Alas poor terrarium, we hardly knew ye.

After our family moved to Texas I of course assumed the children would find a bevy of new interests, hobbies, etc to go along with the new environment. I was hoping for fun things, innocent things, harmless things, cute things. Here they would be able to ride bikes year round, swim in November, hike around in the woods on our property. All of those options sounded great to me. For the most part I have not been hesitant to embrace the boys' new interests, with one giant exception. Wesley, my sweet five year old, loves bugs. Seriously, he just freaking loves every single one.

We moved here at the very beginning of August with Wesley's birthday occuring 4 weeks later on September 5th. He was having a blast from the word go assisting me with getting our drowned insects out of the pool every afternoon. In true bug collector fashion we took an empty egg carton for him to keep his most prized specimens. It reminded Matt and I very much of the bug collections we had to make the summer before starting 7th grade.

Oh by the way, I maintain Matt blatantly cheated on this assignment. Rather than chase down God's most fragile and disgusting creatures in the woods or basements or garages like the rest of us, he had friends and family retrieve ornamental, outlandish, A+++ (psshh, overachiever) bugs. No fair! If there is to be any justice with regards to the valedictorian in training's bug collection is in the fact that his teacher lost it (after grading it of course. He probably would have burned the school to the ground otherwise for daring to deny his achievement in making other adults do his summer school work). Anyway...

After running around our two acres of grasshopper and caterpillar infested property in 120 degree heat rounding up what most of us step on with his bare hands (or run from, in my case) and depositing them into an old aquarium we decided he needed the proper tools of the trade. Mind you, while he was dodging fire ant hills and sweating his little brains out, the rest of us were watching from our inner tubes in the pool with mixed expressions of shock, horror, confusion, and general icky-ness. Each afternoon Wesley would put on his swimming suit and say today he was going to cool off with us. And each day he would jump in once only to get out and begin wranglin'.

For his birthday Matt went out and purchased a huge bug net, a small wire mesh bug tube with a strap to sling over your shoulder during the hunt, and the best gift of all...a plastic insect/reptile terrarium. It was 4 inches by 6 inches of pure plexiglass perfection. It was the alpha and omega for Wesley. He spent every available moment of each day filling, emptying, and refilling that beloved terrarium with anything and everything he could scoop up with his gigantic net. In true hunter gatherer fashion he would head out and collect until his portable container threatened to burt at the seams, transfer the contents into his holding tank, and head out into the wilderness all over again. Before long we began to notice a huge presence of praying mantises and those too stayed with us for a day and maybe a night before rejoining their brethren with tales of being kidnapped, placed in a box, and stared at by a giant.

The mantises gave us the opportunity to see the food chain in action within the insect realm, as those fascinating creature can devour grasshoppers in the blink of an eye. I wondered how Wesley would take to catching bugs for the purpose of feeding bigger bugs, but he loved feeding the mantises. In truth even I really enjoyed watching those grasshoppers bite it big time. Take that! All those nasty things do is give me bad dreams about swarms devouring me whole, or even worse standing between me and the door back into the house (safely away from THEM). If only there were more mantises I thought. Wait, no. I only thought that until early one morning when Wesley came upstairs to wake me by saying "I brought my mantis inside". I was uneasy considering we had a concrete rule about the terrarium never coming indoors. I asked where and he said in the toy room. After going downstairs I expected to walk into the toy room and see the terrarium perched on the couch next to his cup of milk and brown sugar pop tart.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the door only to be face to face with a mantis, sans enclosure, chilling out on the arm of the sofa. Yes he was next to the milk and pop tart, but I was soooo past seeing anything cute about the situation at this point. Naturally I screamed and rapidly closed the door with Wesley and his new best friend on the other side. I told my young, innocent son through the door to put that bloodthirsty killer back in its pen and immediately take it back outside. Crisis solved.

A while later Matt's sister Kelly came to visit us for a long weekend all the way from New York. To the surprise of no one he proudly showed Auntie Kelly his tools of the trade. She ohhhed and ahhed with proper enthusiasm and awe of her little nephew's source of absolute joy. Little did she know she would find herself drawn into the lie and cover-up of a lifetime over that sweet little boys most prized possession.

