Spidey Time

Spiders are one of those creations which I intend to ask God about when I meet him some day.  I don't know if you're allowed to bring up the subject of Hell when talking to God, but my earthly question goes something like this..."What in the Hell were you thinking when you invented venomous death-traps that crawl on eight furry, spindly legs and scare the piss out of people all the time?"  I might have to work on the wording some before I get to Heaven though.

It happened when Tradd went on shift.  Why this is the case, I just don't know.  It always happens this way though.  The stars must line up, waiting to move into anti-Cindy mode the day that Tradd leaves for his shift.  Wednesday was going okay in the morning.  The girls were doing a combination of school work and outdoor play time while I taught them in between getting things done around the house.

Kacy and I were inside working on the school work when Storm let out a blood-curdling scream from our back porch area.  Knowing that Kacy had recently found a hand saw, which I had quickly confiscated when she attempted to use it, I was picturing Cameron with the saw in one hand and only half her fingers on the other.  I didn't have to conjure up gruesome images for long though.  Storm apparently rescued her baby sister and came running in like lightning to inform me that there was a HUGE spider in the laundry room.

This might be okay for any normal person, but I have a serious phobia of spiders.  I honestly don't remember having a strong problem with them when I was a small child, but I do remember the precise second I became a bon-a-fide arachnophobic.  I was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona; a place where everything of both animal and plant life finds some way to poke, strike, spear, cut, or launch some type of irritant, poison or venom at everything else.  In fact, as an adult, Tradd and I have often pondered if God just gave this corner of the world to Satan when he was creating things and said, "Here's my gift of peace to you.  Just decorate and inhabit it however you like."  The result is now the desert of the Southwest.  Satan's interior decorating skills are beautiful when viewed from a distance, but deadly if one steps too close.

Anyways, when I was about 9 or 10, I wandered out of bed and into the bathroom one morning with my eyes closed.  This was normal for me, since my parents had built the house on their own when I was an infant and my path to the bathroom had been the same for a decade.  I usually managed to peel my eyelids back about the time I went to flush.  On the way back to my bedroom, I reached up to turn off the bathroom light and just about lost my finger in the mouth of the most hairy, disgusting spider I had ever seen.  It was massive.  This bastard must have had its own zip code in Spiderville, which was just fine there, but it was in my house now.  It was not just in my house, but on my light switch.  Actually, it covered the entire switch plate; no freaking joke.  It pulsated with its furry ass and its many beady eyes too.  I think it was keeping time with my heartbeat in order to figure the most effective and precise second to launch at my jugular and sink the first and fatal bite.  Then I just figured it would start with the juiciest parts and devour me from the eyeballs down.  My dad would eventually get tired of me taking so long getting ready for school and he would find my body with this beast of a spider eating my face off.

I did what anyone in my position would do; I ran to the other end of the bathroom, jumped in the bathtub and screamed, "Daaaad!!"  Now, I will never forget what my dad did because I remember thinking at the time that I could have hugged him and given him a huge Daddy's Girl Kiss for his sensitivity and thoughtfulness, while at the same time I wanted to kick him in the shins for not slamming through the bathroom door Rambo style, complete with his Sheriff's Department uniform and sidearm to blow a hole through the spider, the wall and the tree out back if need be.  Then again, I wasn't picky.  I thought a torch blower would have been a nice way of dealing with it too.  I mean, I had to consider the possibility that it could be carrying a zillion baby wolf spiders on its back that would scatter and hide in all the cracks of the house to breed, multiply and grow even larger just to seek revenge on me.

My dad came up outside the closed bathroom door and in a tiny voice said, "Do you need me to go get your mom?"  I knew what he was worried about, but I had way bigger fears at that moment than a lifetime of monthly bloodletting rituals.  Little did I know...

