Arachnophobia

This morning I was awoken by the pitter-patter of tiny feet - except this time, the feet belonged to my cat instead of my children, and those feet weren't running down the hallway, they were trying to knead my face like a 5-day-old lump of dough. The only time I am woken in this manner is when my cats are out of food, so I knew if I didn't get up and feed them soon they would swarm me on the stairs or cough up a hairball on my work clothes.

So I shuffled to the basement, dished them up a hefty serving of the best dry food crap money can buy, and headed over to the sink with their water dish. As I grasped the handle of the faucet, my finger got caught in a cobweb - no big deal, it's a basement, it's to be expected, right? What I didn't expect, though, was to see a spider the size of Mongolia racing towards my hand at top speed. Suddenly, every fear I have had since my first viewing of "Arachnophobia" was playing out in real life. Thankfully, I maintained my bladder control and yanked my hand back quicker than you can say "GETITOFFME". As I did, it spun around and raced back to the firey pit from whence it came, obviously not in the mood to take on this giant wuss and her big bowl full of water.

*Shudders*

That experience alone is enough for me to have nightmares for a week... But this evening, as I was heading back down to the basement to switch out a load of laundry, I saw a dark black object scampering across the floor. Could it be? Is it the same man-eating spider I encountered earlier? I watched carefully as it crossed the floor, afraid to move in fear that it would make a flying leap towards me. But as it began to come more into view, pure horror washed over me. This was definitely not the spider I saw earlier, oh no - this was Bubba, his giant older cousin. He was no Mongolia, he was the entire continent of Asia. This is the kind of spider that eats those other spiders as a mid-morning snack. Obviously, given the fact that I haven't seen one of these in my basement in nearly a year, I should take these two sightings as proof that they are forming some sort of arachnoid militia and plan to invade the second I close my eyes tonight.

Sleep is overrated, right?

Just When I Couldn't Get Any Weirder...

Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine that there is a level of weird that exists out there beyond my daily "norm", but I think I went there today. First though, I have to air a confession. I have never - ever - made rice krispie treats. Not when I was a kid, not in college when it's all I could afford to eat, not even now when it's practically written in to the parenting manual. I sure do love them, don't get me wrong, but even the complex "melt marshmallow and stir in krispies" recipe goes over my head. If you're one of my fairweather readers, you may already know about my crippling kitchen ineptness...

Anyhow, as I was in the store today I was overcome with the desire to bond with my daughter over some krispie treats, so I scooped up a bag of marshmallows and dropped them in my cart. I was feeling pretty good about myself and my clearly superior parenting as I checked out and got the kids home in time for bed (ok, ok, I did venture to WalMart at 7pm, so that was a slight parenting fail on my part...bear with me). After they were tucked in, I hopped on to the internet to Google rice krispie recipes (yes, really - I told you, it's a foreign language to me). And the more I thought about that white, gooey marshmallowy sweetness, the more I concluded that if I stole one or two as a late night snack, it really wouldn't be the end of the world. Right?

But after thieving three delicious little pillows of sugar from the bag, I decided that eating them plain just wouldn't do. They needed to be CAMPFIRE marshmallows. The crispy-on-the-outside-gooey-on-the-inside-let's-sing-a-song-and-tell-ghost-stories kind. But how?

A LIGHTER, that's how! I retrieved my honorary incense lighter from it's typical resting place and settled down on the sofa with it, along with my marshmallows crammed onto the end of a butter knife. And I proceeded to set them on fire as the show "My Strange Addiction" played on in the background - ironic, don't you think? I haven't had toasted marshmallows in years, and despite the fact that I broke my lighter and burned the tip of my finger trying to keep the flame lit long enough for that perfect crispy shell, I enjoyed three of the best campfire marshmallows this side of Cub Scouts.

[After proof reading this whole thing, I'm a little embarrassed at just how weird it makes me seem. However, I spent half an hour writing it and since I have so little free time anymore I refuse to call it a loss.]

Side note: I also realized that in my cloud of parental superiority at the store, I actually forgot the Rice Krispies for which to make my rice krispie treats. I'm guessing they are a rather important ingredient. So unless I happen to remember on my next store outing (slim chance), there may be more campfire marshmallows in my future.

Side note #2: Despite being ridiculously anal about spelling, every. single. time. I typed out "marshmallows" in this blog, I spelled it "marshmellows" and was autocorrected. Never has an "A" been more unwelcome, I say.

Mornings, How I Loathe Thee

I don't know about you, but I am not a morning person. I would be much happier overall if the hours between 5am and 7am (ok ok, even 8am...) didn't exist - or at least that I was lucky enough to sleep through them, blissfully unaware. My daughter, however, is not very accommodating. She has developed this bad habit of waking when the sun comes up. Example conversation between Lainey and myself:

Lainey: "Mommy! MOOOOOOOMMMY!"
Me: "glurffbp"
Lainey: "Moooooooooooooooooommmy!"
Me: [inaudible grumbling from underneath my pillow] "Go back to sleep Lainey, it's not time to get up yet."
Lainey: "It IS time to get up! It's morning!"
Me: "No, not yet....it's too early."
Lainey: "But mommy, moooooooooooooommy, mooooooooooooommmy, the sun is out!"

Curse you, early sunrise. However, she recently discovered that instead of hollering out to me she could just go ahead and get up and let herself out of her room. Want to know how I found this out? It's ok, I'll tell you anyway...one morning I opened my eyes, disoriented and panicked at the thought of having woken up on my own, with no little person yelling out my name or kneeing me in the crotch. I shot out of bed and checked Lainey's room - empty. This is not good. I then checked the bathroom - empty, with a toilet so clogged with tissue it was about to become a miniature Niagra Falls and a pair of 3-year-old girl sized underwear lying in the middle of the floor. I then ran downstairs to find my child sitting happily on the couch, naked, with the TV on (oh, apparently she learned how to do that, too...), watching Law & Order.

Clearly, we need a better system.

So my great idea was to invest in an alarm clock for her, something I could set to a certain time and that when the alarm went off, that meant she could get up and come out of her room. Genius, right? So one day we trotted off to Target in search of the perfect clock. She was so excited, her very own clock! You would have thought the child was getting a pony (which honestly, I would have considered if it would give me an extra half hour of sleep in the mornings...). We get to the aisle with the clocks and before I could even take a reasonable survey of them she exclaims "THIS ONE! It's perfect!" and was holding up a bright pink (of course) Hello Kitty clock that was twice as expensive (of course) as all of the other ones. She loved that clock so much, and I did promise it to her, so I gave in. She was on cloud nine, hugging the clock all the way to the register...to the car...she even asked if it could sit with her while she ate lunch. I started to think that this idea might really work after all!

Naturally, we did a practice run and set the alarm to go off to make sure it was working - and suffice to say that I believe that clock would have woken up the Pope all the way over in the Vatican. Then my husband says something that had never occurred to me... "So does that mean if she actually sleeps in, it's going to wake her up anyway?". NO. No No No. That can't happen, what person in their right mind would want to wake a child who is sleeping contentedly? That's like putting your bare arm into a lion's den. This discussion then led to, "If you can hear this thing ringing in outer space, doesn't that mean it's going to wake up Owen too?" This isn't looking good, Kitty. So we did what every good parent would do in this situation - we took the batteries out and explained to her that the clock was broken. And then returned it when she wasn't around.

I suppose now is the time that I should really hunker down and teach my daughter how to read a clock. And if that doesn't work....how to pour a bowl of cereal and turn the TV to Nick Jr.