Primitive fear

Today I encountered one of these in my clean dishes. Actually Jackson and I had seen the creature scaling our living room wall yesterday but I chose to ignore it hoping that it would soon find its way outside or underneath someone's shoe. See, I'm not a big fan of spiders, especially the big meaty ones. My blood pressure increases exponentially with the size of the spider. It doesn't even have to be in the same room to have this effect. While I was searching for pictures of jumping spiders on the web to post here I found one that was much more graphic than the image I linked to, but I couldn't bear to look at it long enough to copy the link. Heebie jeebies is the best term I have to describe the feeling I got just looking at the picture. So you can imagine my complete horror when I picked up a dish from our dish rack with my BARE HANDS and saw the spider, which I knew to be a jumping spider and this fact only increased the intensity of my reaction and necessity of my ensuing actions. I screamed. I screamed more than once. Even after I hurling the plastic dish and spider violently to the floor, I screamed and did that little dance people do when they've just encountered some sort of creepy crawly. Like they're trying to shake the thing off of their body while moving their legs up and down fast enough to prevent the creature from crawling back up. But this spider was nowhere near me. Yet I danced. Nine months pregnant, screaming like a little girl, shaking and dancing and hurling dishes across the floor. I noticed my sliding glass door was open and thought, shit, I hope the neighbors didn't just see all that. Meanwhile, there's a very stunned jumping spider on my kitchen floor. Thinking quickly I grabbed the can of all natural ant spray, which contains some very pleasant smelling peppermint oil, in a cabinet nearby hoping to buy myself some time while I figured out what else to do and maybe stymie the spider's jumping ability at the same time. I decided on the vacuum method and retrieved the dust buster from the garage. I sucked up the well oiled spider letting its big, hairy body whirl around inside while I carried it back out to the garage, turning the power off the vacuum only when it had safely been returned to its charger. Then I quickly got the hell out of the garage.

Now I think of myself as a pretty strong, competent woman who can calmly resuscitate a child or even impregnate herself. But those stupid spiders have me beat.

In some countries it's a sign of courtship

Today when I picked Sam up from school his head was wet. Actually it was just one side of his head where he had been licked by one of his classmates. Apparently the little girl was sitting next to Sam and licked his hair, found it to be quite satisfying and went back for more. Sam, always in the mood for a good head massage, leaned his head towards her and enjoyed the tongue bath for awhile until the teacher's caught sight of what was going on and put an end to it. I showed up just moments after this event to a very wet headed, but happy, Sam. It's the special moments like this one that make raising a child with a disability so entertaining.

Intellectually checked-out

Checking out at the grocery store today the young man behind the counter asks me, "Do you know the rules of my line?"

"No, I've never been in your line before and I'm guessing that maybe I should be looking for another right now."

"Each person who comes through my line needs to tell me a cultural, scientific, historical, or geographical fact from a foreign country they've visited."

"You realize you're asking a very pregnant mom of two to think up something on the spot?"

"I'm feeling brave today."

"I got nothing."

"How about a joke? A joke will work, too."

"Okay.... knock knock....."

And it became painfully obvious to me that the more children you have the more your brain turns to mush.

Strip malls rule

Wanna hear about the highlight of a busy mom's day? I've been cleaning, organizing, running various errands all in preparation for this baby's birth. Since we're having a homebirth there is a bit more involved than simply packing a bag for the hospital. Part of the preparation involves acquiring all the necessary items for a waterbirth. You might think "You've got a tub. What more do you need?" Oh much much more my naive friend. I tried the tub when I was in labor with Sam and me and my enormous, un-immersible belly did not last 5 minutes in that hard, fiberglass bucket. So this time we're going the route of the oversized kiddie pool. Most of the items for this birth one can find at that magical place Target, but there were two items on my list that I still needed: a pool thermometer and a fish net. The pool thermometer is used to make sure the pool water stays a comfortable, yet safe temperature for mom and baby. The fish net is used to... well, to fish stuff out of the pool in case any of this stuff, which shall remain nameless, should somehow enter the pool. And by "somehow enter" I mean in a manner that I refuse to discuss in this blog.

So I had just dropped David off at the car dealership to pick up our other car after an oil change and I was running about 10 minutes early to pick up Sam from his school just a few miles away. En route I saw a shopping center and thought I'd kill some time checking to see if there were any stores there that might have some stuff I needed for the birth. What I found brought tears of joy to my eyes. It was like some form of divine intervention had brought me to this place with only the smallest amount of time to spare. For what I saw was a pet store right next door to a pool supply store. Now if you don't know me then you don't know what an efficiency junkie I am. Finding these two unrelated stores right next to each other in a block of time I was afraid was going to go to waste was euphoric. And... AND I found a parking spot right out front that had a time limit of 10 minutes.... 10 MINUTES! I accepted the challenge, completed my mission and had to call David immediately after to share my immense joy.

Indecent composure

The other day in the car we had a children's cd playing for Sam. Jackson, who is very familiar with the cd, was singing along with one of the choruses that repeated the line "I was running down the hill." But Jackson has taken after his father in a way that has made David very proud. David has a passion for changing or embellishing the lyrics of even the most innocent song and causing it to become quite inappropriate. So on this particular day, Mother's Day, we hear Jackson's voice from the back of the van singing sweetly along with the children's singer, "I was running down the hill..." and then he improvised in such a way that proves I was only the vessel for David's progeny "...with no pants on."

Deeply dessert

The other night I was indulging in one of my guilty pregnancy pleasures, vanilla ice cream atop half of a mini chocolate bundt cake from Trader Joe's, when I realized that I had been going about eating it in the wrong manner. The enjoyment of each bite relies on the perfect balance of ice cream to cake. This is quite easily achieved until the end of the dessert is reached; you may be left with too much or too little of one of the tasty components which makes the ending to such an otherwise decadent experience quite anti-climactic. So to prevent this tragic ending I had been carefully planning out each bite to achieve the desired final ratio. Sometimes this meant that I might have to construct a few subpar spoonfuls in order to ensure that my last bite was perfect. The problem was that I stopped enjoying all the bites leading up to the grand finale and sacrificed so much enjoyment for one final moment. Not a great way to eat cake and ice cream. Now you might think that there's some great life lesson to be learned here, and maybe there is. But what I'm taking away from this is to quit planning 'cause there's always more cake and ice cream in the kitchen if I need to balance the ratio in the end.