Guests

I feel like I like in Florida. No, not the weather. Not the ocean. Not the transplanted Yankees. What I'm talking about is guests. Uninvited guests who show up every summer for about two weeks until we kill most of them.

I'm talking about Fruit Flies. They arrive each summer about this time and just think since we're not the greatest housekeepers, that they can live anywhere they want. This year Mr. and Mrs. Fruit Fly and 12,ooo of their children arrived a few days ago. They love it here, and we've been gracious enough as hosts. Shoot, we've pretty much let them have the run of the house, but this year they are especially fond of my kitchen and bathrooms. I'm talking swarms, clouds of these idiots.

They aren't fast fliers and it's quite the sport here to lock oneself in a bathroom late at night. BOOM! BOOM! CRASH! We all find these sounds so lovely as the person in the bathroom tries to kill as many fruit flies as possible during the time the person should be brushing and flossing. Then the person emerges from the bathroom declaring his victory over fruit flies while forgetting to camouflage his unbrushed and unflossed teeth.

We've tried to be polite about the fruit flies. We've tried to be gracious. We've gotten rid of the produce. We've bleaching the surfaces. We've blasted the drains. We've used the homemade traps and remedies listed on Google. We've even used...chemicals - in our kitchen area.

But nothing works. We still walk into a room only to encounter even more fruit flies than were there 10 minutes before. They find their way into everything. Think contact lenses.

So each year, when Mr. and Mrs. Fruit Fly announce that they are moving in permanently, we have to bring in the guest buster. We are reduced to putting up those horrible fly strips. You know the kind found at most church camps? Those long sticky strips with flies permanently glued to death? That's what we use - in our kitchen - next to the chemicals.

So if we ever move to Florida, our future guests have a little heads-up on what it will be like at our home. Really, we're all about gracious hospitality.