Spiderman? Is that you?

I have a serious phobia. Tons of people are afraid of spiders, I know, but I think I’ve discovered a new form of this: Arachnohairophobia. The fear of spiders landing on your head and not being able to find them and the nasty things crawling around in your hair.

So we spotted a spider today. From across the room. It was BIG. I’m talking like quarter-sized. And fat. I didn’t want to go near it but I did not want to leave and come back into the room and wonder where the hell it was. So I sent my little one upstairs (we are careful to make sure my kids watch out for anthills so they don’t step on the ants by mistake) and I grabbed the nearest thing, which happened to be a cute animals coloring book, walked over to the spider and thwacked it. I swear, when that thing landed, it made an audible *plop*. A loud one. I have never actually heard that before. There was…stuff on the coloring book, too. Lots of it. And that frickin’ thing was just sitting on the chair like a dead body I’d have to wrap up and stuff in the trunk of my car. It was disgusting. It took seven tissues for me to pick the remains up and, even though I knew I had gotten the thing, I was compelled to run upstairs and take a shower. My skin was slightly pink and my scalp tingled in an unpleasant way due to my manic scrubbing.

My 7-year-old son takes karate. He’s awesome at it and I love that because I worried about him not doing well at sports. I am not extraordinarily athletic. I mean, I can drive and play Angry Birds and stuff but I’m not super strong or anything. But, when I see a BIG spider near me or I walk into a spider web (those frickin’ things are, like, invisible!) I could mop the floor with any of the kids in my son’s class. Don’t scoff—these are trained karate kids. Ones I would not have been able to take if it wasn’t for the spider-phobia thing.

I feel badly that my little boy heard me shriek (and quite possibly heard the spider hit the chair with that loud plopping), that I ran upstairs all flushed saying over and over to him how "Okay!" I was, and that he didn't eat lunch until after 2 PM because I just had to wash the non-existent spider out of my hair. I feel badly about all these things but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Exoskeletons and Parking Meters

It’s awesome when we’re out in the world and I can teach my kids something. Like when we park downtown and do math word problems: “If the meter is 50 cents an hour and I put in 15 cents, how long do we have before we get a parking ticket?” Or when we try to figure out if the raspberry-colored splat on the ground is some kid’s ice cream or poop from a bird who ate too many berries. Or how funny it is that, when you figure out mommy’s weight in ounces, it’s a big, big number. Which is, for some reason, hilarious. But, hey, they did a tough multiplication problem. And when we see a goldfinch on the feeder that’s not bright yellow anymore but muddy brown, we speculate that goldfinches don’t migrate they adapt. Math and science are everywhere. It’s endless.

This is all especially awesome when I learn something, too. Like what the exoskeleton of a really big nasty bug looks like. We found this bug’s shell still clinging to the leaves in a tree in our yard. It was holding on for dear life except for the whole it’s-not-alive thing.  

           

This thing was so gross and so cool, I was at a loss. I was at once horrified and fascinated. It took me ten minutes to get up the nerve to go near enough to snap the pictures. I know, it’s disgusting. But look at it! You can see right through the frickin’ thing. Wild. And note the leaves, people—those are not small leaves.
  

“Hey, kids, check this out!” Science lesson for the day—check. Two little boys talking about giant bugs and exoskeletons and bug shells during dinner—my bad. I'm suddenly not in the mood for pasta shells. Pass the wine.