One afternoon during her stay we went to run out for paint to start a beautiful mural for the big boys' room. I was backing up my pimped out mom-mobile and couldn't quite swing the beast around in one swift motion. No, I had to pull forward a bit, then reverse again, and finally drive out. It was during the first pull forward for 3 feet that disaster struck. Kelly and I both heard the crack, or shatter, whatever your pleasure. We stopped the car and she hopped out to survey the damage. With her lips in a frown and her eyes in full sad puppy dog mode she announced the sum of all fears: It was the terrarium.

Dear lord baby Jesus, NO! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I was going to lose my mommy badge for running over the only thing he truly loved.

Panic mode ensued. Considering it was the very end of September our chances of finding an identical replacement was slim at best. Catching bugs is generally not an activity retail stores prepare for going into late fall or early winter. Target was out, in fact the young man we asked seemed utterly befuddled by our query. There was only one other place that could possibly spare us the heart wrenching fate of watching those baby blues burst with and endless stream of hot, agonized tears.

Help me Wal-Mart, you're my only hope.

We, or maybe just I, resisted the urge to behold the unyielding awesomeness that is people you can see at wal-mart and kept our eyes on the prize. Behold, there it was! Like the shrubbery in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we accomplished our mission after laying our eyes on the best piece of plastic $.08 can make (and sell for $5.99). Like giddy school girls we returned to the house and inserted the new terrarium seamlessly into the life of the old one, and disposed of the ghastly remains.

And they all lived happily ever after.

And now for something completely different

Good evening all,

This one will be short and sweet as I just have some venting to get out of the way. In general I would call the topic reactionary or political in nature.

This new child nutrition bill that the first "Lady" wets herself over seriously cheeses me off.(Seriously, on a side note, this woman looks like a cross between a human being and a bulldog and I get physically angry whenever I see her in any news/media outlet) I understand that childhood obesity is a serious problem in our country, and it would seem Texas is doing quite a bang up job padding the statistics. However, it is NOT the job of the federal government to step in at the LOCAL level and dictate what the schools may and may not serve. Matt and I put our money into Cooper's school lunch account and then he selects what he wants to eat in exchange for that money. It is our job as his parents to effectively teach him healthy eating habits and how it is important not to eat only sugar, but also take in protein, fruits, and vegetables to fuel his body. Cooper is 6 years old and understands how food gives us energy and if he only eats sugar he will not have the energy he wants to stay awake, learn well, play with friends, and "grow big and strong".

I do not need, and I strongly resent, the government treating all citizens like they are too stupid or otherwise ill-equipped to properly teach their children what to and not to eat. Yes, there are those parents who either cannot or will not take the time and effort necessary to do so, but why in the hell should everyone be punished for their ineptitude? It makes me livid that because there are bad/lazy/disinterested/etc individuals out there who could care less what their children eat and how overweight they get because of it all children will have the food available to them controlled by Uncle Sam. I am so sick to freaking death of the nanny state getting more and more involved in my business.

Thankfully I have other options, at least for now. But where does this end? As it stands, whenever this next egregious overreach of the current administration goes into effect I can begin making my children's lunches at home and sending them in. In fact, I could send in nothing but a box full of Red Bull and Twinkies if I were so inclined because it is still my right as a parent decide what my children eat. It's my right, Matt's right, not Washington D.C.'s right. One has to wonder though when they will start having a problem with that too and institute some sort of asinine "Zero Tolerance" policy for sweets in school period. And please, spare me the whole "Our government really does just want what's best for everyone and would never go that far in telling you what to feed your kids". Bull! No doubt there are already those who want to do exactly that and without a doubt they would do at the first available opportunity.

No worries though, I certainly will not be sending in 5,000 calorie lunches with Cooper to make some sort of horribly misguided, and completely ineffective, social statement. Currently in our house the kids do not drink pop more than one cup in a week's time or down hand fulls of candy all afternoon and evening while sitting around playing video games until they pass out from exhaustion combined with a sugar crash. Of course they would love to eat ice cream for dinner and have Reese's for a midnight snack and wash it down with Dr. Pepper, but they do not have that option because we as their parents accept the responsibility of keeping tabs on the junk they consume. And Matt and I are extremely ready, willing, and able to take on that task. We knew it was part of the job description when we decided to have children. It just makes me furiously angry that even though we make sure our children know how to eat right and keep moving to balance out a small amount of junk food the government has decided that because there are those who suck at that task we will no longer have the option of letting Cooper make his own decisions with our money at his school.

It might seem harsh and uncaring and too individualistic but the concerns I have over the epidemic of childhood obesity begins and ends with my four children.

