The Other Winifred, Round One

I received the following e-mail from Emily:
(some of it has been edited to complete her person private; I hope it's okay her response is "published"...if not I trust she will immediately contact me and let me know that 1) she is not amused 2) she doesn't want to be talked about on Winifred and 3) her feelings are hurt)

Subject: I wanted to leave a comment on the Winifred blog

Body: But, it would not let me without signing up for a Google account...I will just e-mail the comment and you can guess to which blog it belongs:

I did not know that you freak out about bugs. I thought I had taught you to smash them, just like I always did. I suppose I should get you a can of Raid and then you can just spray them with the lethal killer until they die, like my husband does. Then, take a tissue and flush them! Hahaha

Emily is seven and a half years older than I am. When we hung up she made a special point to tell me "not to do anything stupid tonight." This is worth mentioning not because I invited her out for a drink (from the other side of the country) but because my idea of a rip-roaring Thursday night is to watch The Simpsons for an hours. There was a time when The O.C. was the highlight of my week, and it's taken some time to adjust to a life without Seth Cohen. Sometimes on a wild night my roommate and I go to Chipotle before 8 p.m. and we get burritos. With pork and guacomole.

Emily's childhood was filled with various exciting activities, many relating to science (and some to Tonka trucks). An especially significant highlight was her bug observation tools, which included a bug chart and a device for observing and examining bugs. I inherited these tools and brought caterpillars into the kitchen when Winifred made dinner. Emily went out of her way--as did Winifred, obviously--to make sure I wasn't one of those whiny girls who can't stand bugs.
I like bugs. For example, I really like spiders, caterpillars, butterflies, and roly poly bugs. I like them when they aren't creeping through my living room en route to my cabinet, where the cookies are. I also don't like it when they are filled with goo and won't smush against the bottom of my sneakers when I have raised my arm over my head to bring it down with a quick smack.
I just had the floor cleaned. I can't get guts out of this carpet! Also, I tried to flush a bug once and it jumped out of the toilet and into my face.
The bugs in this city are tough.
Still, she must be devastated. The kind of way I would feel if she called me tomorrow before 9 a.m. and told me that she was Republican. (Two horrors at once: communicating before 9 a.m. with anyone and finding out I am closely related to...a Conservative.)

I am of course incredibly fortunate to have Winifred II, all sarcasm aside. Emily is reliable in all tough situations. And it's good to be reminded not to do anything that might be stupid. Because goodness knows, I come up with some stupid ideas...

SWEET REWARD

As promised, I have the shoes. They were ordered Wednesday around 1 p.m. EST and were in my fair state by 5 a.m. Friday. I picked them up in the leasing office at 5 p.m. yesterday before going to the greatest diner in the city, further cementing how spoiled I am. (Except it was my money so it's...nevermind.)

It was a mutated monstrosity, you'd have been scared too.

I was going to revoke Winifred's rights (temporarily) as the cool mom who took her daughter to concerts. The cool mom who encouraged her three daughters to become independent thinkers. I was going to regale you with a tale, a story in which she took her college daughter to lunch (thanks!) before the bookstore, wherein she said, "Yeah, didn't some woman die from CBGB?"
I was then going to remind the reader how important CBGB was as an institution, that the founder, who fought tirelessly for his institution and was a humanitarian!, died of lung cancer last week, and how while in New York City my roommates and a merry band of friends paid our respect.
But Winifred put me in my place last night, so I won't.

I called Winifred last night around 10 p.m., interrupting her during a movie, to ask a question. She didn't mind of course, and as we discussed whatever it was I had called her about, I spied a brown spot in my living room near the couch. Usually a brown spot is an indication of a cupcake crumb, but this spot moved, and I sprang into action.
"Wait, there's a bug, don't leave me!" I cried.
"There's a what?"
"A bug! A big one!" I flew threw the air with a POM glass in one hand and a flexible cutting board in the other, landing inches from where the bug was blissfully crawling across my very clean white carpet. "Oh! It's so big, ew ew ew, please don't hang up," I begged.
"It's a bug? Squish it," she said, without pity or sympathy for her final heir.
"I can't squish it, it will ooze. It's big." I slowly and decisively attempted to cover the bug with the glass but it jumped into the air in the general direction of my face.
I also jumped into the air, in the opposite direction, and flailed my limbs.
"It's just a bug," Winifred "reasoned."
I went after the bug again, just as it began to head under the couch, a haven for bugs. (The three of us that cohabitate here refuse to move the couch to kill a bug.)
"No, it's a big bug," I said, because ranting about how it was spotted, strange, large, menacing, and squishy. I then explained how gross this breed is when my roommate picks up her sneaker and thwack!s it against the carpet or bathroom wall, and how I can't stand to look at its milky interior. Moreover, that I can't wipe off the guts from my shoes. I love my shoes that much.
I caught the bug through all of this, and squealed with delight when I had captured it between the glass and cutting board, and promptly began to shrief when it bounced from top to bottom of the glass, leaving behind part of a leg that was trapped under the glass.
"It's just a bug. Stop being such a baby," Winifred reprimanded me.
And in that moment I knew I wasn't allowed to reverse her long-standing cred.
Because she was right.