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.
Honestly, it must be something to do with the lights being off. It was during a nighttime power outage that I met Henry.
I like total dark EXCEPT during a power outage, when I need to have a light in the bathroom and one in each room. For the children...I say.
One night, I swear I rolled over in bed and there, about a foot away from my face....and mouth...was Henry. He apparently had a highway across my bed. He stared at me and I stared at him. He was a good size for our region. We eyeballed each other and o spet of nodded and he sort of saluted, and then he scuttled off.
I have had to grow up and wear my big girl panties and deal with various pests. But Henry the spider and I reached an agreement that night.
Thank you for this. I was feeling really down being isolated but this cheered me up and I was laughing.
I was once housesitting for a friend who lived in an ancient (and decrepit, if i'm honest) farmhouse in the country. I woke up at midnight to go to the bathroom and turned on the bedroom light only to see what looked like 100000000s of those horrid creatures having a rave. One of them reared up at me like a horse! Needless to say I left and only came back in the bright bright daylight.
For instantly killing insects, I prefer a spray bottle filled with alcohol(Denatured alcohol from the paint department. It's the same as booze, but has toxic ingredients that will kill you if you drink it, because you didn't pay liquor tax on it!) A good industrial spray bottle can squirt up to 10 feet. Never tried it on centipedes, but it will kill our FLorida mega cockroaches within seconds. And it doesn't leave any residue, like hair spray. (That's gotta be a mess to clean up, huh!)
LMAO!!!!!!! oh my gosh, the devil's phlegm, perfect word to describe those nasty things. I saw one, just one on a wall as I was climbing into my bed one night many years ago. Didn't get to it in time with my shoe and it scampered off into the woodwork. I packed a bag and went to a hotel for the night and had exterminators in the very next day. I can't even imagine the frozen terror you experienced seeing more than one.
Oh god, I was so not expecting that. I am deathly afraid of centipedes. I usually disdain trigger warnings, but I coulda used one this time.
Oh, Karen, you had to go there didn't you. That place where each of has locked away all the foul things of the earth that we never wanted to ever, ever, ever revisit.
All you saw centipedes gathering in groups till they could mathematically overwhelm you by grouping in battalions tallying millipede strength and beyond.
While you where experiencing row upon row of tiny little legs flowing in synchronized Rockette fashion. My mind was uncontrollably pulled elsewhere.
My very first apartment, a studio of which I was so proud to call my own, turned out to be a nightmare. It was a 3 story 1940's style building filled with tenants by night but it became obvious that tenants were mightily outnumbered as the break of dawn revealed that it a was a mighty throng of partying cockroaches while we all slept.
I had not revisited that nightmare of living out the daily battle plan, that included copius quantities raid sprayed thick into my tiny apt., until now.
You are truly hillarious. At least now we can, as you have, look back and laugh. The things we all have survived, keep on writing and we will all keep on laughing!
Omg, nightmare fuel!!!!!
Sweet Karen!
I adore your posts and this one did not fail me. As I read the comments by other readers, I LOL'd on and on. You have a gang of great women! Just exactly the prescription I needed to start my quarantined day :) Much love to you all! STAY WELL :)
Thanks Laura! ~ karen
Ugh! What a horrible bug! Thank God we don't have centipedes like those in the uk. It's like a spider on steroids!
Last night they asked everyone to stand on the front step and clap for all our NHS workers, very appropriate, as we have 2 nurses living opposite, a mother and daughter. I really didn't expect our neighbouhood to join in, but they did. It was very emotional, all this clapping. We only have 20 houses in our road, but everyone certainly made a noise. A big thank you tomall health workers, as well as postmen, police, water treatment workers, shop staff, and all the people who are working so hard during ghis crisis.
What is so freaking weird is that it has a face that's staring at you. I pointed the cursor at your picture and the word shitface appeared. I nearly died laughing. Thanks.
OMGosh! Thanks for pointing this out! I would have missed an awesome laugh until I cried! Awesome!
It's important that we name insects by their latin terms. ;) ~ karen!