I shouted back at my dad, "No!  It's a spider!"  Even from my cowering position in the bathtub at the other end of the bathroom, I think I caught the hint of an audible escape of air from my dad's mouth at the relief that it was something he was familiar with and knew how to handle.  In a louder, more controlled voice, he asked the specifics, and then opened the door and slayed the dragon, I mean wolf spider.  I honestly don't remember how he did it though.  I think my mind has blocked it in order to protect my own sense of sanity.  Apparently it's not working very well.  Every morning after that, I walked into the bathroom with my eyes open as wide as saucers, looking for the first hint of pulsating spider legs so I could run before getting trapped behind a closed door again.

Unfortunately, this had been only the start of a long streak of massive wolf spiders laying claim to our house in Tucson.  We ended up coming up with new and inventive ways of killing them though.  One time, while my dad was not home of course, another beast of a spider appeared in the corner of the ceiling.  Lacking proper insect spray and the obligatory blow torch, my mom used her next best weapon.  She pulled out a can of hair spray.  Not the weak, modern junk, but the good old fashioned aerosol, extra hold kind, that you could spray from 25 feet away and still have it be completely effective at holding hair and depleting the ozone all at the same time.  I remember my mom standing there in a wide crouch, with her left arm out to the side and me behind her, sort of like they taught us in basketball.  Who ever knew my mom was so athletic?  With her right hand, she aimed the can, pushed the trigger and didn't release until the damned spider was so coated in hairspray it couldn't move.  I don't know if it was dead or alive, but I do know it was completely shellacked and sure to not move anywhere.  Since it couldn't curl up to die like most spiders do, it was left, glossy coated, at its full diameter.  I think we might have presented my dad with the story, the hairspray streaked walls and the crunchy, well-preserved spider when he arrived home.  God knows...I hate spiders.

Back to the spider Storm found.  I tried to downplay the spider and my fears as I headed out to the laundry room with the girls.  "Okay.  Okay.  So you found a spider.  Is it really all that big?"

"Mom, it's huge!  And Cameron was standing right beside it," Storm assured me.  I'm sorry to say she was right.  I got out there and asked for the location of the spider, thinking I would have to look for it.  Storm pointed to the dead center of the room and said, "There."  Yes, there it was.  It was roughly the size of Cameron, but its weight was dispersed between its eight fuzzy legs, its taunting beady-eyed head, and its pulsating abdomen.  (I'm beginning to see a pattern with the pulsating thing, but I'm not sure if all spiders do it just to tease me or if my own fearfully twisted mind supplies this gory detail on its own.)

"Holy Hell, Storm!  You didn't tell me it was THAT big!"  At this, Storm laughed at me.  The little snot actually found this reaction amusing.  Of course, she was safely behind me.  Since my dad wasn't around, I again did what anyone in my position would do...I whipped out my cell phone and called Tradd at work.  I knew he couldn't really do anything, but maybe there was some glimmer of a hope in me that he would pick up the phone, hear my fearful pIea, and shut down the fire station for an hour just so he could run home to slay my dragon for me.  Or at least he could walk me through the process of firing up the blow torch.  Really.  It was sitting on the work bench from when we burned yard trash last week.

Since I absolutely detest talking on the phone, I always get straight to the point.  This time was no exception.  Tradd answered and in a panicky voice I said, "There's a huge-ass spider in our laundry room.  It tried to eat Cameron and now it needs to DIE!"  There were a few moments of silence.  I think I actually heard Tradd smiling, but it could have just been his retreating footsteps as he left the common room at the firehouse, too embarrassed to have this conversation with me in front of other firefighters.  Either way, he finally said, "Okay?"  It wasn't a statement.  It was a question.  He was mocking me in a so-what-do-you-want-me-to-do-about-it way.  The gall of him.

Since he apparently was not going to try to come home and take care of things himself, I asked him for any ideas on how to kill it.  "Smack it with a shoe," Tradd said.  Yeah, there's a genius idea...

"No freaking way!" I shouted back.  "This sucker will hold on to the shoe on the upstroke and come after me with it.  Besides that, I can't be far enough away with a shoe."

