So, Saturday night, some old friends of my parents threw their annual Halloween party. And, it's always an awesome party. They go all out. The amount of time and energy they've spent in buying decorations, putting up decorations, invitations, catering, cooking, planning, entertaining, and taking down and storing decorations makes me almost too tired to attend the party. This year, they gave me a whole new reason to avoid their party: the remote controlled rat with glowing red eyes that they gave my daughter.
For my child, it was love at first site. She pet it, talked to it, and followed it around. Then she got the controls and all hell broke loose. The hosts of the party gladly gave it up to her. Apparently, it had woken the lady of the house out of a dead sleep several times after turning itself on and running itself into a wall repeatedly. At no point did I think this was going to be fun to take home.
Since coming home, my daughter has made it several new nests to sleep in, driven it around, worried about it, sung to it, hugged it, etc. And, it never stops turning itself on by itself. I'm at the point of being afraid to take the batteries out of it, for fear that it will continue to turn itself on and look at me with its glowing, red, eyes. While my child claps and giggles in delight.
Tonight, looking for an escape from the rat, I went to the bathroom. Typically, I am not afraid of spiders unless one gets trapped between its web and my face, but when you turn on the light of your bathroom, and a hairy, South Georgia tarantula (they call them "wolf spiders") isn't even scared enough of YOU to move out of the middle of the bathroom floor, it's time to shriek a little bit. My husband came to see why I was whimpering in the hallway, when I clearly needed to pee and be rat-free for a moment, but was distracted by the large, furry, creature that most certainly does not need batteries to be animated in the middle of the floor. He decided the spider had to die.
I like spiders. I like frogs. I like lizards. If it murders and disposes of the bodies of mosquitoes or flies, I'm a fan. I also have a problem with killing things of a certain size, or if they have hair. The spider is about two inches long, with its legs out, and my nearsighted ass can see hair on it from ten feet away. I ran off my husband, took a deep breath, and stepped over the spider. It barely flinched, but gave me a little room as it scurried another inch towards the bathtub. I knew it was bathtime for my daughter, and figured that between her noise and a little space, it would flee if given a chance. My husband gave our daughter her bath, we did our nighttime ritual, and I had to pee again (because I have a bladder the size of a walnut). The spider is in the corner of the bathtub and wall, close to the toilet.
CHEWING. CLEANING ITSELF. SETTING UP A HOUSEHOLD.
I still have to pee, and the rat is encouraging me to leave the living room with its glowing red eyes to confront Mr. Wolf. Yes, we have another bathroom, but I'm not completely convinced that something smaller than my hand should have the upper hand in deciding what toilet I should use.
