I'm having a bad week with reptiles.

So you might know I'm not really a fan of reptiles. No, it doesn't matter if they're poisonous and it doesn't matter if you say it is more afraid of me. Trust me, it's not.

My week started fine. Normal. Then my co-workers and I decide we're all gonna be really healthy and go for walks at lunch. Yay for motivation!

And they're all like, "yay, let's go to Lettuce Lake Park and walk on the boardwalk!"

So I'm like "Hmmmmm...that sounds swampy and snake infested."

They convince me that it's just perfectly beautiful and they've never ever seen snakes on the boardwalk. Maybe in the water, but it happens really rarely blah blah blah dah dee blah.

So I try to be brave and we go. Honestly, it was really nice. It was shady, cool, quiet, and as beautiful as Florida gets. It was sort of like this:

I came back from the walk nice and refreshed, and the next day we set out again.

We're about four feet in, and whadayaknow. A snake.
I ran, my co-workers laughed, and that was the end of that.

Then, just when I thought I had mentally recovered from the trauma, I heard the republicans are coming here for their convention in 2012. (Sorry to my republican friend, but it was just right there and I had to do it. You can still love me, right?)

Then Sunday, Khan and Lily went off to St. Pete and I tried to clean the disgustingness we call home. It was going well, I was so proud, and I went to grab a load of laundry from the dryer, but this guy got in my way.
Oh, fine. He was more like this. But they're practically the same. So I flipped out, called my mom, my dad, and my husband. Of course this always happens to me when I'm home alone!

The best advice anyone had for me was to get Kitty to help. But she was busy.

After about 10,746 hours, Khan finally got home. By that time, I knew that the velociraptor was under my washing machine, but that's a really hard place to reach. So we kept trying different ways to get at it and try to get him out. Khan tried a broomstick. We turned the washing machine on. I suggested squirting him with a squirtgun, but Khan got pissy at me and told me that was a stupid idea. Turns out he was right.

Finally, Khan started banging on the machine and the little guy was inching his way out. We're only pretty sure that he's gone because neither one of us actually saw him scamper out the door, but we couldn't find any sign of him.

So I went to bed trying to remind myself of all the things I love about living in this reptile infested swamp. I tried to remember how much I hate winter, but all I could think of was this: