Genta Sebastian ~ Spicy Sapphic Romances

Okay, my loyal and lovelies, I’m ready to dish more dirt on the (once idyllic) island of Terceira. We’re still here (Day 99), and now I’m probably in trouble with the authorities. *sigh* Remember when I told you the state of the house we’re renting…

Location, location, location … right? Well, yeah, there’s A LOT to be said for the view, but I’m staring at it through unscreened windows which have allowed a plethora (yes, I know what it means) of bugs to spend most of our vacation with us. Water-bugs, cockroaches, mosquitos, and wall worms!

I left you last waiting for a dental appointment, which had me eating soft food over a month while waiting between the SIX (6!) dental appointments it took to get a root canal and crown down. Yogurt, chicken noodle soup, French fries, yada yada, not what yada want to eat on vacay…still, patience, grasshopper. It limited our eating out, I mean, why bother…

Shopping at a Chinese store (many are on the island) for temporary shelving to assemble, I found a mid-sized frying pan. I worked up an appetite building one of the rinkiest-dinkiest portable closets ever, so I decided to make spaghetti, a semi-solid food I can chew on my good side.

I turned on the gas stove to brown some local ground beef (*) when a cockroach as large as a man’s thumb dropped from the gas pilot box, hanging above the stove. I jumped and fled, it flew, and I did the two-steps-forward-one-jump-back hunt and search for the critter until the meat almost burned, and I gave up, waiting for Traf to get home from visiting. She chased it down, sprayed it, and in the morning we had two (2?) dead cockroaches (shudder), one on the kitchen floor and the other in the dining room.

I can tell when it’s about to rain here because a millipede crawls up from every drain, varying in size from a little bitty thing to Atilla the Bug. They bite, but are not too hard to deal with because they move so slow, just … ugh. It had rained little since we got here, and repeated downpours of torrential rain hit for days.

And, to no one’s surprise, the house leaks. Yep, and I’m pretty sure the continuous pounding the house takes from 8 am until 6 pm Monday through Friday doesn’t help. What? I forgot to mention that the house that shares a well, wall, and patio has come down and been rebuilt from the ground up this whole time? Ah, let me catch you up, then.

The house next to this one is the same house Traf and I stayed in two years ago. We are very fond of the woman who owned it, and since she’d moved in with her daughter because of health reasons, she let us use it. She’d raised four daughters there, and with mildew and mold there was no doubt it needed to be repaired. She ended up giving it to a grandson and his bride, who are excited to move in to their own home. We know and love them, too. He’s got the best laugh on the face of the planet, and she’s sweet and savvy. They were sorry when they realized the noise the house repairs (rebuild) would make during our vacation. So were we.

I will admit, the first few months were the worst. Jackhammers, heavy machinery, tearing down existing walls and burying the remains as bedrock for the new structure, were all noisy. Then there was the well that both buildings share, which needed to be uncovered, checked, rebuilt, closed in, and covered over. Much, much pounding went into that, often beginning before we were awake. Some days we couldn’t hear each other speak, sitting at a kitchen table less than three feet apart. Other times, the headaches produced actual tears. We spent a lot of time away from the house, but the weather is hot, humid, and creates a lethargy in anyone past the age of eighteen.

Over the last three months, the old house disappeared and the new structure has gone up. The young couple hope to finish the interior during the fall and winter, and we wish them much happiness in their new home. Traf drew our initials in the wet cement of the internal walls, so our best wishes will always be with them.

Now it’s much quieter from over there. But this old house, which has stood empty for MUCH longer, took a shaking. I sweep up piles of dust and dirt filtering down from the interior as it ages around us. It lands on everything, but especially around the wall edges, and provides a perfect nesting area for bugs. Which leads me back to cockroaches.

Traf loves to fish, uh duh, but there might be someone reading who doesn’t know much about my hero wife. She’s passionate about it, so crazed sometimes with the drive, I call it her Fish Itch. She won’t calm down, can’t feel settled, until there’s a baited hook at the end of a line from a pole in her hand. (Don’t worry, it only roils her when there’s actual water and fish nearby.) And she doesn’t come down until too exhausted to continue (or she runs out of bait). It’s THE reason for this location. She can be fishing in less than ten minutes, and often does.

