This blog is not intended for children under the age of 9. Children under 9 should be accompanied by a parent when reading this blog. Also, this blog might cause you to throw your head back and yell, "ahhhh", nausea, vomiting, and possible heebie jeebies. It is not intended to cause stroke or heart attack, however, so if that occurs, I find it necessary to say... read at your own risk! I am not responsible for carpet cleaning or medical bills!
I must preface this blog by telling those of you who don't know me very well or visit my house, that I have a touch of OCD when it comes to having a clean house (work friends... I keep house like I keep my office if that helps give you a better idea of how clean my house usually is).
That being said, this year has been the year of spiders for me. Along with the spiders, we have had other creepy crawly things pop up! I may get some things out of order, but I will do my best to recall these events as they happened.
As i recall, the event that kicked it off was me getting bitten by a spider (probably a Brown Recluse). I woke up one morning to find a red spot on my stomach. It kind of hurt to touch and I thought it was an ingrown hair (which was strange as I DO NOT have a hairy belly!). I showered and left for work as usual. As the day went on, the spot grew. I waited too long to go to the Doctor, and as the days grew, so did the spot.It grew, and grew, and grew! It turned a greyish color in the middle and developed a welp the size of a baseball around it. It hurt so bad sometimes, I couldn't really move. In fact, it hurt all the way to my back. i finally sucked it up and went to the Doc. he said it looked like it started as a fiddleback bite but had progressed into a nice little staph infection. Great. So he wrote me some "super anti-biotic" and off I went. the medicine made me sick to my stomach and i was pretty miserable for a few days but then it got much better. This was about three weeks ago, i think?
While recovering from the fiddleback attack (in my sleep, mind you. I slept with that thing!!!), I was in the garage smoking one night. The kids were all gone, and John was in the house. I kept hearing something moving and, being a bit on the freaked out side from the spider i shared a bed with, I put my feet up on a chair across from me. As i got up to go into the house, i took a quick look around and there she was... a BLACK WIDOW! She was hanging upside down in this really messy looking web that resembled a cobweb. OH GOD< HELP ME!!! I couldn't move... i yelled for John, but no response. So I went inside and called my Mommy! hahaha... i told John about it and instructed him (very sternly) to go get it! Kill it!!! He mistakenly believes that spiders are good for the Earth and was going to "wait until tomorrow". ARE YOU NUTS??? What, so she can be gone by morning and we will never know where the heck she went??? He was useless to me, so i got off the phone and went out to fight the little woman! i scrambled to find Raid and found it! I sprayed her and she ran all over the wall from me and then behind a cabinet. She was no match for me though! I got behind that barrier of plastic protection and dowsed her to death! DONE! whew... she didn't get me!
The next day, John was sent to the store for whatever heavy duty spray he could find for us to spray the house with. He returned and we read the instructions... "kills spiders (and listed about a million different kinds), EXCEPT BROWN RECLUSE AND BLACK WIDOWS! Seriously??? I am done for! By now, I am pretty sure there is some sort of set up going on in the spider community and they are out to get me!
We have also had the occasional house spider here and there and I have graciously allowed John to throw them outside (saving the Earth one arachnid at a time, right?). When John's not around, the little get flattened by what ever shoe is in reach!
OK... this next thing is really gross! One night at about 3:00am, Dallas comes to my bedside and tells me he found something in his room. I was too far into a sleep stooper to process and sent the poor boy back to bed I guess (I do not recollect the conversation...was told in the morning when we were all up). Later, when I had a cup of coffee in me, Dallas tells me that he had gotten up to pee in the middle of the night and stepped on... A SLUG! OMG! Are you kidding me?? I looked in the bedroom and behind his bed and Haden's bed, all along the walls there are slimy little slug trails. Oh... how in the world? What kind of filthy people get slugs in the house? I was so grossed out by this that I had to have a second cup of coffee and think. The carpet was dry as a bone, so I don't know why the things are attracted to MY HOUSE! Back to the store we go to find slug bait. Well, you can't use the dang bait with a dog in the yard because they are attracted to it and will eat it and it can be fatal. Of course! ugh... so i plan to use the bait tonight so we can take Eddie out on a leash every time his tiny bladder gets full. Sheesh...
Moving on... about two weeks ago, John and I were visiting on the back porch while smoking, and in the corner of the porch next to the house, was a dead baby snake. Some bug had eaten it's head off... yuck. The kids wanted to pick it up and I wouldn't let them... I am really wondering at this point if there is some sort of plague involving crawling things!
So, today... I have done yardwork all day. I am hot, sweaty, dirty and disgusting! But I keep pressing on because there is so much work to be done! I was cleaning the back porch and all of it's items. The grill has been scrubbed, the patio furniture, scrubbed, the dog even got scrubbed! So all of the patio furniture was in the yard to dry in the sun, blocking the small entrance we have to get to the grass. (there is a short brick wall, about 18 inches tall around the edge of the patio). This is important later. There were some folding chairs leaned up against the house that need to be taken to the garage. Next to the chairs is the doghouse (where John sleeps when he is naughty!) I moved the chairs two at a time and leaned them against the dog house. When I got the last one, about 50 Daddy Long Leg spiders scrambled up my legs and onto my arms, neck, and head!!! I freaked out, ran a couple circles frantically trying to brush them off and finally drowned myself with the hose. I really have the heebie jeebies now! I haven't seen a Daddy Long Leg since my childhood days out in Logan County! Why here??? OH! Because it's the year of the dang spider! So, I calmed down from that experience and that is actually when I gave Edward Von Schnitzel a much needed bath. I then sprayed off the porch. After finishing, i thought, well the only place I missed was behind the dog house... so of course I moved it... but first I moved the deck box (positioned close to the dog house) behind the deck box, was another dead snake! This one was just like the first, only bigger. Guess they double their size in about two weeks, just in case anyone was wondering! I disposed of the body and moved on (I am not afraid of snakes like most girls, so this didn't creep me out as much as the other stuff...lol). i then moved the dog house. Wish I hadn't... behind the dog house is where mama snake had made her home. So when I moved it, Mama and 3 or 4 juvenile (delinquent as far as I am concerned) snakes scattered all over the porch! Of course I had just put the shovel away all the way across the yard in the shed. Why did I do that??? So, i had to pick them up and throw them somewhere! My gut reaction was to toss them over the fence, so i did. Mama and one little one made it to the safety of the yard next door, which belongs to an elderly lady we have never seen. She doesn't get out of the house, so I don't think she will ever know she has snakes living in her yard! lol Two or three others are somewhere in my yard, and i am done! My dog is running around barking and chasing these snakes and I don't even care. At this point, I am ready to shower and move to Alaska! Eddie found one snake as I was typing this blog, and he killed it. Poor baby snake...
Don't let this story scare you from coming on over to enjoy an evening with the Meadows! Thanks for reading!
