Happy Spring

It officially feels like spring at my house. The trees are budding with little green leaves, the birds are pooping on my front porch, the days are warm and breezy, and the grass is turning green again after a good soaking from irrigation.

I love this time of year. I feel like I have to soak up these beautiful days before it gets too hot to step outside. Baby Brown Eyes loves playing outside. He'll tear up the grass with his little hands and let it fly on the breeze, or, occasionally, stuff it in his mouth. He laughs at the horses eating their hay and stares, riveted, every time a plane flies overhead, letting out an "Ooh!" of excitement.

There is one thing I dread about spring springing. The warm weather stirs to life all the nasty little spiders who seem to think that my home is a cool place to be.

I don't mind spiders outright. In fact, I appreciate their bug-eating tendencies. If they could exist in my home, eating all the other gross bugs I don't want around, and never show themselves, we could live happily together.

The problem is, they insist on showing themselves. A lot. They don't get the hint, either, or the connection that showing themselves means certain death. They just keep popping up out of the bathroom drain, chilling on the wall like they own the place, crawling across the floor on those eerie eight legs. I even once saw one with a huge egg sac on its back. It didn't matter that I was pregnant at the time; I smashed that spider flat with no remorse for our mutual connection of motherhood.

The first spider of the season showed itself last night, clinging to our dining room wall. Mr. Brown Eyes was home and disposed of it quickly and quietly, without any of the shrieking and fanfare typical of any time I kill something with more than four legs.

I could observe the spider across the room without freaking out. A spider in the same room as me isn't such a big deal. It's when they cross the line into my personal space that I lose it.

Such as the peaceful summer night not long after Baby Brown Eyes was born. I was in the kitchen making dinner, thrilled with the delicious spaghetti sauce I'd made using tomatoes from our own garden, when I felt what I thought was a hair tickling my shoulder. I turned my head and found myself face to face with a huge, hairy spider.

I screamed, swatted it off, darted to the other side of the kitchen, and kept screaming as I watched the disgusting little creature scurry under the cabinets. Mr. Brown Eyes, probably sure I was in the throes of death, came rushing in, somehow found the spider in the direction I was frantically pointing, and killed it.

He picked up the carcass with a paper towel and studied it before throwing it away. "This was on you?" he asked in amazement.

If Mr. Brown Eyes was amazed, that tells you how big and disgusting the spider really was.

I couldn't reply to him. I was shaking, feeling like I needed to take a scalding hot shower in order to remove the spider goo that had violated me.

Mr. Brown Eyes saw my state of unease and held out his arms. "Come here. It's ok."

I went to him and let him put his arms around me, my big, strong, spider-killing husband.

And then he skittered his hand across my back, trying to make me think it was a spider.

I slapped him.

Just kidding. But he took a big risk, messing with the already-unstable mind of a girl who had just had a traumatizing up-close-and-way-too-personal encounter with the biggest, hairiest spider known to man.

But he's also the one who killed the spider, so I kissed him instead.

Happy Spring!

Spiders Be Warned,
The Brown-Eyed Girl