Spooky!

This guy and me, we have an understanding: He can build an elaborate web outside my kitchen window and eat the bugs who congregate by the porch light and I will not try to kill him AS LONG AS he never, ever, ever tries to come inside or send any of his relatives inside. If he does, I will kill him dead.

Of course, I'd have to get over the panic attack, first. And maybe call DH to do the killing for me so I wouldn't have to get too close. (Have I ever blogged any other spider adventures? In Texas once I found a spider as big as my hand crawling on my bedroom wall. DH was out of state -- on a recruiting trip for his residency program, I think, or maybe a job interview -- but I called him anyway. Obviously I knew he couldn't kill it for me over the phone, but I needed moral support! 30 minutes of hyperventilating, tears, and false starts later, I finally squealed and smashed it with a shoe. Another time, in Idaho, Uno and I found a particularly dangerous looking spider on the couch in the basement; it wasn't sooooo big -- though it wasn't small, either! -- but it was black and kind of furry. *SHUDDER!* DH worked close enough to home that he often came home at lunch, so Uno and I sat there watching the spider -- didn't want him to get away! -- from a safe distance for 90 minutes until DH could come and kill it for us.)

Okay, yuck. I was feeling all smooth and brave about this guy, since we have this treaty and everything, but now I'm feeling creepy-crawly. My hair is constantly falling out and every time a loose hair brushes against my neck or arm, I think it's something else. Eeeeew. I shouldn't have started this. Ick. Eeeek.

So sorry. :-(

In other spooky news, I took the girls to the Halloween store this afternoon to get them out of the house so DH could nap a little before his night shift. I thought it would be a fun outing; we'd get ideas for costumes (I told them I wasn't buying today, so no begging!) and look at decorations and props. The first thing we saw as we entered the store was a lawn display, some kind of gory fountain with a guy holding his own chopped off head, blood oozing out of its mouth instead of water. It was gross. I hate that element of Halloween, honestly; it's too over-the-top for me. I don't mind all scary stuff -- witches, zombies, skeletons and skulls -- but I like them to be a little bit classier than that. It's like difference between Hitchcock and cheesy B slasher movies.

Anyway, 3yo Tres was nervous as soon as we entered the store. I tried to steer us to a more innocuous aisle -- steam punk accessories and Indiana Jones costumes -- but then the girls heard barking. I assured them it was probably from some motion-activated Halloween decoration, not real dogs. Because who lets real dogs in costume shops? Apparently this place does, because just after I had the girls all calmed down, we saw two dogs (leashed and with their owner) charging down the adjacent aisle. Pretty much all my girls are nervous about dogs, but Uno is terrified of them. She screamed and clung to me and wouldn't let go. She kept wailing, "Make them go away! Mommy, make the dogs go away!" I had to peel her off of me to remind her that she was safe, and that as long as they were leashed it was Uno's job to stay away from them -- that her phobia wasn't the dog owners' responsibility.

Uno calmed down after the dogs left the store, but Tres remained on high alert. The decorations made her nervous. The masks freaked her out. We tried to stick to the non-gory parts of the store, but that didn't help either. At one point Dos picked up a broom from the Harry Potter section and Tres screamed, "Don't touch that! I'm worried you'll fly away!" We tried to explain that it was all fake, but I guess she's not old enough yet to fully understand the difference between real and pretend. (Though I had thought she was savvy: When she was potty training, I told her not to get her Dora panties wet because then Dora would be sad. "Mom," she told me, rolling her eyes a bit, "Dora won't be sad because that's just a picture on clothes -- it's not a real person!" Huh. That line had worked on her sisters when they were her age! Whatever!) We wandered around some more, looked at the friendly toddler costumes (a ballerina! Strawberry Shortcake! a princess!), but of course around every corner lurked some dark and scary thing so we called it quits before too long.

"Promise me," Tres said, "promise me you'll never take me to the Halloween store again. I don't like it." Poor kid.

On the drive home, I listened to an interview on NPR with the Baltic brass band-influenced alternative musician Beirut. He sounds like an interesting (not spooky!) guy, and I liked the snippets of music they played to punctuate the interview. His first album was Gulag Orkestar; his latest is Rip Tide. I think I'll check him out. Maybe you should, too. :-)


~RCH~