Fruit Flies (果蝇, フルーティーなハエ, 과일 파리)

I may have posted this before, but fruit flies absolutely drive me bananas (no pun intended). We're currently going through a fruit fly infestation here at the Yan househould and it is pretty bad; I almost lost it yesterday when several flies were landing on me at the same time while I was holding Baby Mina and trying to work. They're worse than telemarketers! I don't know how they got into our home, why there are so many, why they keep coming in droves, but I'm actually hoping for winter to come back now to freeze out these little buggers. It got so bad I panic ordered traps from Amazon that is just basically a blue light with glue on it to attract the flies and get them stuck on a piece of paper. The other inhumane device, of course, is my dad's favorite: a device looking like a tennis racket that he swings around to "zap" the bugs in the air, as anytime the bugs go through the circle of the racket an electric charge shocks them. Pretty tough for the soul to no I've ended more than 100 lives in one day, but there's really no way to get these fruit flies out otherwise, and they're tearing up all our food! They even somehow make it into our refrigerator, and lots of little dead fruit fly carcasses lie on the bottom of our fruit shelves as testment. They're also hanging out in the door, through the gasket (the part that seals the refrigerator, a fact I learned recently) and just anywhere they can to get to our food. They're faceless, tiny, nerve-tingling beings that are peak cringe, and cringe the way it's supposed to be used, not the "cringe" that Gen Z has overused to the point it means anything they think is uncool or inappropriate. Maybe this is just a sure sign that spring is here and summer is right around the corner. This is going to be another boring summer. MJ and I haven't really had an extended vacation since summer 2024, when we visited Korea and China, which seems like a whole lifetime ago yet also feels like it just happened yesterday, minus a 9-month pregnancy and 4-month life of Baby Mina. Some events in your life just stay with you forever, just because of how unique the experience is and never doing it ever again. I remember on that trip spending just 48 hours in China, part of it in a hotel room finishing up work at 1AM local time because it was business hours in the U.S., then waking up at 8AM there to do a podcast episode with my fantasy baseball friend, just to go out and explore the most populated city in the world right after, and the city of my birth, Shanghai. Ah, those type of days aren't going to happen for awhile, where I'm just by myself living in the world with few responsbilities, world is my oyster. Now my oyster is the 15-pound bowling ball of a baby I hold almost night and day because she's just so attached to me. I yearn for freedom, but also I cherish the moments now with her because probably in what seems like a flash she will be too heavy to hold and no longer want me to hold her. Welcome to parenthood: it may seem tough now, but some day even these will the good old days (that's a Macklemore song feat. Kesha called "Good Old Days.") Except the fruit flies. Anything with fruit flies can never be "the good old days."