Holy bugs

Yesterday when I was walking into church I was about to dip my fingertips in the holy water* when I saw one of these doing the ol' backstroke.

I fished him out with the tip of my sunglasses, lest he crawl up Aunt Edna's arm and cause an infarction. I kind of flicked him off of the glasses, and I lost track of where he went, so I couldn't stomp on him and say "Ugh, Ugh, Ugh..."

I went up stairs to the loft and told Bette I deserve combat pay, and told her what I had done. NO fewer than 3 ladies exclaimed "Oh, you didn't kill it, did you?? That's a holy bug. It was in the holy water." I think that two of them were kidding with me. The other one...

It's times like this that I think to myself "what did I do? what did I do?" because no one, in the Lutheran church I attended when I was growing up, ever warned me not to kill a millipede.

I looked down at my feet and mumbled "No, I didn't kill it" contritely (thinking "....because I couldn't find his creepy little body to crush it with the pointy toe of my Sunday shoes...")


*that particular marble "font" is cracked and leaks so there is a VERY elegant tiny little 1-cup tupperware oval in there, to hold the water. It's fabulous.


P.S.:
Today my son dragged me into his room and showed me his calendar. On every Monday of this month he wrote "Walk" because we agreed last Monday that it would be our day to walk together. Who needs a $5 Mother's Day card?