To have loved and lost...

Have you seen the McDonald's commercial for the Angus Chipotle BBQ Bacon burger? A guy takes a bite of his burger and drops some sauce on a napkin. Then the voice over person says..."It's better to have loved chipotle and lost some, then to never have loved chipotle at all."

Every time I hear that, I just wanna scream "NOOOOOOOOOO! Don't fall for it! You will regret it!"

To understand my intense reaction to, what may seem to you, a seemingly harmless commercial, you have to understand that I have once loved...and lost. It wasn't a simple love. It was a madly, deeply, truly kind of love. The intensity of my passion cannot be summed up into words here. I won't even try. You'll just have to imagine it for yourself.

I didn't set out to fall in love. In the beginning, I honestly didn't think anything would come of the encounter at all. It was just supposed to be a harmless indulgence. Well, maybe not completely harmless. There was some part of me that knew it was wrong on a certain level. There are always consequences for our actions. Some of the risks were already well known to me, but love? No, the risk of love didn't enter my mind. Perhaps if I had stopped to consider beforehand that there was even a chance I'd fall so deeply and so quickly, I would have walked away before the obsession began. Instead, I wandered blindly into what turned into love at first... bite.

Oh, BK Angry Whopper! Why did you do this to me? I lived most of my life without you. I should be able to live the rest of it just as easily now that you are long gone. Still your memory mocks me. In moments of weakness, I find myself longing for what can never be.

:::deep cleansing breath:::

I am strong. I will survive despite knowing that I will never again experience the pleasure of that burger again. And I've learned a great lesson from my loss. No longer will I allow myself to feel so strongly about something so temporary. My heart has been hardened. I can't - I won't allow myself to enjoy another burger as fully as I did my precious Angry Whopper, but that is a good thing. I know now that "limited time" romances are never worth the pain and regret that inevitably comes when the promotion is pulled away.

Besides...it's much healthier to get the salad anyway. :)

One Word

S.A.D.

Yes, those are my initials. It's funny because I'm usually the opposite of sad (which, as every 4 year old should know, is happy.) My motto is "if there isn't anything in your life to smile about, smile anyway so that you attract the happiness." Unfortunately smiling isn't always so easy.

S.A.D. stands for something else: Seasonal Affective Disorder. While I don’t believe that I suffer from that particular type of depression, it is true that the gloom of winter usually finds me…well, sad. The wet blanket of clouds that hide the sun, the biting wind that chills my core and hurts my hands and the fact that illness seems to linger around my home longer during the colder months always tends to weigh me down just enough that my smile is a touch slower than it is during sunnier times. This year, we managed to avoid most illnesses until right before the Christmas break. My son missed the very last day of school before the holidays thanks to a tummy virus. Luckily the rest of us don’t usually succumb to that particular bug easily. Instead we were each treated, in varying degrees, to a nasty upper respiratory infection that came complete with fever and general body aches. It waited until Christmas Eve to hit me. I’m sure you can all imagine how wonderful Christmas is when you are shivering with fever and clenching in pain while waiting for the children to finally fall a deep sleep so that you can, um, unlock the door to let Santa in. I couldn’t turn to my wonderful hubby for help because he had to go to sleep early for work (yes, he sometimes works on Christmas. Actually the schedule seems to have him working on Christmas more often than not for some unlucky reason.) Besides, he doesn’t have much experience in… unlocking the door for Santa, so I wasn't sure he would have really have known exactly what to do even if I had been able to beg off of that particular duty, I mean, joy.

I toughed it out, waiting until all of the presents were in place before finally downing a dose of nighttime cold medicine (have I ever mentioned how really awful I have to feel before I take that kind of stuff?), soaking in the hottest water I could fill the tub with and then finally climbing into bed. The next three days are somewhat hazy. It took nearly three weeks to finally start feeling like myself again. Even today there is a tiny bit of cough that sneaks up on me at least once a day. Yeah, I know :::whine, whine, whine::: Get over it, right?

Monday evening I was sitting in a car line listening to the music from my iPhone playlist compete with the chilly rain that was pitter-pattering on the roof of my van. It was just cold enough to feel slightly uncomfortable, but the motor of my van stayed off because, well, have you noticed the price of gas lately?

Car line is my quiet time. It is when I’m supposed to be working on my book. Instead, all I really wanted was to end the day and go to sleep. I wondered "Where has inspiration gone? Is it hibernating? Will it ever return?"

