Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

When you’ve been unemployed for as long as I have—eight months—you begin to become more creative with substituting things for products aimed at producing a specific result.

Take the common household fly, for example. An insect that I’d rather not have flying around in my basement apartment bathroom. I foolishly thought I could sear it with my flat iron while I was straightening my hair. It got away.

The spider wasn’t so lucky. Of course, I didn’t want to squish the spider between the hot blades and then have to clean it up. Instead, I reached for the hairspray. That sealed his fate.

For ants trekking their way to the kitchen cat bowl for food, Windex works pretty well and ends that wagon train. Sometimes, I get crickets. For some reason, I prefer to take a wad of Kleenex and pinch them between my fingers, if they’ve avoided the pie pans of water I’ve set out to drown them.

I think I like the sensory sound of their bodies crunching. I then throw them directly in the toilet.

I don’t get any worms, but sometimes I get those potato bugs, at least that’s what I called them as a child. They have a gray, armadillo-like shell and curl up in a ball when they get scared. By the time I see them, they’ve usually died. I don’t keep a lot of food in my underground abode. And, I’m not bothered by mosquitoes, but if I were I give ‘em a good swat, out of impulse.

Now that I’ve got the insect front covered, let me move on to some of my other substitutions. These days I can’t live without Vaseline vitalizing gel body oil in cocoa butter. It substitutes well for Astroglide but isn’t as drippy. I really don’t want to explain that.

Let’s just say it has nothing to do with the dog named Astro on the Jetsons, one of my favorite cartoon shows when I was a kid (more in an upcoming blog).

Moving on to, well, let’s stick with sex. The “bullet” is a substitute for a man. But, darn, if my ex didn’t find that and take out the batteries. I got back at him by taking his Cialis. I’m lovin’ it. Take that McDonalds.