By Alex Iwashyna, blogger at Late Enough 
Nature and I have never been friends. The one time I went camping with Scott, I woke him up every 30 minutes for NOISES. I refer to hiking as forced marches and insects make me leap into the air like I've caught fire. Also, falling leaves do that to me.
I’m particular hateful of Virginia summers. Any temperature over 80 degrees is WRONG and not being able to wear jeans for 3-4 months makes me cry.
But if I hated nature and particularly Southern nature before, after this past week, I’m mortified by it.
My daughter says three times a day: I didn’t like shaking. Let’s not go upstairs this way mama. Um, me neither my dear. And since I spent most of it holding you, checking my washing machine and texting my husband to make sure I hadn’t had a psychotic breakdown, I’m not exactly PREPARED for how to stay safe for the next FOUR that came our way.
Lest I think that nature is done with me, a merely four days later, Hurricane Irene descended upon Richmond. Now I’ve been through hurricane before. I grew up in the normal temperatur-ed Northeast and know exactly what to do. (And it is not: Buy eggs and milk.)
Nor does it include talking walks during a hurricane and stopping underneath a giant limb-shaking tree.
However, I was ill-prepared for losing electricity for 96 hours. In fact by day 2, we bought a generator and ran extension cords into our vomit-inducing garbage disposal.
Oh and while we had no power, we needed to OPEN THE WINDOWS, and of course, one window didn’t have a screen because Richmond get about 10 minutes of window time before the air-conditioner or heat needs to be on. Plus, these old houses are built to look good but not exactly WORK.
At bedtime, we managed to squeak one window in my kids’ bedroom open, but the screen was in the backyard. My husband ran down to grab it and as he’s placing it into the window, he yells and dropped the screen two flights.
Me: Whoa! What is it?
Scott: Ants.
Like a living breathing tattoo sleeve that used to be his forearm.
Next, I look down at the bed and see the sheet covered in ants.
Many, many, many ants running around screaming: Where the heck are we? We were living in our fancy screened in city and now we’re on a bunch of Marios and Luigis. Where’s Jim? Where’s Alice?THE HORROR.
The screen contained the Washington D.C. of ant colonies until Earthquake Scott came along and moved it to another continent. (Well, for the ants to actually call it their DCquake, it would’ve had to occur 100 miles from the screen in a state that the media thinks only exists for confederate reenactments and gaffes by our elected officials.)
We kill ant after ant as bedtime drags on and on. As darkness descends, we can only hope that we had gotten them all.
The next morning my kids woke up with bites on their arms, legs and necks.
I hate nature, and I'll be moving to a concrete bunker on the Southside as soon as the locust plague passes.
