Some people accidentally catch their dog or babysitter doing something funny on their home surveillance cameras; I’m glad we don’t have cameras in our basement to catch me as I stumble around at night breastfeeding an infant, pumping, oh and going to battle against spiders while I’m half dressed, half awake and not wearing my glasses, so maybe it’s not a spider at all but some carpet fuzz. No, if I’m alone, it’s always a spider.
Here’s what those cameras would have captured the other night:
-Me walking back to my bedroom from the bathroom and glancing down at the carpet, noticing a spider running toward me in the half-dark and then me jumping over it whisper screaming* as it ran under my legs.
-Me looking around for a broom or shoe and then seeing another spider on a door three inches from my face.
-Me whisper screaming: “They’re grouping up! They’re after me!” to no one.
-Me finding a broom and trying to stab the door spider with 1000 tiny daggers.
-My cat “the hunter” sitting two feet away looking peacefully amused at the whole situation.
-Me losing track of the door spider so moving onto the floor spider which is now camped out in a crack in the bathroom doorway.
-Me finding two shoes, putting one on my foot and holding one in my hand because I don’t know if this will be a stomp-with-my-foot job or a throw-a-shoe-at-it job but I want to be prepared whichever way this goes down.
-Me trying to figure out how to get the spider out of that crack so I can get it with the broom or one of the shoes without it getting away.
-Me sweating and breathing way too heavily for this amount of exertion so far.
-Me looking at my cat and gesturing to the spider, waiting for her to step in and do something already.
-Me whisper shaming my cat, “I’m going to stop feeding you if I keep finding spiders all over. Do your job!”
-Me grabbing my cat off the floor and tossing it toward the spider, thinking, maybe if I get her started, her instincts will kick in.
-The cat landing directly in front of the spider and still not seeing it, but it did scare the spider out of the crack, oh crap he’s a fast one.
-Me dropping the broom and grabbing the lavender air freshener spray from the bathroom and spraying it at the spider to incapacitate it and whisper screaming, “Die hell bug!” And then whisper coughing a lot from the spray but trying to keep my eyes wide open so I don’t lose track of the spider in the lavender fog.
-Me throwing a shoe onto the spider, then dropping the spray, the broom, and running back to my bed, with the other shoe still on, to hide under the covers.**
Stillness.
-My husband coming into the bathroom the next morning and looking around wondering what happened.
-My husband cleaning off the bottom of the shoe, putting away the air freshener spray, and putting away the broom.
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*Whisper screaming is when you get startled or scared and you can’t keep from screaming, but you just got your baby to sleep, so you do scream but only at a whisper. If you have children I really don’t need to explain whisper screaming to you. If you don’t have children I applaud you for making it this far into reading my blog, but don’t you have something more fun you should be doing like showering with the door closed or drinking an entire mug of coffee without having to reheat it?
**Spiders can’t get you under the covers. At least that’s what my mom always told me, and as parents we know that we would never lie to our kids just to get them to go back to sleep because we are tired and also want to go back to sleep.
That is such a cute picture. And no way would your mother lie about something like that!
Yeah, “Spiders don’t run in packs either, there wouldn’t be enough flies to feed more than one in each house”……clearly I have been duped as well.
That husband bit tho….hilarious!!!
Right? I’m starting to think spiders don’t follow any of the rules our mom told us about… 😉