Gotta Say 'Hi' to Dippy

Nuts.

There are a million things more deserving of my frustration right now, but you know what has my undivided attention? GNATS.

Mother-effin gnats.

Every since we all became locked in our houses, we've had a pretty steady stream of gnats wandering around the house. I believe it all started with a topiary that came from either Home Depot or Lowes. It had a major infestation that I didn't notice for the first day or two. I did manage to find it and go on a destructive bender, but it was too late. Gnats on plants are kind of like opening one of those trick cans of snakes. Once they're out, it's tough to stuff them back in and you might just poke an eye out.

So. A gnat here and there. One or two in the kitchen. One or two in my office. I keep finding the source, even as it moves, and destroying it. So it stays steady at one or two.

But now they're in the half bathroom.

I'm baffled. There are no plants or fruit or anything fun in there, unless we're counting my autographed photo of Ryan Seacrest gazing lovingly at a bottle of Coca-Cola. That's definitely fun. Still, I probably can't blame it for the gnats.

I have tried everything.

I tried the whole "maybe they're in the drain" thing, but nope. I've searched for moisture, like a leaking pipe Nothing. I have scrubbed every inch of that tiny bathroom and cannot find where they're coming from. Alas, there is exactly one each time I go in there. Each time I murder that one, but somehow it calls out to a friend to replace it. One at a time, over and over, I'M LOSING MY MIND.

Maybe they're coming from the vent that connects to outside? That seems like a terrible idea, but maybe?

Regardless, I'm about to go nuclear. Normally this sort of thing wouldn't even land on my radar, but when we've had over a year of pure stupid all around? It's gnats that break me.

Gnats.

Confidence for Miles

Hey, remember a few weeks ago when it was relatively safe and we could still go do stuff? THAT WAS FUN! Hopefully we get back to it soon. In the meantime, Delta blows and I'm reminiscing about the good ol' days.

You know, the good ol' days when I let Mila go to a parkour camp. That was a great week! She had to wear a mask the whole time, but I genuinely didn't have any concerns about her being there. She had a blast running and jumping and climbing and all of that. Such a delight!

While I was reminiscing about those careless days of old, I remembered one of the more hilarious moments I've had when dropping a kid off for a thing. The gym where the parkour camp took place is a BIG gym. It's one of the gyms that has a huge competitive gymnastics teams, in fact. And that competitive team? It's basically there every morning all summer long.

It's a little nuts, frankly. There's no air conditioning. Those athletes are in there busting ass when it's hotter than hot, and they're doing it by choice. They pay extra for the privilege, even!

One of the mornings during drop-off, the competitive team was front and center doing a special session where they were learning basic dance moves for use during floor routines. If you've ever watched a floor routine, regardless of the level, you know very well that gymnasts are NOT dancers. I don't care if you are Simone Biles, the dance doesn't get much more complicated than a grapevine and a few hip shakes. Even -I- can do the dance moves that are in a floor routine.

This is a fact which I can confirm even more now that I watched a few minutes of that session. While a few of the girls were SUPER good, far more of them looked like malfunctioning robots trying to string together a few motions and then tripping over their own feet and falling on their faces. I'm sure they are kickass gymnasts. What I'm saying is that I'm used to dance kids who look like they're floating and can fall more gracefully than I can walk. The contrast was HILARIOUS. Just wildly different skill sets, you know?

Mila was still standing next to me as this whole thing went on. She too was watching, except she was a little confused because I swear they were trying to learn the EXACT dance that nearly every studio uses in its big recital finale with all of the dancers. It's a little grapevine, a clap, and repeat. Mila knows all of the steps because she's the little sister of a dancer. Of course she knows The Dance. In that moment, Mila showed me how good she is at that little dance. (Spoiler: she is very average for a 7-year old, which is the equivalent to AMAZING compared to some of the gymnasts who are definitely built for jumping and tumbling and such.)

Fast forward to this week. Obviously, the Olympics are on the TV as much as possible in our house. That has led to Mila preteding to be in the Olympics. Usually that involves running laps around my kitchen, but there was a night when she was very much so going to be a gymnast.

The kid busted into The Dance, declared herself the gold medal winner, and proudly said, "I'm definitely good at this part so I probably really will win a gold medal some day."

Dream big, kid, but maybe work on that cartwheel before you get too confident? Maybe?