Just to make sure I don't leave an important part of the bill out I want to be clear that I think expanding the free and reduced lunch program is wonderful. Every child should be able to eat at least at school. This bill will also help provide before and after school meals to those children who normally do not have food to eat at their homes. However, by tacking on the government's newfound ability to restrict the types of foods offered in lunch lines and sold in vending machines, the bill becomes yet another ridiculous example of how the government continues to wrap their meddlesome fingers around the throats of it's citizenry under the guise of "just doing what's best for the people of America".

There, I feel better.

Bring on the gray hair

Throughout my life my mother would periodically look at me and exclaim

"When you grow up, I hope you have a daughter who is exactly like you".  It wasn't a compliment. This usually came after I broke something, talked back, or just caused general mayhem. I know, I know. You're all thinking to yourselves, how could that be? Certainly I never did anything naughty or wrong growing up. I was the picture of patience and obedience and overall sugar, spice, and everything nice.

True, there are those who could spin a yarn or two about me falling out of trees, getting impaled at construction sites, hoarding buckets of salamanders, getting my snow boots stuck and coming inside with only my white lace church socks on. Perhaps I needed my mouth washed out with soap once, and yes maybe I used to hide my little brother in cabinets and tell my mother I had no idea where he was. But I was just high spirited!!!

Anyway, after giving birth to 5 amazing little boys in 4 1/2 years I figured I could safely thumb my nose at the silly mom curse. Ha! Mine were all boys. There's no way I'll have one just like me, they're not properly equipped. At worst I figured I would have trials similar to what Matt's mother must have gone through raising him. But considering he turned out captain of two sports, an NHS member, valedictorian, engineer, certified mad scientist genius, I liked my chances. Even if all 4 boys that God saw fit to let me raise needed ritalin drips and countless layers of stitches, I could do that standing on my head.

Do your worst Almighty!!!

Enter my youngest child. Murdoch Joshua Caellum. Age: 2, Height: mid-thigh, Weight: 26 pounds of pure hell. Please, if you ever come into contact with this adorable baby do not let the floppy blonde hair and ocean blue eyes fool you. Beneath lies the soul of a terror Dennis the Menace could never have hoped to attain. Now don't get me wrong, Doc is a source of laughter and joy 95% of the time. His giggle is infectious and his willingness to try anything and everything is inspiring. Yes, I find inspiration in my two year old. I find boatloads in my three year old, but that is another story.

I'm not going to spend more time on the great 95% of Doc. He's a bowling ball of entertainment and loves his mama! It's that last 5% which provides the subject for this latest missive.

Doc came into the world 9 weeks early after my final, arduous pregnancy. After twice daily shots and three months of complete bedrest he still showed up just over two months ahead of schedule. His very first night he let us see just a glimpse of how he was not like other premature children. I was wheeled up to see my newborn after we were both stabilized. The neonatologist told me he was doing ok considering the circumstances, but he could not properly breathe on his own and would need to be intubated. I touched his tiny chest and squeezed his miniature hand and told him to be strong, that mommy loved him so much. They needed to work on him, and the staff wanted me in my room. By the time we rode the elevator down one floor to OB and parked my bed in my room the phone rang. It was the NICU telling us that they didn't know what I said or did to Doc, but he had turned around and no longer needed to be tubed! He was strong, a fighter, and wouldn't be told what course he was to follow from his first hour of life.

Doc was the only one of our four boys who ever figured out how to climb onto the dining room table (a high, bar top height table) for entertainment purposes. That was at about 15 months of age, even now at 2 it is an ordeal for him to summit the oak beast. Our table has a wooden rounder in the middle and this baby loves to crawl onto it and have his brothers spin him like a top. Seriously, it's like he's an item up for bids on the Price is Right!

Our new house has an above ground pool in the back with a wooden ramp leading up to it. There are handrails on the ramp that are about 3 1/2 feet off the ground for about a 4 foot drop into the pool. After seeing his older brothers walk the plank to jump in, Mr. Bigstuff had to do it himself. Was he scared to be over his body height in the air on a narrow beam? No. Did he extend his hand to have a capable adult offer additional balance? No. Did he even attempt to get anyone's attention before flinging himself into the water? Certainly not. Thankfully I was there to catch him. We figured it would scare him and the one time would be it, but after the next 20 jumps we knew we had thrill seeker on our hands.

