Carsick

[Error: unknown template qotd]My mom worked nights, so I often spent the night at home alone from a very young age -- around 7 or 8. Her ex girlfriend lived in a nearby apartment, so she would come check on me, but I had our apartment to myself.
I was always sure that one of two things would happen in the night.

1.) The apartment building would catch on fire, and I would have to climb out of my bedroom window on the second story. This was probably because when I was really little, our trailer would have small electrical fires on a regular basis. The outlets would smoke, and then we'd have to call the fire department. I may be imagining that this happened more often than it did in reality. Maybe it only happened 3 times in the five years we lived there... I would have to ask my mom.
This fear was not paralyzing in the way that some of my other fears are. I was prepared. I made a ladder out of sheets and tied it to my loft bed, so I could climb down it. Every single night before bed, I would wrap my  most favorite things in my blankie and tie it up and place it next to the window and the sheet ladder. I usually had the screen pulled out of the window, too. I would practice gettting down from my loft really fast as often as possible, so when the time came I wouldn't be nervous, I could just do it naturally. The things in the blankie were always pretty similar: my favorite doll of the moment, my tabacco box, a perfume bottle that was my great grandma's, and two or three of my favorite articles of clothing. I never actually had to climb out the window.

2.)Someone was going to come into our house to kidnap/rape/beat me up. I often lost my house key, so I had to learn how to open the door with my ID card from the University of Toledo Recreation Center. I knew it was really easy to just slip a card in, and open the door. I couldn't use the chain because then Carol, my mom's ex, wouldn't be able to get in when she needed to. So instead, I would practice lying still. When I went to bed, I would pack blankets and pillows all around me so that it looked -- I imagined -- like I was just part of the mattress. Then I would become very concious of my breathing. With each breath in, I would slowly suck in  my stomach. And with each breath out, I would push my belly up a little, to keep it from deflating. This was a nightly ritual, whether my mom was home or not. I felt like someone was definitely watching, and I had to be so disciplined that even if I had the worst itch in the history of itches, I could not, at any cost, scratch it.

[Error: unknown template qotd]I love this one. How could I resist??

Leopard slugs do a strange mating dance, which involves following one another up a tree and out onto a limb. Then together they hang from a band of slime in mid air, twirling and twirling. Their penises (which they both have) emerge from just behind the "head" and intertwine with each other. This is how fertilization occurs.

Fucking sweet.
It is made to look very romantic on David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth.

[Error: unknown template qotd]One of my favorites... 

Person 1: You suck
Me: Not you.