Rain by Breaking Benjamin began playing and I thought "Yep…that’s what I’m feeling right now. "

But that was Monday. My mood lifted a bit as the week worn on. Yesterday as I was listening to the radio, I heard the DJ's talking about "My One Word" and I wondered...can I change my word from SAD to something more in line with what I want to be? The idea behind One Word is that rather than make the same old list of New Year Resolutions that we start with the best of intentions and then let fall away, we look at the person we want to be by the year's end, choose one word to describe that person and commit to it. Then whenever we hear, see or think of that word, we should be reminded of the direction we want to steer our lives. That sort of sounds like the "cue" word I used to use with my oldest daughter when she was much younger. I let her pick out the word and she knew that whenever I said it, she was supposed to stop and think about her words and the tone she was using. hmmm...she is 17 now and I'm thinking seriously that we need to start using cue words again. But I'm getting off subject...

When considering my "one word" what leapt to my mind first was TRUST. Of course, choosing that word wouldn't mean that I'd suddenly start trusting everyone and everything around me. If I did that, I'd have to quickly change trust to naive. No, my trust is reserved for the One that guilds my life. The thing is, deep down, I know that I do already trust in that way. Sure I need reminders every now and again, but even so, the word trust doesn't really describe how I want to change. So, which word does? What is my one word?

Well, why not the most obvious? I want to be new. I know what you are saying "Hon, you are 43. That's waaay closer to old than it is to new." Yeah, yeah, but that's not the kind of new I mean anyway. Let me explain. Right now there is a philodendron in my front yard that is looking pretty droopy thanks to the recent cold temps. This is the second year in a row that we've hit lows that harsh. The first time it happened, last winter, I wondered if he was gone for good. Then spring came around and after I cut away the dead leaves, I was happy to see that Phil had a new stem growing, ready to replace what had been lost. By the summer's end, he was brilliant again.

That's what I want. It's time for me to cut the rotten and dead away from my life so that I can make room for the new to bloom and grow. I know that it will come in cycles. Just as my poor Phil has to take the toll of winter before re-inventing himself, I know that I'll find myself facing challenges that will shape me. For now, I'll just trust that I'll overcome the frost of life...and find myself new once more.

It's a Swamp Thing

There is a small section of our yard that is bordered by the pond fence, the driveway and the ditch. It has a name of it's very own. We call it the "nutrient patch." I suppose that it could be considered a compost area/wildlife feeding ground. We toss the leftovers there and the food either breaks down to rejoin the soil or is consumed by creatures furry, feathery or scaly. I used to have dreams of turning that little area into a vegetable garden. After all, the soil there must be amazing by now! Unfortunately that patch (along with much of the surrounding ditch) has been taken over by a notorious weed by the name of Horsetail Rush. For those who are unfamiliar that reedy weed, let me assure you that it is the absolutely most impossible plant life on the face of the earth to kill. There is a chemical that will destroy it, but it will also make the ground sterile for several years. Defeated, I've decided to simply continue feeding the ground and wildlife while admiring the tenacity of the ancient genus that thwarted my plans.

A couple of nights ago, after clearing the table, I walked outside to add a plateful of nutritional goodness to the patch. I was slightly startled when a huge, I mean, well fed, possum emerged from the reeds. As though embarrassed at having being caught noshing, he waddled back toward his home as fast as his portly legs could carry him. I felt kinda sorry for him. After all, it is a good 300 yards to the swamp. He might've starved to death before he reached the cover of woods. Or had a heart-attack.

Hold on...it just hit me. We live less than 1000 feet from a SWAMP! :::gasp::: How did I not realize this before? Oh, wait. I did. I actually have been aware of that fact for quite some time. My husband even grew up here. I grew up in a much less swampy area. <-said in my most snooty voice. It's probably a whole mile between my childhood home and the swamp. Well, maybe not quite a mile.

Oh come on! This is south Louisiana. The swamp is all around us.

Some people apparently seem to think that it's a horrible thing to live "in the swamp." I'm not one of them. In fact, I think it's kinda cool. Exotic even. There is a unique beauty here in the swamplands that is life affirming to me. Some of the very best memories of my childhood are of my father taking us kids to the camp in the swampy woods. Nature both amazes and inspires me. The tree line photo at the top of this blog was taken from my backyard. If you've ever gotten lost enough on the web to stumble upon my Myspace, you might have noticed the same photo. There I call it "Swamp Sunset." In my fictional world of Rhonia, my hero hails from a place called Mireterre. Mire = swamp, terre = land.

You wouldn't think that I should need to convince anyone that I have a special affinity for this land that I live in, but apparently I do. You see I was recently misquoted in our local newspaper. That sentence attributed to me makes it appear that I see the swamp as a horrible place.

Let me give some background here. Our school board is considering moving boundary lines, which would force children who live in this area to begin attending a school in neighboring community. Both schools are very good. The school that our children may be bussed away to has an excellent state rating. Still, parents here are very much against the idea. Our school was built for our community. It's seen generations of local families. The father of a friend recently said that Grandparents Day can often feel like a class reunion. It means something to them that their grandchildren are getting an education in the same school that they not only sent their children to, but that they attended themselves. The problem is that the area is booming. Enrollment is rising and the classrooms are becoming more and more crowded. A large part of this is due to a newer subdivision, which is located in an area that was not originally part of our school zone. Understandably, many parents who grew up here are now feeling that their children are being pushed out to make room for newcomers.

