Fly-Swatting For Charity.

It’s Blogathon time again! For those who don’t know what it is, the Blogathon is an annual charity event in which bloggers from around the world stay awake for twenty-four hours, making one new post every thirty minutes, in order to raise money for charity. The ‘thon has been in existence since 2001 and has raised nearly $200,000 for over one hundred different charities. This year’s event starts on August 6th at 9AM EST.

Each participant chooses his or her own charity to raise funds for, and this year I’ve chosen Planned Parenthood. I’ll be blogging from my personal website at jadeddaisy.net but will be duplicating my entries here on OD, and I’m looking for sponsors. Even a donation of a couple of dollars will help Planned Parenthood in their mission while proving that bloggers and the internet can make a real difference in the lives of others.

Please click here to sponsor me, or visit the main Blogathon page for answers to any questions, or to sign up as a participant yourself!

So, my neighbors are asses. I’ve never met them, but they’re asses. For one thing, they’ve put up this giant cardboard cutout of Elvis in the front window, so now I get to tell people that I live in “the pink building with Elvis in the window.” Only I could ever end up living in a pink building with Elvis. For another thing, they never take their garbage out. At least once a week, I’ll come home and the hallway smells like rotting food.

So these people, who leave their Elvis-clad window open and their trash rotting in the kitchen, naturally attract a hell of a lot of flies. Every couple of days they’ll shut out the lights and leave their door open so that all the flies will leave their apartment. And where do the flies go? To the end of the hallway. Where I live. So on these fly-ridding days of theirs, I come home from work and find an entire colony having a kegger outside my door. I’ll flap my arms around like a banshee, swatting at the air and swinging my purse and any new mail I’ve just picked up so that the flies get scared and flee towards the other end of the hallway. Then I put my keys in the door and wait for the perfect fly-free moment to slip in. Alone.

This morning, I was trying to leave for work, only I couldn’t find my keys. I tore my apartment upside down looking for them, but they were nowhere to be found. (On the plus side, I found my remote control that’s been missing since March.) I stopped for a minute to think, then realized where they were. They were still in the door. Where they’d been all night.

Farking flies. Farking Elvis. Farking neighbors.