Uninvited Dinner Guests and Strange Bedfellows

The other night, my Beloved Husband, during his evening-commute-phone-call, asked me if I wanted him to bring home some fast food. Oh yeah! Cooking isn't my favorite past-time, and I like doing dishes even less. I think my son has neophobia when it comes to food - he hates pretty much everything - but Baby Daughter walks around asking, "Fries? Pop?" as though she's an addict going through withdrawal and looking to make a score. We've told our son that if he will try 10 new foods, we'll get him a game for the game system, so he agreed to try a hamburger since Daddy was bringing something home. I know, can you believe it? My almost 6 year old son has never had a hamburger happy meal. Chicken nuggets, yeah, but "no burger, no, not ever, I hate that, I don't need to try it to know I hate it!" That's what we usually hear. But he really wants a new game, so he agreed to a burger. Battle averted. Whew!

We helped Daddy bring the goodies in when he got home, and pulled out the TV trays so we could watch cartoons with the kids while we ate. Usually I can't stand cartoons, but you know, Piggley Winks actually isn't that bad!

Dinner was going along fine, and my son was even eating his burger with fairly normal bites instead of his usual 1/16" sized bites. Okay, I'm exaggerating. It's more like 1/32". He acts like we give him poison. :::sigh::: I swear, it takes him an hour to eat a bowl of cereal or a "peanut butter and jelly sandwich with no jelly and no crust" sandwich. Anyway, dinner was moving along when it happened. The guest. It wasn't a knock on the door, and it wasn't the ring of a phone.

It was a spider that scurried across my TV tray right out from under my opened burger box.

I gasped and did my best to slide my tray sideways, out of the WAY MOVE SO I CAN GET OUT! My husband, ever my knight in shining armor, bolted to find the little sucker before he could hide. The kids sat there looking at us like we were doing some kind of weird parent dance, sans music. Wouldn't you know it, the spider dropped to the coffee table - he knew we were after him! (I say we like I wasn't all the way across the room) He scurried off the coffee table, across the floor and under the basket of CD's under the TV. Well, my knight got him anyway. Neener!

So today, I'm making the bed. Last touch, grab the toss pillows off the floor and toss them back onto the bed. I straightened it just so, and saw him, another spider, against the patterned background of the quilt. Oh my God he's HUGE! He sat there looking at me, pretending he was "blending" so I pretended he was "blending" too, and grabbed a handful of tissue. Ugh, it wasn't enough! I got him, yeah, but I could feel his grotesque spider body through the tissue while I ran screaming to the trash can. :::feels shiver down my spine just writing about it::: I'm not normally a screamer, so I got the kids attention, who were then right in front of me while I was trying to get to the garbage. MOVE!! I just knew, KNEW if I didn't make it fast enough he was going to crawl out of the gobs of tissue and eat me. Alive. And then go after my kids for dessert. I'm still giving the garbage can a wide berth.

I don't like spiders, in case you couldn't tell. I got a gardening magazine in the mail once that had a spider on the cover, and couldn't bear to have it face up on the coffee table. When I was 4, I woke up to a spider in my room and sprayed it to death with air freshener, that being the only thing within reach. Once, one snuck up behind me while I was spray-painting something and guess what? Yep, stiff, sticky, dead, glossy white spider. I'll use what I can as a weapon, but, if it's out, my favorite is the vacuum. A 6 foot reach so I don't have to even come near the little bastards. If there's a spider on the wall, and it's location is higher than my height, it automatically becomes taller than me. That's when I go get the vacuum.

When I was in high school, my sweetheart got a pet tarantula and named it after me. I tried to be flattered, really I did, but it's hard to feel flattered when you've had your worst nightmare named after you! (lol Did I want to hold it. Goodness, you were funny, C!) Guess who my son's favorite superhero is? Spiderman EVERYWHERE! I just love it when he calls me "Spider-mom"! (Seriously, I do - it's cute! But it does creep me out a little!)

I have this irrational notion that when Satan took 1/3 of the angels with him when he got kicked out of heaven, some of them decided to become spiders, demons incarnate, to harass people on the earth. Boogey boogey boogey BOO, evil is coming to get YOU! (I said irrational, I'm not that dumb!) And I have absolutely zero desire to overcome my fear. I live with it just fine, thank you very much. What I can't live with, is spiders!