Spider Season…

We’ve moved into spider season.

IMG_3064_ottawa_spider_1_elenrey_october_2011 (1280x733)

You know.

The season after winter.

Sometimes referred to as spring.

Not at Casa Elen.

Nope.

It’s spider season.

IMG_3056_ottawa_spider_2_elengrey_october_2011 (1280x802)

The season when all the little spiders, tucked into their cami-nests, start taking a stroll on the wild side across the walls and ceilings. And it’s not like I don’t dust and vacuum and do regular perimeter patrol of the walls and ceilings, and well, just the whole interior of the house. Maybe even the exterior.

I don’t like indoor spiders.

They are in the wrong habitat.

Mr. G honey has gotten used to my freakish habit of total area recon before my head hits the pillow. It’s the only season I sleep on my back, because I have to spend 15 minutes monitoring the ceiling before lights out. This usually involves a flyswatter, a flip-flop, and (upon occasion) a hammer.

Did I mention that I don’t like indoor spiders?

I don’t like them outdoors either, but I try to do the right thing and shoo them away.

Shoo! Shoo! You freakishly hairy big spider. Shoo!

IMG_3059_ottawa_spider_3_elengrey_october_2011 (1280x956)

That’s really code for Holy Mother of God. Shriek-like-a-girl. Run into the house. Slam the door. Throw the bolt home. And pull the shades.

I need a safe room from spiders.

The first time Mr. G honey was startled awake with his new wife marching around the bed, eyes on the ceiling, stalking a multi-eyed, multi-legged interloper the size of birdseed, I’m sure he was thinking there was an important question missing from the pre-nup questionnaire. A question you might want to add to a speed-dating round. Just a suggestion.

Now, he’s used to it. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t wake. Let’s be honest. Doesn’t really care. When you marry an I’m-afraid-of-indoor-spidies-freak, you learn to go with the flow. And when he thinks freak, he’s thinking it in the most loving way.

Right, Mr. G honey?

IMG_3058_ottawa_spider_4_elengrey_october_2011 (1280x960)

Run for the hills!

These images were taken in Ottawa (our nation’s capital, fourth largest city in the land) in autumn of 2011, aka the other spider season. Don’t go to Ottawa during spider season. Hear me on this!

In other news ~

The container farm is growing like it’s hopped up on sheep manure crack, which it probably is. Just mix with rain and grow.

The G-Pup is eating the tender, new grasslings just as fast as they sprout from the ground.

I’ve eaten my way through the entire Ontario asparagus crop. Smacks lips and swoons.

We saw Maleficent on a date night last week, and Angelina Jolie was magnificent in her maleficence. Next up — X-Men: Days of Future Past. Thanks for taking the poll, peeps.

And that’s how we’re rolling on Thursday.

You?

Elen

12 thoughts on “Spider Season…”

  1. If you like, I will tell you the tale of how I woke one morning . . . with a spider in my ear . . .

    Entirely and very true. It happened years ago. I have never been quite the same since then–witness in particular my additional eyes . . .

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      • You have asked for it. Therefore: the tale:

        Very early one Saturday morning about eight years ago, I woke to a sensation of something fluttering across my face. Before I was truly awake (and is anyone ever truly awake?), I was brushing at this fluttering thing–and I had a sensation of something entering my right ear.

        I woke (more) fully. I thought, “Did a crane fly get in my ear?” I probed with a blunt finger. I went down the hallway to the bathroom where we kept such supplies, found a Q-tip, and excavated.

        Nothing.

        Yet I had a sensation of something buzzing in my right ear.

        Earwax, I concluded. I must have some dried earwax in there, resting against my sensitive eardrum–and that sensitive eardrum is registering its own vibrations as the vibrations of something thrumming in my ear.

        I had owned a little kit for cleaning earwax out of one’s ears. I searched for it–couldn’t find it.

        I went back to bed; sought vainly the doors of dream (gates of ivory; gates of horn–I didn’t care). My thoughts would begin their slow crawl to dream–and then my ear would thrum . . .

        After about an hour of sleeplessness, I rose, dressed, and went in search of an earwax cleaning kit. The local drugstore was closed, but I found a grocery store (a QFC, almost part of Seattle’s University Village) that was open and carried the kit.

        I stood in the checkout line, my basket containing the earwax kit, some pastries, and orange juice.

        Thrum-thrum-thrum, went my ear.

        I drove home and put on a pot of coffee. Then I went into our sunroom and lay down on a huge chair that my wife owned. It was a chair, but a full-grown man could sleep on it.

        I lay on my left side. The earwax kit included a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide. The kit instructed me to put a couple of drops of hydrogen peroxide in the affected ear and then wash it out, using a provided bulb syringe.

        I decanted a drop of hydrogen peroxide into my right ear.

        I decanted a second drop of hydrogen peroxide into my right ear.

        MYGODWHAT’SHAPPENING!

        My ear erupted. No: something erupted within my ear.

        I felt something emerging from my right ear.

        I felt . . . legs . . . emerging from my right ear.

        I reached up. I seized it. I flung it onto the tiled floor of the sun room.

        A brown and drenched and defeated spider lay twitching feebly on the tiles.

        A paper towel, a slight pressure: the spider met its end.

        And I? Have I, since then, ever been entirely sane?

        Do not answer . . .

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      • And, some several years ago (1991?), I began writing a novel called “The Foil People,” precisely about folks who might wear tinfoil hats . . .

        I never did finish it. But around 200 pages of it are still somewhere in my files.

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  2. Aaaa hahahaha!!! What are the odds that we’d post the exact same image within a few days of each other? I totally loved your story that went along with the various angles… I can totally relate. When I was a kid, I didn’t have any trouble with spiders and often caught them with my friends. But today is a different story.

    Very cool post… it also gave me the willies.

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  3. This is such a funny post Elen… one that I can relate too in the recon department, but perhaps at a lesser level… perhaps 😉
    Amazing that you and Shane posted about the big ugly Spider at the same time 😀
    Great pics!!!

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