Last night, Jessie and I were in our bedroom.  I was packing away clothes and Jessie was lying in bed watching TV.  It’s not because Jessie was being lazy, it was because if he helped me pack clothes, he would crumple the clothes into balls and smoosh them into the suitcases.

I was in our walk-in closet (I’m sad to leave that behind.  I don’t have a lot of clothes, but it’s been nice for storage) and I thought I saw a gigantic spider out of the corner of my eye.  I spun around and prepared to run to Jessie screaming like a little girl, but I saw nothing.

Oh yeah, have I told you guys that I am REALLY scared of spiders?  It’s not like a scream and jump on a chair scared, I have a physical reaction to spiders.  I get nauseous and have the overwhelming need to cry for my mommy.  No joke.  I’m a huge arachnophobe and the fact that I want to cry for my mommy is hilarious because she’s as bad as I am.  I have this memory that still makes me laugh:

We were living in the little house in Adamston and I was in my bedroom being a teenager and my mom was in the basement (which was directly below my bedroom) doing laundry.  There was no insulation between the two floors and I could hear what she was doing quite clearly.  I heard her EEP.  Then I heard her EEP again.  Then I heard her scream bloody murder.  I screamed down to my floor,

“What’s the matter?”

“AHHHHH!”

“MOM!  What?”

“SPIDER!”

I decided not to go down.  Because I’m an asshole like that.  I had big round hairy spiders drop down on me in that basement too.  I would have gladly set myself on fire to get them off of me.

Oh yeah, back to the story from last night.

I had just finished for the night and was preparing to get back in bed when I noticed an ENORMOUS spider sitting in the corner by our door.

“JESSIE THERE IS AN ENORMOUS SPIDER BY THE DOOR.”

Jessie cautiously approached the doorway, looked at me and said, “Yes that’s a big spider.”

“KILL IT.”

So Jessie goes foraging in the nearby area to find a proper enormous-spider-killing-tool.  He tries to use a toilet brush.  After I informed him that if he killed that enormous spider with a toilet brush, I would throw the thing in the garbage (it’s good enough to scrub toilets, but if there are enormous spider bits on it, it has to go in the garbage!)  He then came out with a plunger.  And guess what?  He tried to kill it with the tip of the handle!  I warned him that if he did it that way he would miss it and it would run away.  Of course he didn’t listen to me.  It’s a Canon-Man thing to assume they know better than the women folk.  And of course he missed and the enormous spider got away and ran under our dresser.

I frantically informed Jessie that I was NOT going to be sleeping in that room unless he found and killed the spider.  Jessie grumbles an bitches that if I’d just let him use the toilet brush, blah blah blah.  At this point, I had run into our bathroom and watched in terror as he pulled furniture away from walls and pulled clothes out of drawers trying to find the beast.  I was feeling nauseous and trying not to cry for my mommy.

After 15 minutes, Jessie finally did find the beast IN MY BED.  He killed it bravely and asked for a cup in which to house the body.  This was the third gigantic spider we had seen in a week and we wanted to ensure that it wasn’t a venomous spider for Lukas’ sake.  Jessie went downstairs while I tried to collect myself and talk myself into agreeing to sleep in my bed.  I went down after a 10 minute wait.  He had found the name of the beast and it isn’t venomous or any threat to humans or pets.  But the name…..do you want to know what the name of this spider is?  The Giant House Spider.  The word “giant” is in the name!  Talk about fear-mongering nomenclature!  GIANT!  Holy fuck!

I’ve been on edge all day, waiting for a relative of the defeated beast to come out of the corners of my house and beat me up….or worse….crawl on my foot.  Giant House Spider.  Good God.

Jessie is my beast-slaying hero.

My husband is a big baby.

Anybody who has spent more than an hour with Jessie knows his preoccupation with eyeballs.  In the 8 years that we have been together, it has been both an annoyance and a source of great entertainment for me.  I’m not afraid to stick my finger in my eye when he is being obnoxious.  It makes him shut up VERY fast.

Today, an enormous tractor from the state (I assume) mowed down the huge overgrowth on the hill behind our townhouse.  They do this every year right before the onset of the early Pacific Northwest fall.  And also?  There are snakes back there!  I’m always glad when they do this.  I noticed today as the tractor was doing its rounds that there was a lot of white fluffy stuff floating in its wake.  I usually don’t have allergies, but that floating white fluff did a number on me and knocked me on my ass.  I’ve been lethargic, stuffy, and very “meh.”  And all of that combined makes for a grumpy Somer.

When Jessie got home, I kind of drifted off to a quiet corner and stayed to myself.  When he would get upset with me and ask me what the hell was wrong, I was so “meh” that it took too much effort and enthusiasm to say “meh.”  All I could do was grunt and turn away from him.  He was kind enough to go out and get me a good cup of strong coffee to bring me back to life.  He’s a good guy.

After we put Lukas to bed, we were sitting on the couch snuggling and slowly working our way to petting (TMI?  Sorry.) when I noticed he was blinking a lot and turning away from me.  I thought maybe he got a microscopic piece of dust in his eye.

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR EYE?!?!?!?!”  He finally screeched.

“Huh?”

“Your eye is all red!”  *Blink*  *Blink*  *Blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink*  *Rubs eyes*  *Blinkblink*

“My allergies are a little pissed off today from the tractor mowing down that overgrowth.”  I replied.

*Blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink*  “I can’t look at you!”

I don’t have any eyedrops to help.  My eyes aren’t really bothering me…not to the point that I would take anything for it.  If he starts being obnoxious, I’ll just get in his face and peel my eyelids back and start poking my eyeball.  He won’t sleep for weeks.