With the weather cooling we moved away from our exploits in the water to playing in our yard. Our driveway is very long and goes on a fairly steep grade. The older boys love riding their scooters, bikes, and big wheels down the concrete roller coaster at break neck speed. They lug their vehicles up and scream their heads off the the whole way down recreating MarioKart. Naturally, Doc figured if Cooper and Wesley could do it, he surely could. And so it was that this not yet two year old grabbed the handlebars of a big wheel that was bigger than him and hauled it all the way to the very top of the driveway. I held my spot at the bottom wondering how this was going to turn out, but deciding to take the National Geographic approach and not intervene. Like I said, stitches and blood do not scare me. One of two things would happen. He would either have a successful run or take a fair amount of skin off. Either way I sat back down in my chair and waited for the show to start. I even whipped out my precious smart phone to take some video (just like on NatGeo!).

It was like a bobsled race people, no joke. He straightened the handlebars, pushed with his feet a few times to gain speed, and took off like a well tanned Nordic bullet down the run. What he had not planned on was the fact that our driveway curves to the left at the bottom. Of course there were other obstacles, Matt's car by the house, the large evergreen right before the curve. But a 22 month old cannot correct his trajectory while traveling at his little terminal velocity.

Smack!

Doc went right into the left rear wheel well of Matt's car. (That's when the video stops) I held my breath and waited for his reaction. Matt and I have a very firm policy regarding reacting to our children when they fall or do anything that normally elicits gasps from other parents. We do nothing, literally nothing. We wait for them to look at us and base our reaction on what we see in their eyes. 99% of the time we wind up cheering and telling them to get up and try it again. There are those who say our overly tough guy mentality is odd, but we don't have kids who think they're dying every time they fall down either. Doc looked back at me and I could see there was no blood, no scrapes, nothing. So I acted like he had just finished the Tour de France in record time. He shared my enthusiasm, and grabbed his trusty steed to head up for round 2 (which ended with a head on collision with the tree, and was again met with overwhelming applause).

It began to sink in that I had a grade A daredevil on my hands. He wasn't afraid of heights, water, speed, or the potential for injury. Now folks, those feelings are instinctual in all of us to varying degrees as a means of self preservation. Not with this one. And it forces me to think about things differently. Should I keep my towels high up and hard to reach to prevent any attempts at flying off the roof? Do I need to keep the car keys in a locked box for fear of some sort of Grand Tourismo adventure? Will I eventually get on a first name basis with my local ER docs for my baby who is also called Doc? Will that name wind up seeming oddly ironic?

I'm game for anything of course, and L'Oreal makes wonderful products to cover any follicular stress my budding Evil Knievel places on me. But more than anything I look into those bright blue eyes and think

"I hope one day you meet a wonderful woman and get married, and have a baby exactly like you."

The Armadillo

Good evening,

One of the best, funniest, grossest, least and most entertaining things that Texas has thrown at me is my armadillo. There are those that have already heard versions of this story, but I felt it necessary to get the unedited version out there.

Early on after moving in to our new house I began to have a little game going of "What weird thing will be floating in our pool today?" They say everything is bigger in Texas and whereas I cannot comment on "everything" the bugs sure as hell are bigger, and a whole lot meaner. Within the first few days there was a giant cicada, giant grasshopper, giant frog, giant beetles, giant stinging winged insects, you get the picture. The boys found endless entertainment in having me scoop these things out and put them in an empty egg crate for their "bug collection". Not the frog though, it spent a while too long underwater and came up in pieces...ugh.

One innocent morning as I was conversing with the woman who so graciously gave me life on the phone I noticed something rather large in the pool. Matt routinely walks out there with his deck shoes on. Deck shoes comes from the Adidas sandals that I used to wear on the pool deck during my diving days. They're made to be soaking wet. Anyway, he always wore them out there and rarely, if ever, wore them back into the house. Usually they wound up joining the rings, torpedoes, squirt guns, and other assorted pool toys floating aimlessly until the afternoon for the boys to pick them up. However, rather than being black, like his sandals, this shoe was brown. Again no cause for alarm, it couldn't be less shocking for me to imagine Matt wearing other shoes out there and forgetting about them as soon as he saw something shiny and got too distracted to realize he was barefoot.

As our conversation lulled I said to my mother that one of Matt's brown slip on shoes was in the water. I saw no need to hang up the phone, just walked outside and picked up the net to scoop the shoe out and go about my day. I, still talking to mom, began walking around the edge of the pool and something about this shoe's appearance became very odd. It wasn't the right color, and it was much too big. At this point, I began to panic. What was it? Just what the hell was it!? I approached, and let my mother know that this was definitely NOT a shoe. The conversation went something like this.

