Biting Flies

This morning I read an entry in EPBOT, the new blog by the author of Cake Wrecks. She listed some blogs that she likes, so I scanned through a couple of them. They were okay, humorous, but none really grabbed my attention until I got to Hyperbole and a Half. This one sucked me in. My eyes blurred and I had tears streaming down my face before I was halfway through the first post. Hyperbole and a Half is my new favorite blog, which means that I will spend the next 11 hours and 37 minutes reading it incessantly. This also means that I will forget to do anything remotely connected to my job.

Today’s Exploit:

This morning I went for a short run. I wanted to warm up for today’s workout video. I grabbed my hat, to divert flies from attacking my head in swarms and headed out. I made it 16 ½ steps before I nearly inhaled my first fly. It was one of those flies that will take a huge chunk of your flesh and leave a welt the size of a small marble on the back of your head. I choked and gagged and spit it out, covering myself in saliva in the process.

I cleaned myself up and started out again. I covered 0.0237 miles before the second fly hit me in the face, narrowly missing my mouth. I gagged and spit and slobbered all over myself in remembrance of the first one.

I got another 3 steps in before the next one flew into my mouth. I hacked and gagged and choked and, finally, spit the dang thing out.

Me: WHAT IS WITH THE FLIES TODAY?!

Little Buddy: *Head cocked* (was that a squirrel I heard?)

I ran the rest of the way with one hand in front of my mouth and the other swinging furiously at any fly, dust mote or sparkle that came within range.

I still managed to nearly eat three more flies, each time slobbering all over myself. When I returned from my 20 minute run I was drenched, but it was mostly drool.

While I wasn’t choking on flies I spent the rest of my run changing directions. I met 3.75 more cars than I had any desire to (4 passed me). The only way I’ve found to get Little Buddy out of the way is to turn around. That’s the only way I can get her to actually come to me on a run.

UPDATE:  This post really tickles me, mostly because of the title.  It makes me giggle with the double meaning every time I look at it.