Shithead! Hahahahaha!
Well, damnit, now I am going to check every picture of every post like the crazy person I am. I ended up doing that with xkcd.com. He has descriptive comments as the photo name which I didn’t realize until saving one. Ugh. That took me forever to see each one, but increased my joy of them even more. ❤️
Dear God, why have I never heard of house centipedes and centipede invasions? I live in FL, insane humidity, you'd think they'd be an issue here. Jesus Karen, they sound disgusting and creepy. So if not for "Earth Hour" (which in your case should be refery to as "hell hour") I guess those creepy lil monsters would still be doing their thing in your house while you were sleeping. Is that the first time you'd seen them in your home? Aw hell, now I am going to obsess about them all day, along with the other 10 things I obsess about each day
Stay well and centipede-free!
I know centipedes are in my house, they're in every house in Ontario, Canada. But they usually stay to themselves. HOWEVER they do come out when it's dark! So turning off alllll the lights basically gave them permission to come out of hiding and party. I now ALWAYS keep some sort of light on between my bedroom and the bathroom at night. ~ karen!
I had house centipedes in SC. Once I realized they were harmless, unlike the true centipedes we had a SA child in Hawaii, I relaxed a bit, even though are freakishly scary to look at. Sprinkling food grade diatomaceous earth around is the what I did. I had three dogs and the diatomaceous earth was safe for pets and kids. We moved shortly the centipedes appeared so I don’t know the end of the story, but I go back to them in a heartbeat cuz now I’m in TX and it’s scorpions aNd they can sting as several commenters have noted. I hate those things. I made my husband line all the AC vents with window screening after I found one in bed with me. Hubby was of course piloting a plane to China for several days, oblivious to my predicament. Every summer they return. This year they’ve come back early. Great, locked in my house and the scorpions are laughing at me cuz everyone except the dam scorpions has to practice social distancing. Stupid term. But our scorpions don’t hold a candle to the one my sister encountered in Africa. Big black ugly scorpion in her Jeep. She was violently ill for several days. Said she’d never experienced such pain and she been attacked by soldier ants and killer bees, had malaria, allergic reaction to the anti malaria medication and temporary
blindnessand all kind s of stuff. But her scorpion bite was the worst. I hate the bloody things. I’m afraid my new pug pebbles is going to try to eat one like she tries to eat the pebbles outside. But little gravel pebbles don’t sting little pug noses like scorpions can.
House centipedes have sight and memory. They see you, they know you, they hunt you in the night.
I used to live in a house that had a very damp basement and a very big centipede problem. These shitheads bite.
I recently read a comment to a blog from a lady down south who said she kept chickens in her yard simply to deal with the scorpions. She said she'd rather spray off the deck every day from the chicken poo than deal with the scorpions. Apparently, they are quite tasty morsels for chickens, and you get eggs as a side benefit!
Omg, thanks Karen for nightmares tonight! I knew I should've waited till morning go read this!! Lol! I kept trying my best to read only but no matter how I advance the blog you had another bug to show me, yikes! Now I need to get cotton balls ready for nose & ears and the tightest jeans I own on before bed!
Centipedes are the wooooorst. Ugh. I'm having flashbacks to our invasion a few years ago just from seeing those pictures. I don't blame you for using any chemical possible to kill those suckers.
I had a spider egg sack hatch above my head one time, and termites migrated through our living room once (happily, I was gone for that one and my husband had to deal with them). I find the vacuum cleaner with the loooooong attachment works best. But by far the grossest thing wasn't a bug, but a slug, a great big banana slug. Which crawled in under the door, into the kitchen, I stepped on it, bare foot, in the middle of the night. Truly disgusting.
Stepping on a slug while barefoot is one of THE WORST feelings!!!!!!