"Get the fly swatter."

"No.  That only gives me 14 extra inches.  It's not long enough or big enough around for this thing."  While it may seem like I was just stalling, I was dead serious and totally honest about all of this.  I will not get close to a spider due to visions of the spider jumping either on top of my weapon and laughing as it comes back to me on the upstroke or jumping on my face and chewing away when I get close enough.  These visions may be totally unjustified since I know of no historical reports of spiders ever having done this, but they are completely real and compelling evidence in my mind.

At this point, Kacy's hell-cat Scarlett leaped through the door of the laundry room, having no idea why we were gathered there.  She simply wanted to be the center of attention.  She sauntered around while we stood in the doorway beckoning and cooing to her to come to us.  Our coos turned to outright shrieks as Scarlett nearly stepped on the spider.  Since this cat often times acts like Satan's sidekick, I tend to think she intentionally tiptoed around and near the spider just to listen to us scream.  She seemed amused.  The spider twitched and started pulsating faster.  I think it was in strike mode when Scarlett finally tired of this game and left the laundry room again.

I thought again for a second and spied the perfect weapon.  "What about the blow torch?" I asked Tradd.

To this I simply got the reply, "Cindy."  It may have been one word, just my name, but it was loaded with: Are you out of your freaking mind, woman?  You are going to blow up or burn down our house because of a spider?  Our children, if they survive the fire, will be left homeless right before the holidays and mentally scarred for life because their mother will be living in a psych ward after that.  Insurance will not pay for repairs due to Arson-by-crazed-wife-of-a-firefighter being listed as the official cause.  Then we will still have to pay the life-sucking mortgage payment every month for our children to eat, sleep, dream, and play in the pile of ash that was once their house.

The money part shocked me back to my senses and I abandoned the blow torch idea.  (I still secretly fantasize about it though.)  Storm piped up from behind me and said, "What about Daddy's bug zapper?"  For Father's Day this year, my parents bought my brother and my husband tennis-racket shaped bug zappers.  If you push the button and touch the wire mesh of the racket against a bug, it will sizzle and fry right before your eyes.  It works well too.  Phillip had to test it against Tradd's skin when they received them.  Tradd said a couple choice words, but also mentioned it hurt too.  I considered Storm's suggestion, despite the lack of length to the handle, but decided against it since it was hanging on a peg on the wall beside the spider.  Crap.

Since Tradd was obviously being no help, I told him in a disgusted voice that I was going to get off the phone and actually figure out what to do.  "Call me and tell me what you did," he said.  Yeah.  Sure.  I'll get right on that...

I staked Storm at the door of the laundry room to let me know if the spider moved anywhere while I went to find a weapon.  I didn't want this bastard to disappear before I could kill it.  I was fairly certain it would end up on my face in the middle of the night.  As I was headed out to the shed to look for industrial strength insect spray, I spotted a better weapon.  I love to build or make things out of wood, so I have sheets of wood and other small boards collected on my back porch.  My newest project idea involves a complete log, so I happened to have what I thought was the perfect weapon, lying right at my feet.  This oak log is about a foot and a half long and sawn in half length-wise.  It weighs about 25 pounds, so I hefted the log in both hands and told Storm, "Stand back."

The girls clustered behind me.  I stood sideways just outside the doorway.  I couldn't stand in the doorway out of fear that the Spider Master might be able to leap onto my face while my hands were occupied with its 25-pound Weapon of Death.  There was a dual purpose in standing sideways as well.  This way, I could squeeze the log through the doorjamb without crunching my knuckles on the frame, and, despite having three kids, my profile is still less noticeable than my front-view.  It would make a more difficult target for any last-minute life-saving antics the Spider Master tried to pull.  With the girls behind me, we counted, "1-2-3!" as I swung the log wildly from side to side.  On the count of three, I let it go.  While it did not exactly sail effortlessly up through the air, it at least hit its mark.  But, just to make sure, I let out a battle cry, leaped tall piles of laundry in a single bound and landed square on the log.  I braced myself with one hand on the water heater and one hand on the washing machine.  I jumped up and down a few times with all my weight, just to make sure Spider Master was dead.  I realized that I might be turning into Maniacal Mommy again when I looked out the laundry room door and saw my three girls lined up with their naturally saucer-like eyes staring at me and their mouths hanging open.

