Attack of the Earwigs!

I think that last post pretty much sums up how crazy my weekend was, but it got even more nuts last night around 2 A.M.

This is a picture of an earwig. They have taken over my apartment, despite the fact that Itsumi cleans like a maniac. According to some bug freaks on wikipedia, they are harmless little bugs that get a bad rap because they're so damn ugly. Their name comes from Old English and is thought to have originated from the urban myth that they will crawl into your ear and burrow into your brain...

You know where this is going, don't you?

Well, I killed one last night because I'm getting sick of throwing them out the window, and I decided to do some research on them last night, and that's when I found out about the origin of the name. Needless to say, I was pretty creeped out by the idea that they got their name from crawling into ears, even though every source says that's a myth. I went to bed at around 12 and couldn't sleep. At around 2 A.M. I felt the inevitable: something was on my left ear. My left arm went into reflexive action, snatching whatever it was and smashing it between my thumb and index finger. It didn't feel big enough to be a bug, though, and I calmly convinced myself that it was just my imagination; after all, I had been reading bug horror facts for about an hour before bed. A few minutes later, I felt something crawling on my wrist. I jumped up in bed and Itsumi jumped up, too. She turned on the light and....and.... (I can't bring myself to type it)....there was a writhing earwig on the sheets under my wrist where I had smushed it. The tiny thing I felt between my thumb and index finger was the bug's pinchers, which I had squeezed off in my moment of terror. He was headed right for my ear...for my BRAIN.

I'm still in denial over the event--how can that possibly BE???? It is such a coincidence! Every source said the crawling into ears NEVER happens, so why did it happen to me on the day I read that?!?! There is some weird cosmic joke going on right now...