Today started like any other weather-challenged day. There was a thick layer of clouds covering the city when I woke up, making it difficult to see the buildings across the street, and when the clouds slowly faded, they gave way to torrential downpours. The rest of the day saw more clouds, wind, rain, humidity and other "fun" weather.
I ended up going for lunch at Potbelly, since I chose to leave for lunch at the exact moment Mother Nature decided it should rain. I didn't bring an umbrella since it wasn't raining when I left for the elevator, but the hard raindrops began pelting me in the head almost immediately. Potbelly is in the Rockefeller Center Concourse, and when I go by the concourse, it means I only have to walk 1.5 blocks outside and can walk the rest underground. Even taking the concourse, my already curly hair (which seems to get curlier the older I get and which I did not bother straightening today since it was raining) got even bigger.
On the way back from Potbelly, I chatted with my mom about last night's (completely awesome) episode of Scandal, filling her in on everything she missed in the first season. I hung up because our elevators have terrible reception, and called her back as I unpacked my lunch at my desk. We continued to chat about Scandal but I couldn't tell you exactly what because what happened next wiped those memories from my brain.
While we were talking, I heard a buzzing noise pass my ear. I was annoyed, thinking a fly had followed me into the office and now I had to battle it and try to get it to leave before I ate my lunch. I didn't see anything flying around though, and a buzz that loud could only come from a decently large fly. I heard the buzz a few different times but each time couldn't see anything flying around. I have decent peripheral vision though and I suddenly saw something black drop out of my hair.
Out. Of. My. Hair.
I barely had time to consider the fact that the large black object had fallen out of my hair, because I realized that said large black object was sitting on my upper arm. I grabbed one of the napkins off my desk and tried to swat it off my arm.
Didn't move.
If you don't already know, I cannot handle insects. Bit of a phobia here. Everything after that was a bit of a blur. I remember screaming on the phone when it dropped out of my hair and onto my arm. I remember swatting at it with a napkin like a crazy lady before I finally knocked it off my arm.
But I couldn't find it anywhere. I didn't see it fly off but it was nowhere to be seen.
My office neighbor came by to see if it was a rodent because I guess she heard me scream through the wall. I could deal with a mouse. I cannot deal with a big fly.
Not wanting to eat lunch near a fly that clearly loved to torment me, I escaped to our office cafeteria and finished off a (very) late lunch while watching NY1. I returned to my office, looked all over the floor, but still couldn't see the fly. Every so often throughout the afternoon I would hear a buzz, turn around, shake out my hair, look into the air, but I didn't see anything. I started to get more comfortable and thought that maybe it had finally flown off. I still couldn't believe that while I was on the phone with my mom it was buzzing and flying around in my hair. I guess that's the problem with thick and curly hair. I figured that, as panicked as I had been and how traumatic it had been, one day this would be something I could laugh about. A bug taking up residence in my hair and flying around inside it?! My hair's not that big!
Once my guard was down, I started to hear loud buzzing again and saw something black fall onto my desk. I think it must have been watching me from the ceiling because it tumbled from quite high. I started to panic again but this time grabbed the Pledge multi-surface cleaner spray bottle from inside my desk drawer and started spraying in the general direction of the fly. I kept spraying, it kept buzzing, I kept spraying, it kept sputtering, and then it finally stopped.
I was thinking maybe it was not your normal large fly because it didn't seem to fly as much as others. When it fell to the desk, it kind of flew around between things on my desk but didn't go very far (lucky for me). I thought maybe it was sick, felt a little bad, then remembered they spread disease and it was on my arm, and then thought maybe it was having babies (I know nothing about insects in this department and I've been scarred for life by Charlotte's Web (and yes I know this is not a spider)) and there would be little flies all over my office.
A was very kind and came over after work to clean up the fly for me. After the spray bottle incident, I kept looking over to see if it was still there. I guess I thought it would just start flying again because I was that afraid of it. Once the fly was gone, it was time to clean my stapler, my mirror, my poor page-a-day gallery calendar of islands pictures, all of which got a little bit drowned in my fight the fly campaign.
What an afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment