Ahoy.

Sailing. Who doesn't love it?

That's right. Me.

I think in my life I've had two enjoyable sailing excursions. And by enjoyable, I mean tolerable. From an early age I have experienced colorful degrees of motion sickness varying between semi-queasiness to full blown projectile vomiting. Planes, trains, automobiles and naturally; boats. Growing up on an island water travel was inevitable, and dreadful. However one of my earliest memories was heaving into a paper bag as our plane touched down in Cape Town. It's less embarrassing when you're 5. Kids are always doing disgusting things like throwing up.

Since reaching what they say is adult hood, I've learned to manage those feelings of nausea. I can generally struggle through it in cars and on planes. But boats are a different story. Read: Maui. After that most recent and horrifying experience I was a touch apprehensive about setting out on a sailing adventure a few weeks ago on the Sunshine Coast. As it happened, the water was like silk, so it was literally smooth sailing. That is if you ignore the part where I jumped off the side of the boat in lace underpants then panicked as the boat drifted away from me. It was toasty warm and I needed to cool down. In theory it was a great idea. Boyfriend was with me and tried to tow me back to the boat, but I got fussy and in a classic movie rescue scene, kicked him away. This is why people drown.  

Fortunately I did not drown. I just showed a boat full of men my underpants. It could have been worse. And then it was. When apparently my underpants became increasingly revealing when wet. However the sailing part was great! I got to drink cold beers and soda pop and eat fried chicken. I got to jump off the side of a boat and go swimming. All good things. When a few weeks later we were invited to go on another friend's boat for the evening I was totally up for it. I survived my last trip, plus it was boyfriends birthday and he loves this crap. The craft seemed sea-worthy and was bigger than the last one we were on. What could possibly go wrong? 

The ocean. That's what.

Turns out last time I wasn't actually sailing. In order to sail there must be wind. There wasn't. That's why I had such a great time. As I would soon find out wind changes things. Boats tilt, pitch and bounce around like crazy. It seemed okay at the beginning, I was even steering, and didn't hit any freighters or wind surfers. Then we hit open water. Open water being a few more hundred feet off the shore. That's when everything went sideways. Literally. The boat tilted (heeled) and one side of the boat was 6 feet in the air and the other was within inches of the water. I clawed my way to the "not so bouncy" part of the sailboat. But within 15 minutes or so was told to shift position because the wind needed to be on the other side of us or whatever. I was being jostled. While friend #1 was white-knuckling it back to a non boom-y spot friend #2 was trying to feed me dry crackers and make me laugh. Boyfriend was asking me if I had taken good photos of him captaining. I told him to stuff it, then proceeded to scramble to the starboard side where I vomited for 15 minutes straight. 

I felt awful. I looked awful and I had successfully ruined my boyfriend's birthday, as well as my friend's sailing adventure. Boyfriend was great and convinced Cap'n to ditch us on a near by dock as we were likely going to be on the water for another 2 hours. We drifted into a super fancy marina thing and without slowing down were told to jump off the boat onto a rickety looking dock. "I hope the gate's unlocked!" yelled Cap'n as the boat gently sailed off into the sunset. Our friends waved to us as we stood on a dock in the middle of nowhere.

We found a cab about an hour later and were back at our car about 45 minutes and $70 later. We exited the cab to see a lit mast floating into the marina in the distance. I ate nothing but soda-water and saltines for about 24 hours, and text boyfriend mid day the next day. "remind me I hate sailing"

Moths: An Infestation

Moths: An Infestation

There are a few different kinds of moths. There are the gigantic flappy terrifying moths that hurl their bodies into light bulbs, windows, walls and passers by, which seems to be the only thing they are good at. Then there are the epicurean moths that feast on bits of wheat germ and grains. And there are fashionable moths that nest, eat and crap in pretty much anything. The last two species described are excellent at their jobs. They are dedicated, disgusting and efficient.

I think I was in denial for the past year. Despite holes in cashmere and an increase in sitings, it wasn't until a literally moth eaten cow skin rug was found that the heavy denial really kicked in. That new stage of denial lasted approximately a month. Then one day when I decided to make cookies and hauled out the brown sugar only to find squirming larva all the way through it. I could ignore the problem no longer.  I immediately began pitching dry goods. At first checking the contents of each item, until I began feeling nauseous and just started blindly throwing away everything in the pantry. 

Next it was time to go through the out of season woollen bins in the closets. This wasn't going to be as simple as pitching rolled oats. This required finesse. Over the span of two days there were roughly 10 loads of laundry done. There were several bathtubs filled with scalding water to drown babies and sterilize large items. There was actual nit picking done. Except the nits were in fact cocoons and larvae. With rubber gloves up to my elbows I'd  individually pick bits of moth excrement off of precious articles of clothing. It's true moths only eat wool, the bad news is; they nest in bloody well anything. Cotton, synthetics, straw, you name it. 

I'm scared to go into the storage unit. I know it's a building infestation. And I fear the fallout is going to be huge. Regardless of the type of moth they are basically flying silver fish. Except thank Christ they are much less speedy than silver fish. However when you kill either they turn to dust. This is creepy. So hurray, moths are easily killed when spotted. However they are sneaky and little and can hide places.

The final step was to strategically set up little sticky pheromone laced tents around the flat. These are apparently designed to attract the wretched winged insects and adhere them to the pheromone-y glue lining the inside of the traps. Within minutes of setting my traps the moths came out of the wood work. They went bananas for these things. The moths appeared to be all loved up on fake pheromones and fluttered around the flat all willy nilly. I flailed wildly for about 15 minutes charging around the apartment swatting moths with flip flop in hand. That was enough exercise for the day and I stopped the masacre, unless one came within arms reach of the couch.

By bed time the moth death toll was around 22, including the few trying without much success to release themselves from the sticky traps. The apartment looked like a house of horrors with brown and black smears peppering my pristine pink walls. 

In three months the traps will have worn out, and the apartment may need a fresh lick of paint, but hopefully the moths will be gone. Fingers crossed.