On a Lukas Note, since we will be on a plane for 5 hours on Sunday I wanted to make sure that he was as comfortable as possible.  I have comfy clothes picked out for the trip, and I wanted to get him his winter slippers early so he could wear them on the plane.  We took him to Target and let him pick out his new slippers.  He chose Elmo slippers.

When Lukas was first born, I made it known that anybody who got Lukas any Elmo toys shouldn’t get mad at me when I donate said toy to the Salvation Army.  I HATE Elmo.  But he picked out these slippers, and they are so cute on his precious feet.  And now he’s fond of saying “Elmo!”  I still hate Elmo, and I still mean my “I WILL NOT TOLERATE ELMO TOYS” threat.  But don’t be surprised when, on his birthday, he opens an Elmo Live.  Every time he sees one at the store he kisses it and cried when we pull him away.  That’s a pretty sure sign that he wants an Elmo Live and out of pure maternal love for my baby, I will make this sacrifice of my sanity in exchange for his happiness.  But I’m the mommy.  I’m the only person allowed to buy Elmo stuff.  AND THIS IS IT!  NO MORE!  I hope.

If he weren’t so damned cute…..we’d be having a little talk about Momma’s threshold and how Elmo crosses it.  But he IS cute and therefore I am putty in his tiny toddler hands.

In exactly one week (even down to the hour) Lukas and I will be at my mom’s house in PA.  Jessie and his father will be on the road headed towards Eastern Washington.  The move will be ON.  At this point, all butterflies and anxieties have run their course and only happiness at the geniusness of this move remains.  In fact, this weekend has probably been one of the best weekends we have had together as a family in quite a long time.  There was a lot of giggling, a lot of hugging and kissing, and a lot of easy going smiles.  It’s been a long time.

Jessie and I are both very guilty of throwing the happiness of our marriage on the backburner at the first sign of stress.  We will go weeks at a time without so much as a hug or kiss (and forget sex).  We bicker over the most ridiculous stuff, and then we keep bickering until we can’t stand the sight of each other.  The words “You are the most annoying person ever.  STOP LOOKING AT ME!” are uttered quite often…..by both of us.  A lot of eye rolling and hiding away from each other.

But this weekend we’ve been hugging and kissing and cuddling and we have noticed that it bothers Lukas.  We’re not being pornographic.  A hug here…a quick smooch there.  But it’s such an odd thing for Lukas to see that he runs over to us and physically separates us.  I think maybe that makes us crappy parents for not showing him in a SUBTLE physical way that his parents love each other.  We need to work on that.

I took a nap this afternoon while Lukas was napping.  I had a dream about my deceased grandmother.  I dream about her a lot.  I miss her so much it hurts….I can’t even talk about her without crying.  But in this dream, we were sitting on her kitchen floor eating and chit chatting.  My grandma was a hoarder and not a good housekeeper.  In fact, her house was downright dirty and smelly.  But I was always so happy to be there with her.  She complimented me.  She had pet names for me like Pumpkin, Sweety, and Super Pest.  She always told me that she was proud of me and that the people in my life who were hurtful to me were missing out on getting to know me.  And she made the best fucking pancakes in the world and it kills me that I can’t replicate it.  Oh I’d give anything for a stack of those pancakes and to sit on her dirty floor and have a grown up conversation with my grandma.  Ok, back to my dream.

We were sitting on her floor eating and I looked at her plate of food and saw that she was eating a lot of  red meat and a lot of fattening food (my grandma died of heart disease).  I looked at her and said, “You should start eating better.  I want you to be at my wedding some day.”  She stood up, dumped her plate and came back with a plate of chicken breast and broccoli.  She told me that if that had to be her reason for eating better, then she was happy to do it.  Then, in my dream, I thought to myself that she died before I even met Jessie.  She dies long before I get married.  And in my dream I started raging about how my subconscious had ruined my dream of having my grandma at my wedding.  I started stomping around and yelling “Goddamn you, reality!  Let me just have this one thing!  Let me have her sit in the front and cry when I marry Jessie!  Goddamn you!”

I woke up when Lukas climbed in bed with me.  To wake up to my baby’s smiling face after that soul-beating dream was good.  After Jessie took him downstairs, I laid in bed for a few minutes and cried it out.

When I go to Clarksburg to visit family in October, I’m going to take a few hours and drive to Center Point to my grandma’s grave.  Can I convince a friend or two to come with me?  It’s a long drive and I don’t really want to make Lukas sit through another long drive on top of the two almost five hour drives to and from Clarksburg.  I also want to sneak up and look at my great-grandparents’ house if it’s still standing.  That effing place is haunting me or something.  Both of my great-grandparents are dead now, but once a month I dream of that house and their ghosts haunting it and talking to me.  I haven’t been to that house since I was a little girl.  My great-grandmother was always mean to me, so I avoided it.  It’s a small house and the trapping inside are very very old.  The old telephone on the table in the living room, the old furniture in the bedrooms, the old television, the old outhouse out back (despite the perfect toilet inside), the cellar off to the side with jars of pickles and beans, even the smell.  It’s very very old.  I can’t say it ever creeped me out…it really didn’t.  And I don’t know why I keep dreaming about it.  It really bothers me.  Once a month.  And it’s usually my great-grandfather talking to me.  He says weird things.  He died when I was very young, but he was always nice to me.  It’s weird, but it’s withing a stone’s throw of my grandma’s grave, so I’d like to just go look at it.  If I’m lucky, it’s fallen in on itself.  After my great grandma died this past fall, I’m sure everything of value was pillaged and it’s now abandoned.

7 more days.  7 more days.