"Huh, that isn't a shoe. What the hell is that?"

She replied "What do you mean it's not a shoe, what else could it be?"

The horror took over as a realized I was staring at what was, until recently, an armadillo.

"Oh my GOD! It's a fucking armadillo! There's a dead freaking armadillo floating in my effing pool!" Yes, I use many different ways to express the lovely f-bomb.

Thinking there would be an outpouring of concern, love, and support was completely wrong. I have never heard my mother laugh so loudly. Ever. And I've seen this woman after too many margaritas when her face goes numb. I was in the same hospital room she was when dad played Garth's infamous "There's a duck in your house, and it's not my fault" voicemail. I sat at the same table in Hawaii when my little brother dropped 4 ounces of liquid aloe vera on my father's bald spot, and that event caused Mt. Dew to come rocketing out of my nose. She was there when Grant hit Garth in the head with a squish ball at a distance of 30 yards from a floating raft. She was there when Grant wound up to hit a funoodle around the ladder of that same raft and managed to hit himself in the nards so hard that he may very well have rendered himself infertile.

On a side note, I never realized how many hilarious moments my little brother has provided. Thank you Grant. Keep up the good work.

No, this incident took the cake without a doubt. She roared, howled with laughter. Unquestionably she had tears streaming from her eyes and her stomach ached for at least two days. Honestly, she's probably chuckling about it right now from the safety of her snow covered home in the great white north.

What to do about my new, deceased, friend? What else but continue the job at hand. I scooped the curled carcass out of the pool, and was surprised at how light it was, perhaps 4 or 5 pounds. Naturally, I had to hang up to complete the recovery mission. Once in the net the next logical step seemed to dispose of it down by the creek, again we're big on returning things to nature around here. Cringing the whole way down with this dead thing hanging in the bright blue net at the end of a 10 foot pole I wondered if it was true what they said about armadillos and leprosy. Really I figured that would be about par for the course. Come to Texas, see a tarantula, die of leprosy. The trifecta.

I left the poor little guy there and ran, not walked, back to the house where I again threw the deadbolt just in case. About an hour later I had a horrifying thought. In all my panicked, confused haste I had forgotten to snap a picture of my new late buddy for proper Facebook documentation. The children were still sound asleep for their naps and I put on my pink cowboy boots and trudged down to get my evidence. No dice.

It was gone. The dead damn armadillo was GONE! I double checked that I walked to the right place. Yep, there was the net that I dropped on my sprint back indoors, there were the footprints I left in my wake. No armadillo. I called Matt to give him the terrible update so he could share my shock at bigger animals living in our backyard that will eat dead 5 pound animals. To my chagrin, he could not have been less surprised or concerned. In fact, he rattled off a list of things that would be more than happy to feast on the free lunch I left out. Raccoons, Coyotes, Bobcats, Possums, Fox...with each one I grew more and more convinced that those very animals were having a planning session in the woods to decide exactly when to invade.

I was left with only questions at that point. What caused that poor little armadillo to commit suicide by crawling up the ramp to our pool and fall in? What happened in the animal kingdom that left him so despondent? Wasn't there anything that could have offered him comfort, solace, or hope? Truly sad. And of course, what about the leprosy issue? Yes there was at least one aspect of the disease that sounded alright, the leper colony on Kua'i sounds positively divine. But the rest, eh, I could do without it. Thankfully after an exhaustive Google search I discovered that while it is in fact possible to contract leprosy from an armadillo the only known way is by consuming raw or undercooked meat. Considering the chances of my eating armadillo in any form is significantly less than zero I felt completely at ease.

Let's be honest, when considering the long, LONG list of foods that I have yet to try in my 29 years of eating solid foods, armadillo meat just can't crack the top 1,000. Maybe start small with something like a tomato, cucumber, pickle, cauliflower, radish, sweet potato, eggnog, strawberry malt, cherry, olive, lamb, tuna, octopus, calamari, squirrel, tangerine, brazil nut, mushroom, bell pepper, kiwi...you get the idea.