"I hope he's dead," I said.

"Check and see."  I don't remember which child suggested this, but I hated that idea.  I was about to revert back to my 4-year-old stage and say, "Nuh-uh!  You check."  I caught myself just before the words came out.  I told myself instead to, "Think Hero Mom."  This sure as shit didn't pan out for me in the past, so I was really running on a wing and a prayer...who could it be?  Believe it or not, it's just me...  For anyone who doesn't know, those are the words to the theme song from the 1980's TV show "The Greatest American Hero."  Anyone?  Maybe it's just me.  I used to watch it religiously as a kid.  In fact, I had the theme song record and would play it on my bright pink record player while I zoomed around the room in my Wonder Woman underoos thinking someday I would be a hero too.  I really miss those underoos.  I wonder if they make them in adult sizes.  Hmmm.  Okay, enough with the ADD side trek; I have a spider for which I must guarantee death.

After having pounced on the log like an elephantine cat for several minutes, I now gingerly stepped to the side and looked for something to lift the log.  I know, I could have just used my hands.  But, in case you haven't figured out by now, I have a very active imagination, which contains a very real fear of spiders using any means they can to get to my face and start devouring me.  There was absolutely no way in hell I was going to give this Spider Master a bridge straight to my facial area while my arms were occupied with lifting a log.  Thankfully, I spied a sword of the girls that Tradd had made for them to play with.  I poked it under the edge of the log, lifted and saw the damn spider crouch back a little more into the laundry it was burrowed in.

Crap.  Crap.  Crap.  Crap.

"Damn it!" I hollered out of fear and frustration.  I quickly covered my words with the obligatory public message, "Don't repeat that word.  Okay girls?  Cameron, do you understand me?"  I had to specifically call out my youngest on this one because she has taken to using that phrase quite freely and frequently lately.  I don't see any connection between it being my choice phrase and her regular use of it, but Tradd insists there's a connection.  He's asked me to tone it down ever since Cameron cussed at Tradd's family at the park a couple weeks ago.  This is a group of people who have a magical internal bleep button to censor the language of those around them so they do not hear curse words.  Unfortunately, due to Cameron's mere 2½ years of age, they let their guard down.  While Chris, Tradd's brother, was pushing Cameron on the swing, she wanted to go play something else.  I think she asked to get down, but they didn't understand her, so she resorted to the concise, get-the-job-done phrase of, "Put me down, damn it!"  Oops.  Yup, there just might be a little bit of me in that statement.

I dropped the log again and pounced like the elephantine cat again.  I even tried scooting the log along the clothes and floor while standing on it.  I knew the damn spider would cause a massive grease stain on the laundry, but I figured it would be worth any lost clothing, so long as it didn't eat my face off in my sleep.  I grabbed the sword, lifted the log again, and again saw the freaking spider cower back.  Now, I was pissed.  I held the end of the log up with one hand and plunged the sword deep into the Spider Master's heart with the other.  I both heard and felt the crunch and pop of the Spider Master dying.  Ewww.  That's what I hate the most about killing insects and spiders.  I can't stand the snap-crackle-pop.  I never eat Rice Krispies either.

With part of the abdomen being the only thing not turned into a smear on the laundry, I hefted it onto the end of the sword and carried it out in the yard to display for all other enemies.  I felt good about my deed for the day.  I had successfully slain the Spider Master and sent a clear message to all other spiders about their fate should they step their eight furry feet in my house.  It's been about two weeks and I've yet to see another spider...Damn it.