One night in mid-summer around sunset, near ten, she and her group of fellow fisher-folk gathered on their regular pier. I can see them, distant figures, from the front yard, and could walk to where they fish inside of twenty minutes, okay, thirty on one of those beyond humid days. I was finishing The Devil’s Playground and deep into book-head, when I think of nothing outside of the story, in other words, the perfect time for Traf to be fishing.

During one of our explorations of a Chinese store, she’d found DIY netting she’d attached across our kitchen window, but with almost no breeze the hot air sat heavy on me. From the table where I sat with my laptop, I opened the dining-room window, its only defense against the incursion of insects a lace curtain hung for that very reason. I thought to unplug the light, plunging the room into darkness, and plug in the fan. (Remember, I have limited electrical outlets, not enough for two rooms to be lit at once.)

The house cooled. Sitting between the two windows, a bare breeze provided relief, and I zoned in on the spicy BDSM scene I was writing, which raised my temp again. Still, it was better than before.

A fluffy brown bat flew in the window, blowing past the curtain beside my ear, and straight down into the kitchen area. I shrieked, which is pretty much what I always do when startled and scared, just so you know. Horror sank in as I realized bats aren’t that fuzzy here, are gray-black, and it hadn’t done the zig-zag dance going past me. I was being attacked by a giant, hissing, cockroach, the kind that make strong men jump, and tender-hearted damsels faint. I’m neither, so I shrieked again as it continued fluttering in my kitchen (the only room with constant lights because we can’t shut them off without losing power to the rest of the house).

In a dazzling display of brilliant strategy, I raced to turn on the lights in the TV room by shutting down the fan. Who the hell needs a fan when you’re about to die of fright? Yeah, it might have helped, but it wasn’t an option. I needed the light on in that room because it has two doors that close (except for the thick electric cord running to the TV, which blocks the panel doors from latching). I hitched my britches up and bolted into the kitchen long enough to unlock the door, then disconnected my laptop, grabbed the mouse, my water bottle, and fly-swatter (stained and well-used), locked myself in the TV room, and surrendered the house and everything in it to the hissing Azorean cockroach.

Then I waited for the shivers to lessen and went back to the scene. Book-head, remember?

Four hours later, around two in the morning, my wife called to me from the door, knowing I’d locked it. I yelled from the still closed TV room, “It’s unlocked. I’m in here.”

She came in with a bucket of fish and some marvelous stories, but didn’t get a chance to tell any of them when she found me locked away from the ‘dreaded flying cockroach’, as she called it. She hit it with the flyswatter and it fell dead at her feet. I swear to God, if I’d done that it would have grabbed it and swatted me back. I don’t know how she does it.

Wise enough not to laugh at me (in my presence–I can’t ask for more), she soothed my ragged nerves and calmed me down. The next day, one more cockroach dropped into the bathtub with her and committed suicide by drowning (she says, I don’t buy it); I sprayed the house from top to bottom, aware the house-wrecking going on next door had opened passageways to the outside, but praying for the best. And so far, knock on wood, it’s working. Here at the house.

Traf’s had a hard time getting me back out for fishing since the night the smaller, faster cockroaches that thrive on the docks swarmed me, though. We were sitting there fishing with some other people; it was dark; the fish were biting their lines and somehow missing mine, when all of a sudden a horde of the ugly critters raced out of a hole in the cement. A bunch saw me as a challenge and started climbing before I was aware of them. One even made it as high as my arm before I shrieked, jumped up, and performed a spontaneous version of La Cucaracha. I slapped myself silly for the better part of three minutes before giving in to my fears and demanded Traf take me home. Lucky for me, there were people there she trusted with her fishing gear, or I would have huddled in the car for hours. As it was, I was home, alone, in just under five minutes.

Fine by me. I had an erotic scene to finish editing, which I reminded her as I shoved her up against a wall, licked her lips, and kissed her Boa Sorte. She came home early that night.

Smart woman.

Okay, enough for now. I know I still haven’t explained the legal trouble, and there’s the time our neighbor started walking in on Traf and I in our undies, and oh, a ton of other stories. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, we’ll see. We’re down to the final five weeks here on Terceira (maybe for a long, long time) and The Devil’s Playground is in its final production stages.

I mean, maybe you don’t want to hear the further adventures of two libidinous old ladies in comfortable shoes, enjoying what life brings them on the island of Terceira. (But I bet you won’t mind hearing all about the new wedding ring…)

*incredible grass-fed, age guaranteed, low fat, no steroids, or hormones, zero antibiotics – delicious beef!