The "s"-word

There are lots of things that are not so great about 2nd story apartment/condo living. Trust me- throughout college and early married life, I hauled enough bags of groceries (and, for that matter, couches) up rickety metal stairs to last me a life time. I have no-so-fond memories of the rusty steps at the ol' GC Numero Cinco in Logan that would surely have gifted me a lovely edition of hepatitis C should I have tripped. Wrenching our overstuffed chair in to el condo was an interesting adventure, and getting it out was even better. Like the rest of us, the furniture seemed to gain weight while we lived there.

Point is, there aren't a lot of benefits to living up. 'Cept for one.

No spiders.

I could prolly count on one hand the number of spiders I saw taking up residence in my lifted residences. For a wimpy gal like me, this is a big deal.

I'm sure you can guess where all of this is headed. Though I know it's silly, I like to pretend that Paddy, Lupe, and I are the only living things in our house. (I barely count Enrique, our sucky beta fish. I should give him more credit; the guy lives for weeks on end without food. Oops.) This lovely dream was shattered several days ago.

It all started out as a seemingly innocent problem-- a lightbulb in the basement burned out. When Paddy tried to take off the cover, however, he (loudly) discovered a giant, awful, horrifyingly large arachnid had taken up residence in the light. Not only that, but it was not at all happy about being disturbed.

I thought about sparing you the gorey details, but it's just too awful to keep from sharing. Basically, we called Tommy (ye ol' little bro) in a panic to locate some spider spray as we were fresh out. (I was without spider spray? Honestly, it shocked even me.)

When Tommy arrived, the boys planted me on the stairs to man the flashlight while they launched a full-fledged round of chemical warfare on that thing. In true spidery fashion, it didn't go down without a fight. I'm not making this up: the thing actually reared up onto his back 4 legs and pawed at the air. It was awful. I'll tell you something, though-- my husband sprang right into the sky and whacked that thing into oblivion without hesitation. It was so sexy.

We sprayed the perimeter of the basement, and I'm about one spider carcass away from calling some professional to cover my house in Diazinon. Curse those eight-legged freaks.