I accidently discovered your blog while searching for a stitched bag solution. Love the site ! Here is my centipede story: many years ago me and then girlfriend had a country cabin rental... Wed go on weekends to get away from the city noise. One evening I was having my nightly cookies and tea... Took my last sip of tea and felt what surely were cookie crumbs in my mouth... I swished around... A little puzzled by the texture... By then the girlfriend was looking at me, confused, wondering what I was doing... So with my tongue I held the "cookie piece" against my cheek and swallowed the tea... Then brought the foreign object forward to my lips, pinched it with my fingers and slowly pulled out a 2 inch- long centipede !
Thankfully it was as dead as a Norwegian Blue parrot... My gf's scream of terror was priceless.
I'm a guy so I somehow managed to keep my sanity, but it took many years before I could casually prepare a cup of tea without thoroughly examining the cup, tea bag, inside of the kettle (which I must still rinse out before each use)
But your story is way worse and freaked me out.
Michel. My dear new friend Michel. My story is NOT worse. NOTTTT!!!! ~ karen
Years ago we were having coffee after dinner outside and when I finished mine there was a slug in the bottom of the cup. Still gives me the creeps.
I'm still waiting to see what potato eyes have to do with a centipede - where's the story with your mom chasing you around? Yeah, I'm not afraid of bugs. Do love to laugh though :)
Oh it's just a general fear of creepy things that could resemble a potato eye and move on their own. Like a centipede! ~ k
I saw your post last year and then my friend reposted it again today. Unfortunately I started to read it just as I was about to eat dinner.... yes I recognized it, so luckily waited until dinner was done to re-read.
My icky story is about spiders. I also am in southwest BC and have grown accustomed to checking the bathtub or sink before using to check for spiders. One distinct memory of my Grandmother washing dishes and when she lifted a glass full of water it had a large spider floating in it.. eeewwww.
Years later I was living in an above ground basement suite with my baby son and started to notice some spiders around. The final straw was when one night in a half sleep daze I reached over to scratch an itch on my arm... well what I felt was a large spider doing the leg recoil under my hand...you know how they do that.... OMG!!! I grabbed it and threw it against the wall and it honestly made a thud!!! I knew then I had to do something. I researched and went out and bought all the chestnuts I could find and placed them along all the baseboards and at every window and door. It worked! The spiders were gone.
I am happy to say that I now have two cats and if any critters decide to come into my house I just have to say " Cali get the bug" and she makes short work of it (well maybe not short work, the two of them do play with the bug and I have to watch so I know when she eats it and it is gone. I do feel a little guilty about that, is that weird? But I convince myself that the bug has such a tiny brain it can't possibly be feeling tortured right?)
Well now I have to go because I feel like I am being crawled on and I have to find my cats.
Oh, sympathies. SYMPATHIES!!!
Seen some shudderful bugs myself. Yep. My particular bug nemesis? The "water" bugs of Philadelphia. A eyeful of 'em. Black matte, bent leggy, overgrown. Clearly the most successful species of any kind in the neighbourhood. (Always-already) swarming up my very near neighbour's brick front wall, above where she (always-already) placed a dish of cat food. Why did she (always-already) do that? We will never know.
Btw, these bugs would also climb up through the drain during yr morning shower. Versatile.
Anywho, many bugs of many 'hoods later, they are still imprinted on my retina. Once yr nemesis bug infests yr mind's eye, no spray can save you. *shudder*
WE NEED A SUPPORT GROUP!!! Oh wait, here it is! Thanks! Love yr blog, lady. Totally cheers me up yo
Thanks Shelley! Wish me luck Saturday night. Bleh. ~ karen!
I was just searching how to rid my house of these creatures of nightmares when I came across your blog. I would go into shock if I ever saw an army of those monsters. I just killed a centipede that had to have been benching more than my body weight at least. It was so fat it couldn't even run like the majority of the beasts, I'm just glad I had my vacuum handy. If there is one thing I fear out there, it's these evil creatures.
I'm in the Army and I'm still a pansy and half when those things start running. Bleh. You're definitely not alone, and I am definitely investing in that raid stuff along with a sticky trap carpet.
Mr. Army - Also a dehumidifier! Don't know where you live, but centipedes LOVE humidity and can't live without it. omg i hate them. ~ karen!