In an effort to bring public awareness to the issue, I wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper. Later that week, I received a phone call from a reporter. We talked about a promise of new classrooms that parents were given a few years ago when we were urged to go to the polls and approve a measure to untie money for School Board use. If those classrooms had been built as planned, the school would be able to handle the current growth. We talked about the upcoming changes in the Pre-k program that should free classrooms for other grades. We discussed the frustration that parents felt at a recent school board meeting. We talked about student/teacher ratio.

Out of everything that the reporter and I spoke about, here is what he apparently heard: “I just cannot see my child getting on a bus and going 30 minutes into the swamp,”

Seriously?

I guess I can see how he got that. What with me hating the swamp and all. :::sigh:::

Fessing up

The kids love when I bake homemade pizza. Danielle likes sauce, cheese, pepperoni, onions, bell peppers and black olives. Emily gets sauce, no cheese, pepperoni and black olives. Derek and Anna are both light sauce, cheese and pepperoni. My slices have sauce, light cheese, onions, bell pepper, banana peppers and jalapenos. Hubby gets...take out. He isn't quite as fond of homemade pizza as the rest of us.

Last night, we watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice as we munched on our pizza (and hubby enjoyed his fish poboy). The movie was cute - especially the lil nod to Mickey's Fantasia role. Several times during the show, the main character was told that he doesn't lie very well. I can relate to that. I stink at lying. Guilt gets me quickly and I just know that it shows on my face. My children, however, have not inherited that from me. They are all excellent liars. In fact, they are so good at distorting the truth that they actually make me doubt my own sanity at times. Last night was one of those times.

Here is what happened. When the pizza was ready, I cut each section and put everyone's special pieces on their own plates. I only put half of my own section on my plate and left the other half on the stone to keep warm. That half actually filled me up pretty well, so I was planning to store the other piece for breakfast. The problem was that when I went back to the stone...it was empty. I looked back at my children, who were all happily munching away on pizza, and asked if anyone had taken it. Every single one of them denied it. One told me that I must have eaten it myself. hmmm... I WAS feeling full. Could I have walked up to the stone, taken the second half, walked back to the table and eaten it - all while distracted by the movie? Suddenly, I wasn't sure. Then another child pointed out that none of them like banana peppers or jalapenos. At that point I had to concede that I MUST have somehow eaten the slice myself without even realizing what I was doing. There was no other explanation, right?

But what hides in darkness will be exposed in the light.

This morning, I walked into my pantry and found this:

In addition to the peppers discarded on the floor were a few smears of pizza sauce on the wall.

AH HA!

So I did what any good mother would do in that situation. I pulled out the camera and thought "at least this will be good blog material!" Then I sent a text to hubby. He responded with a suggestion that I punish them all unless the guilty party confesses. I wasn't comfortable with that, but figured that since I obviously am not doing a great job at teaching them to tell the truth, maybe I should try things his way. So I called an emergency family meeting. The girls met me at the pantry door. The boy...was busy puking in the bathroom. Now for those of you who think that I should have been in the bathroom with my vomiting son instead of at the pantry with my girls, you need to understand that I am not only completely useless in vomit situations - I am usually in danger of puking right along with the sick child. That's never a good thing.

After pointing out the evidence, I told the girls that I wasn't upset at all that someone had eaten the pizza slice. In fact, if the culprit had only asked me for it, I would have gladly agreed to sharing it. The problem I had was that I was lied to. I told them that if no one confessed, they were all punished (side note - I never actually told them HOW they would be punished - and none of them asked for details) BUT if the guilty party did step up and do the right thing, she or he would be given - forgiveness.

The oldest immediately protested. That wasn't fair! I agreed, but stood firm. Then I walked away to let them debate it among themselves (stopping first to check on my son - who who feeling a bit better having finished his first bout of upchucking.) Ten minutes later, my boy came to me with his head hung low. I checked his forehead for fever and asked if he wanted to try a bit of Powerade. When he raised his eyes to mine, I knew. It wasn't just the illness weighing him down. Whether his sisters convinced him to come forward or if he decided to take responsibility for his actions all on his own, I don't know. It didn't really matter. He owned up to it and was granted forgiveness.

All was well.

Until, I went to pack the fruit snacks for my youngest' classroom Christmas party. I reached into the grocery bag from the night before and realized that an entire box was missing.

Nobody took it. Nope. None of them. :::sigh::: At least none of them tried to convince me that I ate them myself.

