Do You Ever Feel Like Something Is Watching You?

As much as I hear noises overhead in the wee hours, several times a week, in the left-the-nest boys' bedrooms, as I watch TV in my OPC (Old People Chair) in the basement...I don't really get a sense that anything is watching me. So imagine my surprise Saturday night as I turned to the messy TV tray that acts as an end table, and saw THIS:

Yeah. That's a ladybug. Watching me. Or so I thought, because I'm kind of narcissistic like that. I hadn't seen it land. Maybe it's the one that was upstairs on the TV screen the other day. The one I never found when I tried to take a picture.

I was startled, but not unhappy to see this little visitor. I took a picture, and let it be. I'm certainly not going to kill it. I didn't want to walk upstairs to put it outside. The basement door takes two hands to open, with a springy deadbolt contraption. Besides, we'd been having overnight snow flurries. I don't think ladybugs like that kind of weather.

It was going on 11:00 when I first saw it. I looked back a couple of times, and the ladybug hadn't moved.

Oh, no! I hoped it wasn't DEAD! Usually, when I'm trying to get a picture, a ladybug scurries away. Or walks around a porch post. Takes off in flight. Not this one. Every time I glanced that way, it was in the exact same place.

Until I was ready to go to bed around 3:30 a.m. When I looked over at my new little friend...it was GONE! Again, there'd not been any hint of movement. Surely my peripheral vision isn't so bad that I can't sense a ladybug taking off. I looked all around the TV tray table, and the floor. Nothing.

The next evening, I came out of my dark basement lair for some Puffs With Lotion. I'd run out in there, and didn't want the whole box. This one was almost empty, too. I could bring another one down on my next trip. I just wanted a stack of a few tissues to take back into my office. I grabbed them out, still stacked, and something fell to the floor.

OHH! ICK! What WAS that?

I was seriously afraid that it was a mouse turd. Not that we have mice. Or turds laying around all willy-nilly. That's just the first thing that crossed my mind. I watch those hoarder shows, and one guy had a house full of mice, and their turds were all over the place. In fact, he had a second house that was clogged up with his hoard, because this house was too full of mice. And their turds. Okay. I'm done saying turds now.

I looked down on the floor, between my OPC (Old People Chair) and the TV tray table, and there was a dark spot in a big dust bunny. I'm not a hoarder, but I'm not a conscientious duster, either. I turned on my lamp, one of those that stand behind my OPC (Old People Chair), that you can bend over to direct light. My mom gave me that lamp. She had one like it, that she used behind her recliner for cross-stitching, or working Sudoku puzzles.

Yes, there was a ladybug trapped inside that dust bunny. I felt bad. I fanned my stack of Puffs at it, hoping to blow the dust bunny away. Unfortunately, my vision was not assisted by my glasses, which had been left in my office. And the stack of Puffs got a little too close, and came away with most of the dust bunny clinging to it. Except for a part that was kind of wrapped around the ladybug like a shroud.

I didn't want to deal with it right then. I needed to use a Puffs to blow my drippy nose. I figured I could come back later, and if I'd inadvertently sealed that ladybug's death warrant with my slovenly blind habits, I could scoop it up and dispose of it.

Yeah. Several hours later, when I looked, there was no ladybug. It was like Michael Myers in the original Halloween, when he fell out that upstairs window, and was lying on the lawn, yet later he wasn't there.

I wonder when I'm going to see my ladybug friend again...