Welcome to Texas

Hello again,

Phobias are nothing new to people. Most phobias evolved out of natural instincts designed to keep ourselves safe and multiplying. I personally am not afraid of snakes, bats, rodents, heights, enclosed spaces, the number 13, water, or nuns. However, spiders and I have a complete scare-terrify relationship. How does one know if their fear is a full blown phobia? Well I am pretty sure the way I feel about the eight legged creepy crawlies is absolutely neurotic bordering on psychotic. A pretty typical run down of me seeing a spider plays out something like this:

See spider
Hyperventilate-become dizzy
Notice how very, very fully my bladder is
Shake like a Pentecostal on uppers
Squeal
Run away

You may be asking yourself, why doesn't she just squash the spider and be done with it? Oh, so many reasons. Some of them are more irrational (crazy) than others, but we're not here to judge. First, no matter the size of the spider I am convinced that there will be an audible "crunch" of the menacing beast underneath or between whatever I would use to kill it. I cannot mentally handle even the idea of such a thing. Not between my fingers with a kleenex, under my shoe, underneath a rolled up paper, etc. Perhaps it would work if I had a bowling ball to drop on it. Now that might work, I'm sure a 10 pound bowling ball falling at 9.8 meters per second squared would definitely kill the critter without the nastiness of the crunch. However, I am fairly positive that it would take surprisingly few shattered dining room tiles for the space captain to grow weary of that particular pest control method. Besides, my hands are usually full of baby, sippy cups, ninja turtles, or a phone and a coffee to also be able to lug that damn ball around. Then what happens when I see one out and about? Would Target mind if I started dropping a bowling ball in random locations in their store? Could I get through airport security with it as my personal item? And dropping this silly ball does nothing against the giant spiders that hang out beneath the trees in my new locale. What, so now I have to come up with another tool to get it down and then drop the ball on it? I'm a busy woman.

There are other reasons for not flattening spiders. Perhaps the craziest one I can give you is this. I am afraid of retaliation.

Think about it, you crush a spider and throw it outside to "return it to nature". However, what if the thing is not completely dead, merely maimed or mortally wounded? This is where it gets interesting folks. Movies like Toy Story have really messed me up. In fact, I have not viewed the second and third installments in the series because I firmly believe my psyche could not take it. I make a habit out of watching scary movies, and have seen every single new horror flic in theatres opening weekend for the last 12 years without fail. Nothing has changed my life in paranoid fashion like Toy Story. There are two sock monkeys on my dresser, and I wonder what they say about me when I'm gone. Maybe they think those jeans are too tight or my new lipstick makes me look like I should be hanging out on the corner of Hennepin and Lake. Either way I wonder. I arrange our shoes because it occurs to me that they might be sad to be left upside down and away from their mate. The boys have a drawer for their action figures and I wonder if they're afraid of the dark when the lights go out. Is that McDonald's toy in agony after having a leg chewed off by our dog Kona?

Getting back to how Toy Story has forever changed my relationship with spiders. I worry that if I kill or injure a spider it will somehow pass the message on to it's spider brethren and leave me with a full blown revenge insurrection on my hands. I am completely not joking here people, this is what goes through my mind. In light of this I have little choice with what to do in the event I see a spider. They hold ALL the cards and I am paralyzed until I feel safe enough to walk away very slowly leaving the arachnid to carry on about its business. Sometimes I get crazy brave and will do the cup and paper trick. Put a cup over the spider, slide a piece of paper under the cup, and throw the whole mess outside. The spider lives another day, and there is no hit out on me from their webby kingdom.

Which brings me to story time.

On our first day in our new place on the surface of the sun we arrived at our house around 10am. Of course it was already well over 90 degrees, but what else was new? Matt put our new key in the lock and opened the front door to let our brood feast their eyes on their new digs. Upon entering our house you can see down the hallway right out the back door that leads to the fenced in portion of our two acres and the swimming pool. Matt and the boys were off like a shot back outside to see their very own yard. Not me. I immediately noticed how extremely hot it was in the house, needlessly hot for sure. Why wasn't the air conditioning on? The previous owners had only moved out two days before and knew we were right behind them, so why turn off the air? Huh. I flipped the nearest light switch and...nothing. Taking the course that we all do, I stood there and flipped that same switch on and off about 10 times before repeating the same act on the two other switches next to it. Obviously, there was no power. Not willing to let that sink in I walked into the kitched and opened the refrigerator hoping for a friendly cold blast. Nada. There was no freaking power in this furnace! Whatever. Thinking it was most likely a fuse box thingy that the captain could fix I went to join my men outdoors. Not so fast!

