confession.

i have something we need to talk about.
i know, i haven't always lived an exemplary life. there have been indiscretions. i know, sometimes, in the stresses of life, i have let some things slide. still, i didn't think i deserved this. i wasn't prepared. it's hard to say.

i have moths.

moths!

now, i didn't think people GOT moths. i mean, i know there are these things called 'mothballs' and that my babci and dziadziu's 'shoe closet' sometimes smelled like them. sometimes, big moths would fly into our house in the summer and it was kind of gross. but never in my life have i heard of someone actually having a moth problem in their house. until now.

i have to admit, the signs were there last winter. i sent a few of my fave wool sweaters to the dry cleaners and they came home with giant holes in them. at first, i was furious with the dry cleaners, but then i pulled another sweater out of a pile and it had a similar hole. i had the thought that it might be a moth situation, but i had a lot going on, ok? things were kind of rough in my life last winter. so i honestly didn't think much about it. until the other day, when i pulled out a newish cashmere cardigan and found a teeny, but slightly too big to be chance, hole in the back of it. oh, and sure, maybe i had seen a little moth or two flitting around the apartment, but again, who cares?

well, today, i gave moths a little google. i saw the pictures of moth larvae! barf! surely nothing like that could go on in my house without notice. well i reached back into the depths of my closet and pulled out this old sweater my mom knitted me, and boom! it was in shreds. TELLTALE MOTH LARVAE. next, my lovely camel wool coat. PATCHES OF BALDNESS. i went down to the sweaters i had put in storage in rubbermaid. THERE WAS A CATERPILLAR IN MY CLOTHES. i immediately launched into my tried and true strategy for dealing with such situations: a finely balanced blend of panic and overreaction.

(grooosssssssssss.)

the good news is, my closet is clean now. all that wrapping paper i was going to reuse? POTENTIAL MOTH FODDER. GONE. (sorry, trees). that old mattress cover? down the trash chute. those wool sweaters i was thinking about keeping? on the next boat to the goodwill. now, a multipronged approach:

1. i have a lot of silk dresses. you don't go to 4 weddings a year without accumulating some, you know? and sweet fancy moses, you want me to dry clean them all? heck no. they're in my freezer. yes, that's right, and i will have none of your ridicule.

2. i am washing everything in the house. everything. i'm sorry if anyone in this building wanted to use the washing machines this week, but they will have to wait.

3. chemoprophylaxis. there seem to be two schools of thought. first is to seal up your clothes with old fashioned mothballs. effective, but may also kill you, your pets, or your children if you get too close. second, cedar. i'm turning the downstairs storage into death-ball territory, while limiting callie's upstairs world to cedar.

game on, moths. you think you're up for this? talk to the fruit flies who tried to take on my kitchen this summer. oh, that's right, you can't! because there were no survivors.