I reached in without looking and got stung on the outside of my right thumb. Six hours later my hand was swollen into a lobster claw and I had no feeling in my entire right arm. It was four months before feeling returned to my hand and arm below the elbow.
The big scorpions are ickier and their sting isn't fun either, but those tiny bark scorpions are the WORST!!!
Holy crap. I can not even believe that you had to experience that and I haven't stopped itching since I read that HORROR. You just scared me more than Christopher Pike ever did. I send you a huge pat on the back, you are SO brave! Now I will share my centipede tale.
Living on my own, with my boyfriend sans car living in another town, I was chatting on the phone one night, laying in bed with the lights off (not in a kinky way) when I saw a shape above my head on the ceiling. My heart started to race, and I laughed and said "I thought I saw a bug but it's way too big to be a bug, haha" and flicked on a light and THERE WAS THE BIGGEST CENTIPEDE I HAVE EVER SEEN! OVER THE HEAD OF MY BED. I started screaming "I need to call someone to come over here", and my boyfriend urged me to take care of it myself. He walked me through getting the broom, stuffing paper towel in the broom, retrieving a fly swatter and wearing my favourite red shoes, while cradling the phone on my shoulder and standing on the bed. I started screaming and crying. "I'm not an athlete! I'm not going to hit it, I'll miss and it'll fall on me, or in my bed." He urged me forward.
I'm not an athlete. I missed and it fell in my bed. I started hyperventilating and had to call my brother to come over, pull my whole room apart and we NEVER found it.
I didn't sleep in my room for 2 weeks.
-and just a thought - would it have been possible that maybe the centipedes were in the wood you used to light a fire?
That's what I hate the most...oh Lord, when you *can't find them*.
I don't like centipedes...but I fear, hate, loath, and become hysterical over spiders. I have no idea why I behave like this over something that I am about a jillion times bigger. My theory at this point is that at some point in time in a former life, I lived in Australia and was killed by some poisonous spider.
You can imagine my horror to find myself in a spider-infested house in a tiny town in the middle of the Australian outback last year. My partner went in our bedroom with a can of Raid, cleared the bed, sprayed around and underneath it, and then went and bombed the water closet. I made my friend (whose family's house it was) promise that if we found any poisonous spiders in the actual bedrooms, we would get into the car and drive back to Sydney. She promised, laughing at my fear of spiders.
Three days after we'd left, she admitted that she had gone into their bedroom with her husband, shut the door, flipped back the covers to get into their bed, and there was an enormous poisonous spider in the middle of the bed.
The funny part is that she couldn't scream and she couldn't run away and she couldn't do ANYthing she had the urge to do while her husband killed the spider, because she'd just made fun of me and she was afraid we'd have to drive back to Sydney, which was a six hour drive from where we were, in the middle of the night. (Her husband thought this was hilarious as generally she would have completely flipped out, he told me.)
Bugs with too many legs. Bleeech. I feel your pain, Karen.
Karen, the night you've just described is, without a doubt, my version of hell. Centipedes are my most feared and hated creatures of all time. I think I would have had to move. I just couldn't stand it. Once I had a panic attack at the sight of one centipede. I can't even begin to imagine an entire army. Frankly I don't want to. Heebee-jeebees!
Yeah, um ... here's the bad news ... I have the exact same reaction to them. So you can imagine my horror. I actually feel sick to my stomach and sometimes ... well I sometimes cry when I see one. Euch.
Once I discovered my house was infested with carpet beetles. A lovely species I was not previously made aware of. I sure am now. When you find a few wriggling beetle larva in the carpet where moments before you'd been walking carefree in your bare feet no less, that is when you lose your marbles. I vacuumed, re-vacuumed, dusted, re-dusted, sprayed and re-sprayed the entire house top to bottom until I was satisfied any living organism in a one mile radius was dead as a doornail.
But if I traded that infestation for centipedes I'm sure I'd need to be committed. Permanently and without visitation privileges. I honestly had trouble getting to sleep last night after reading that post. You poor thing.
Hah! Sorry bout the loss of sleep. I promise to never mention those horrifying bugs again. Blech.
Karen, were they actually labeled as centipedes? I used to have those. They were always in the sinks or bathtub. And they creeped me out. I had a hard time putting away dishes that had been left to dry in the sink because they were always under there. Waiting. Someone told be they were some kind of a water bug. That was also the house that I came home to to find a dead snake tangled with my mop on the kitchen floor. The cat finally did her job for once. I still shudder at the memories.
Anything with extra legs freaks me out. You did better than I would have in that situation. I would have left, spent the night elsewhere, and called an exterminator immediately. Blech... I had to avert my eyes from the pictures of the bugs while I attempted to read the paragraph next to them... *shiver*
Hah! I could barely look through the Internet for the pictures. I started convulsing. So I know what you mean. Ech.
What you've really got to ask yourself, is why the centipedes chose Earth hour to come out and party?
I mean, (and not to freak you out in any way) surely it's dark in your house for about 6 hours every single night and those 'pedes are doing their thing while you sleep, no?
I know! I know! That thought is what led to the Great Centipede Purge of 2007. If they weren't so stink' fast it wouldn't be so creepy. It's like they've consumed rocket fuel.
And the legs! Oh god, the legs!
Yeah, I don't get it. They probably do that every night, Earth Hour or not. Are you not celebrating it because of post-traumatic stress disorder? lol
Karen, I hear you. There are some things that I, too, just won't part with no matter how terrible they are for the planet. I recylce and reuse and make dolls from old clothes (true story) and I compost, but I will not give up nonstick spray that comes in a can. There is no better substance for preparing muffin tins and waffle irons. I used to dutifully pour organic first-press canola oil into a small bowl and use a pastry brush to prepare the surface. And I felt superior every time I did it. But that's 3 steps, not including washing the bowl and brush. I'm over it. The stuff I use now is organic? So that's ok, right?
You bet it's O.K.! There are VERY few people on this earth who can go whole hog with this whole Save the Planet thing. Woody Harrelson and Ed Begley Jr. are two that come to mind. (pause for thought there) The way I see it, as long as you're doing something, you're doing something. OOOOhhh! I should spray that on a t-shirt!