I turned the knob and went to take my first step into the backyard only to have Matt run at the door and thrust his arm across the jamb preventing my exit. With a wild, panicked look in his mocha brown eyes he spits out

"You should just stay inside. Yes, stay inside. You should just never, ever come outside here, ever."

Of course I assumed there was something of the insect variety near the door. I inquired

"Oh, is there a bug?" He nodded yes. I continued

"Is it a big one?" Again a nod of assurance.

"Is it a cockroach?" I had accepted they were to be a new part of our lives here.

"Uh, no. Think furrier, and with more legs" came his response.

"It's a spider?" My voice rose "Is it a fucking tarantula?!?!" Again, a nod.

Without a thought I slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolt. Yes my husband and all of my children were on the side of the door WITH the tarantula. But this was Chernobyl. This was the sum of all fears and they were already goners. There was nothing I could do for them anymore but pray from behind the locked door. Why did I lock the door? Well how else was I going to protect myself from the spider which assuredly was going to do whatever it took to break into my house and do whatever Jurassic spiders do? Please, like I was going to take that chance.

Matt realized my level of panic, and the fact that he was now locked out of the house, and realized the need to bring me back to earth. He informed me that the spider was already dead. Naturally I questioned the validity of the statement. For all I knew he was in on it with the spider and this was part of their elaborate plan to gain access to our new residence. He assured me, and I witnessed him politely nudge the deceased spider with his shoe. It was enough for me, and I finally opened the door, cautiously, to see it for myself. There is was in all its glory directly outside the door. Yes it was dead, and yes I felt more than a little faint for a while.

The only question now was what to do with the body.

After finding the perfect housing unit at Michaels I can now say that our spider, whom I named Gorgeous George, resides atop our kitchen cabinets. We bring him down to show every new person who crosses the threshold whether they like it or not. I could apologize to my dad, but it would be insincere at best. My mother tells me he was not as big as she thought, but she was never faced with the very real threat of it taking over her house and devouring her trapped family.

My 5 year old son Wesley and I have made an arrangement. He cannot deal with crickets or beetles, and I obviously cannot handle spiders. Whatever we see, we call the best person for the job. He's a master with the kleenex and the shoe, and has my undying respect for his bravery under extreme duress. I will stick to turning tail and evacuating the area or walking by trees while frantically waving my hands in front of me to prevent an arachnid to the face.

Yeah, but it's a dry heat...

Hello curious reader,

You may be wondering at this point why I have started a blog. Well to tell the truth, that's exactly how I feel. However, I am also wondering why you have decided to read my thought drops. There are those in my life who have told me for several years now that I "should write a book" about my experiences with motherhood and everything I went through to earn the illustrious title of "mommy". Maybe it would be interesting and or enlightening, but maybe not. Either way that is not the subject of this premier posting.

After living in the American midwest for 29 years I now find myself in the Lone Star Republic of Texas. I don't quite know why everyone here is so insistent on adding the whole republic part, but my efforts to begin assimilation require me to follow suit. Along with my husband Matt and our four children (Cooper 6, Wesley 5, Killian 3 1/2, and Murdoch 2) we embarked on this journey together in the very hottest part of the summer Texas has to offer. Now I understand that the climate between Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota differs greatly from Texas, but I was truly unprepared for exactly how needlessly HOT the Dallas area is. I come from a long line (well, at least am third generation) of Dutch women who are surprisingly intolerant of high heat. In truth though I spent every summer, until this one, laughing secretively at my mother and grandmother for their constant sweating and griping about how "frikin" hot it was (frikin courtesy of my mother).

I have a condition called Reynaud's that causes my fingers, toes, lips, etc. to turn blue when they get even the slightest bit chilled. Not bluish or pale, I'm talking totally navy fucking blue, think death. I kid you not, when my mother decided to take me to the pediatrician to see what in the hell was going on with my appendages the well trained and highly educated professional walked into the exam room, glanced over the chart, and exclaimed "Oh my God". I hope my mother got a "WTF" discount on her copay. Anyway, considering my propensity to become zombie like in color in the presence of cold or even temperatures below 80, I never considered the possibility to experience something that I would consider too hot. I have spent weeks frying to a pre-skin cancerous crisp in the full Hawaiian sun while my fellow vacationers huddled and whimpered beneath the safety of their cabana tops to find reprieve from the heat. On those same vacations while my family floated carelessly in the water for hours on end to cool off, I shivered my way out of the water with my famously blue fingers and toes to warm up in the 90 degree embrace of unobstructed heat. Therefore, when told that it was so hot in Texas I should prepare myself I again snorted arrogantly and announced there was no such thing as too hot for this chica.

