this (I followed the link from Mimi), and you know what sucks? I’m such a freakin’ sap that all I had to do was read No, and to top it off you murdered Haley Joel Osment and made me cry for ten minutes. and I TEARED UP. I’m such a friggin’ sap now that all I need to do is see someone mentioning themselves or someone else crying about something, and I TEAR UP IN SYMPATHY. Fred thinks it’s the funniest damn thing that I get all teary-eyed if someone cries on TV, but I can’t help it! I don’t care if it’s a stupid, cheesy storyline, if I think it’s the most idiotic movie or show in the world, if someone on the screen cries, I’m ready to cry right along with them.
No one cries alone when I’m around, I always say.
* * *
So after a couple of people – I’m lookin’ at you,
Mike and Jen – noted in my comments that it’s okay to go ahead and plant those daffodil and lily bulbs, and after I heard the weatherman on the radio saying that we might get flurries on Wednesday, I decided to get my butt in gear and go out to plant the damn things and be done with it. (Note: and I see from the year-ago entry (link at the bottom of the page) that exactly one year ago I was planting 30 daffodil bulbs. I should have just put that entry up in place of this one!) We have this nifty little tool that you attach to a drill and which digs holes just the right size and depth for bulbs. I got out the drill and attachment, then went around to the side of the house near the garage door, where a partial bag of potting soil was sitting. I thought I might need some extra soil to help me fill in the holes once I’d planted the bulbs (none of this digging up a bed and “amending” the soil and all that crap for me, nosir). I carried the bag around to the back yard, dropped it by the patio, plugged in the drill (it’s a cement drill and thus mighty powerful) and began drilling holes in the ground. The ground was pretty wet from the rain we’d gotten over the weekend, and I had dug about 15 holes, when I realized I needed to get something or do something – exactly what it was escapes me now. I walked back toward the house and glanced at the bag of potting soil as I passed it, and then I stopped in my tracks.
There, climbing down the bag, obviously intent on crossing the patio and entering our house, was the biggest fucking black widow I’ve ever seen in my life. I swear, the body was about half the size of my thumb, and it was gleaming evilly and I just shuddered as I looked at it. Thinking only “Oh, Fred has GOT to see this!”, I went into the house, grabbed a tupperware container, dropped the container over the spider, slid the lid underneath, and sealed it.
The spider, suffice it to say, was not happy at all. It skittered back and forth (
shudder) and glared evilly at me. After sending Fred pictures of the spider (taken through the tupperware, because I was NOT going to open that thing back up. Black Widows aren’t known to jump straight up, but there’s always a first time!), I went back to planting my bulbs. After almost two hours – and 150
King Alfred daffodils , 48 assorted
Asiatic lilies, and 20
Oriental lilies – I sat down to rest, at which point Fred called to see if I’d been bitten by the black widow and was in the process of dying. He’d been doing some online research on anesthesizing spiders, and told me I should put the container in the freezer. By this point the spider wasn’t moving around much – do spiders need oxygen? Why,
yes they do – and with it being so late in the year it was probably hibernating – do spiders hibernate? I can’t seem to find an answer online – and although I’m all for letting spiders live and let live (I believe I’ve mentioned that as long as the spiders in the house keep their webs neat and clutter-free, I’ll leave them alone), I wasn’t about to let this one free so that it could eventually make its way into the house and bite us all, letting us in for some serious aches and pains for several days. So I put the container in the freezer, and the spider died pretty quickly.
When Fred got home, he immediately went to the freezer to check out the spider. It was obviously dead, and so he took the cover off so that he could snap some pictures of it. As the cover came off, the beginnings of a web which connected the spider to the lid caused the spider to move.
I’m not sure which is sadder: that Fred screamed like a little girl and danced sideways out of the room at a speed faster than any human has ever moved before, or that I, twelve feet away, responded to his scream and dance by screaming myself, jumping up off the couch and landing three feet further away by the fireplace, eyes wide and heart racing.
Because no one
screams alone when I’m around, either.
After he’d taken his pictures, I took the spider, dumped it into the toilet and flushed it. Twice. Because that’s one big damn spider and I don’t want to see it coming back to life and skittering toward ME with blood in its eye.
Gah.
* * *
Détente
(A story in far too many pictures)
Miz Poo: “Um, Mom? I was here FIRST.”
Bean: “This is MY bed. MINE. MINE. MINE.”
Miz Poo: “Get OUT of here, you little turd!”
Bean: “MY BED.”
Miz Poo: “I am NOT moving!”
Bean: “I AM NOT MOVING EITHER. MY BED.”
Bean: “Lord, how long must I suffer, laying here next to the cleaningest cat in the whole wide world? How long? In MY bed?”
Miz Poo: LickLickLick
Bean: “Zzzzzzzzzzz”
Miz Poo: “I was unable to drive him away through my annoying 3-hour-long grooming session. WHAT am I going to do NOW?”
Bean: “Zzzzzzzz”
Bean: “I sense that she’s still there. But I won’t look at her. If I don’t look at her, she’s not really there. MY BED. MINE.”
But sleep overcame them both.
Will they become friends? Perhaps even lovers? Will they spend all their time grooming each other and telling secrets and giggling?
Probably not – Miz Poo’s growling and hissing was a notch above her usual hysteria this morning, perhaps caused by the embarrassment of knowing that she had spent hours snuggling with the Bean, whom she’s claimed (perhaps a little too vociferously) to hate lo these past few months – but a mother can dream, can’t she?
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