Not too sure this is blog worthy when I have so many other important things I am behind blogging about BUT...
I hate spiders and they hate me. (Except for tame tarantulas- we are friends, but that's another story.) I have pretty good spider radar and am always subconsciously looking for them. Maybe they are looking for me too?
One day a while back I was standing in the kitchen, and a small spider landed on my shoulder from out of nowhere. A couple hours later on the SAME DAY, I was in the SAME SPOT in the kitchen cooking something and ANOTHER spider (different kind) landed on the SAME SHOULDER. True story. And no, my kitchen ceiling isn't covered with cobwebs.
Last fall, we endured a hobo spider "infestation" in our house. It was disgusting and sort of like living in a nightmare for a while. (I think I would choose another Alabama flea infestation over this one...maybe.) KR got a nasty bite on his knee that we attributed to one of these bad boys. After their mating season was over, and after spraying some heavy duty pesticide, they disappeared and we slowly started to feel "safe" in our home. I only saw a couple random spiders over the winter. No biggie. Last week, we got new carpet throughout the house, tile in the bathrooms and kitchen, and KR replaced the trim and baseboards. YAY! So in my mind I'm thinking that the house should be virtually spider free for a while, right? Wrong.
Last night, Bailey was having a hard time sleeping. She has been sick so I went in several times to check on her and try to help her fall asleep. It was about 11pm the last time I went in and she was wide awake and wanting to mess with her humidifier. Not sure why, but I let her down and turned on the light. She saw it first-a spider on the floor next to her. I scooped her up and probably screamed. Turns out is was a juvenile female black widow. Great! I was so mad and have no idea where it came from. "It's just not allowed to be here" is what I really thought. So fast forward to this morning...we are getting ready to run some errands. I go into Bailey's room to grab her a sweater that's on the floor next to the humidifier. Sure enough as I look down, there is ANOTHER SPIDER right on top of the sweater, inches away from where the widow was last night. Luckily this one looked like a common grass/house spider, but ominous and ugly nonetheless. What in the world is going on?!?!? It wasn't next to a window, vent, door, or large crevice in the wall, so why would there be more than one spider in the same spot in her room? Too much of a coincidence, so mathematical probability would tell me that there are many more around the house. They are out to get me. So much for enjoying the new carpet barefoot. Grrrrr.
On the funnier side of the story...Bailey so makes us laugh around here. She has been into bugs lately, which I certainly encourage, but I have been trying to teach her to stay away from certain ones. She knows my reaction to spiders and I have done a good job of instilling some of that fear in her. I don't want her to be terrified of them, but I also don't want her trying to play with one either. So as she was watching me catch the spider last night, this was our conversation:
Bailey: "Can I touch it?"
Me: "No, stay right there"
Bailey: "It's a nice spider"
Me: "No, it's not a nice spider, Bailey"
Bailey: "Spiders nice"
Me: "No, Bailey, spiders mean!"
Bailey: "Give it kisses?"
Me: "No Bailey, we don't kiss spiders!"
Bailey: "Give it hugs?"
Me: "No we don't give it hugs. Spiders are mean and they will get you! Don't touch spiders!!"
We have the same conversation about bees and worms, except I don't tell her they are mean-just that she can't give them hugs or kisses! I think she just wants to convince herself that they really are nice and reassure herself so she's not afraid. Like this morning when I found the second spider and was having a mini-freak out, Bailey came in the room behind me saying,
"It's okay. It's okay Bailey..."
No, we don't have a Christmas tree up right now, I just never blogged about a few important things and I'm trying to catch up!