I was so fucking wrong.

We moved to Texas right at the beginning of a stretch of days over 100 degrees that lasted well over 40 days. Seriously, I began to hate the weather function on my much beloved smart phone for having the audacity to display a temperature of 98 degrees (113 with the heat index) at 9am. How dare you madam! (My phone is a woman, her name is Camille and she is a fickle bitch, but that is for another time) Thankfully our new house has a pool in the backyard which would prove to be the only place I could tolerate outside of the blissfully air conditioned sanctity of my house. In one morning phone call to my husband I announced that I finally realized that we did in fact move to the surface of the sun. He chuckled, I looked out the windows of my back door and shook my fist at the unforgiving, malevolent sunshine (such a light term for such a cruel mistress). I quickly apologized for my gesture, lest the deity of Texas decide to flex his true muscle.

Each afternoon after the rejuvenating period of the day I live for, NAPTIME, I would strip my projeny down and cover their powdery white behinds with various bright colored swim trunks and make a break for the pool like vampires running from the dawn. Of course I avoided any orange swimsuits fearing a Good Morning Vietnam-esque bursting into flames. True with 4 we have several replacement models should one be lost to the elements, but telling the engineer I am married to that one of our children spontaneously combusted due to the color of their swimsuit just seemed like an invitation to receive a lecture about heat transfer properties that I have already heard. 

On the rare occasion where we decided to explore our new surroundings I whined to a degree that my ancestors would have been extremely proud of. I rolled my eyes, I fanned myself with my hand and talked of swooning, I muttered profanities about the temperature exceeding a million degrees. But mostly I was on an almost continuous loop of announcing to others present, whether I knew them or not, that it was needlessly hot. Like this was a personal attack against me and ever other life form and we should band together raising our voices in unison to protest such thermal abuse.

Matt, bless his space captain heart, felt it was best to laugh at me and point out how much I sounded like my mother and grandmother. To that end, I felt it was best to whine louder and find numerous exciting ways to extend a very special finger in his general direction. Seriously, if I had heard one more time "Ha! I never, ever thought YOU would be the one to complain about it being too hot", I would have found a way to build a giant magnifying glass and fry him with the sun's rays and dispose of the charred remains in our creek. Those remains would never be found as I know there is something large that loves scavenging dead critters back there (the armadillo, again another time my pretties).

This senseless heat continued into October. October people! I'm just a girl from the upper midwest who is used to snow showing up in October, not a break from 100 into merely the mid 90's. I doubted my sanity. I doubted the sanity of my husband for taking this new job. I doubted the sanity of those who have lived here their whole lives and never realized that God is trying to kill them. How could I be the only one to realize what was really going on here?

Mercifully, as we are now in the end stretch of November the heat has broken. Daily highs are in the 60's to 70's and overnight temperatures dip into the 40's. Now, rather than huddle in my house rocking back and forth with my knees to my chest dealing with my guaranteed death by vitamin D intake, I take immense joy in galavanting around town in capris and t-shirts while my fellow statesmen dig out jackets and sweaters. I hold my thick blooded head high and revel in the beauty of fall stretching into what is normally solid winter. In the grocery store (another posting about adventures at Kroger later darlings) while the other hens are cackling about turning on the furnaces and preparing for "winter" I butt right in and tell them how much I freaking LOVE having windows open and not locating the nearest shovel.

Who's shuddering now Texas!

Honestly, the evening news starts out the same "Well it was a cooold one out there this morning north Dallas!", Ha! The line at my local opium den (coffee shop) get longer each day as these thin blooded southerners whimper over the hum of the heaters in their oversized pickup trucks. Not me, my windows are down fellow citizens of the republic. And I'll do you one better. I never stopped drinking my hot coffee each morning, not even when my black car with black interior mocked me with a temperature reading of 118 degrees. No one makes me switch to iced lattes, no one.

I plan to continue my affront to Texas winters. I will smirk at those who remark about how cold today is. I don't care if I get to a point where my nipples could cut diamonds, I will not wear a winter coat out of sheer Dutch stubbornness.

I know what you're thinking, isn't that poking the bear of summer that you just spend countless paragraphs sniveling about? Maybe, maybe not. Either way I don't care, I'm representing for Minnesota my lovlies!