Life with Derek - Looking Forward

Not long ago, Derek and Anna decided to ride their bikes while waiting for the school bus. Anna pulled her bike out of the shed and began pushing it up the rock road toward the cemented area at her grandparents. She had gotten a pretty good head start on her brother because he had to finish packing his school bag first, but Derek is strong enough to ride his bike on the rock road so he caught up with her quickly. I walk onto the scene just as it occurred. Anna was happily pushing her bike and Derek was happily riding his – directly behind her. He was looking down at his pedaling feet, completely unaware that he was about to plow into his sister. I called out, but it was too late. In an instant Anna was on the ground, sobbing and holding her knee. Derek was off his bike, looking confused and concerned.

Looking forward is something Derek really needs to work on. This is the same boy who, two years ago, ran full force into the back of his grandfather’s parked truck, slicing the top of his head open. Yes, the top of his head. You see, just like with the bike, he was looking DOWN at his feet as he raced home. It was around then we learned he had slight dexterity issues. An Occupational Therapist officially diagnosed him with “Lack of Coordination.“ Seriously. Did you know that is a real medical diagnosis – with an ICD (International Classification of Diseases) code number and all? I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Derek very much enjoyed his OT appointments. And why not? They were fun. The OT equipment looked a lot like toys to him. He was sad when his therapist decided that he had advanced enough to discontinue visits. He is still just slightly uncoordinated enough that I don’t see a future for him in sports, but not so much that he stands out among the other, somewhat awkward, 10 year olds he plays with. But while his balance may have improved, his ability to focus on what is in front of him still needs work.

Learning to physically look ahead is one goal - hopefully his new glasses will help with that! His vision deteriorated quite a bit this past year. Watching him struggle to read even the big letters with his old glasses on was kinda heartbreaking. But vision aside, an even bigger goal is for Derek is to think ahead. To be fair, he has come a long way in that area. A couple of years ago, he still acted on impulse more often than not. It was a rare week that he didn’t have some type of discipline note come home from school. Naturally I wanted to do anything and everything that would help my child, but the school system left me feeling almost as frustrated as he was. He was in their care for most of his waking hours. Little by little, I watched my sweet, happy baby boy sink into a reactive, discouraged child. His love of learning was replaced with an “I hate school” attitude. Hearing those words come out of his mouth was what finally convinced me to give conventional medication a try. Up until that point, I held on to the fading hope that proper nutrition (which he wasn’t getting thanks to his intense food aversions) and herbal supplements were going to help. Having him labeled as ADHD wasn’t my worry. It was the medication that I feared most.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll gladly give my children antibiotics for strep throat, ear infections and so on. Xopenex and Pulmicort (a bronchial dilator and inhaled steroid) were life saving meds for my children that I am very grateful for. And while I’ll usually turn to zinc, Echinacea and vit C when I feel a cold coming on, I’m not above going to the doctor when those things aren’t enough. I have great respect for the medical community – mostly. Mood-altering meds, however, scare me (I also have issues with pain meds, but that’s another story.) The idea of drugging my son so that he would behave in school was something that I struggled over. For some reason that bothered me more than if, for instance, we would have been doing it to help his grades. Derek hasn’t really needed help in that area and naturally I’m grateful for that. But of course, school isn’t just about grades. So in a frustrated effort to help my child stop getting into constant trouble at school, I agreed to give ADHD meds a try. Much to my relief, he did NOT turn into Zombie Boy as I feared. Instead, just the opposite happened. It was as though he came alive again. Not in a hyperactive way, but in a “wow, I can think clearly” way. Instead of binding his emotions, the medication actually gives him more control over them. He still makes poor choices sometimes, but instead of melting down, lashing out or getting defensive when corrected, he now does something that I hadn’t seen him do in a long while. He apologizes. No prompting necessary! He’ll actually talk over what he’s done and comes up with ideas about what he should have done instead.

Wow, right? Well, maybe it’s not wow to you, but it is for me. I realize now that it isn’t just the behavior we are addressing. It is the thought process (or lack thereof) that leads to the behavior!

Sometimes I’ll even hear him weighing possible consequences of an action BEFORE he jumps into something. Not always but it’s getting better. When things do get rough, I try to remember that he is maturing day by day and that I too have to look ahead.

Life With Derek

My children used to watch a show on Disney called Life with Derek. I can't tell you much about it because I, admittedly, didn't pay much attention to it. There was a time when I watched everything that my children watched. At some point, that changed. I think it was when my older two children moved away from Nick Jr and PBS kid shows and gravitated to things like Pokemon. I tried to keep up, but by the millionth PI… KA… CHUUU shriek (a threshold that was probably was achieved in the third episode) I found that I simply could not stand it any longer. It may or may not be coincidence that it was right about then that I really started discovering the internet. Oh, I still had to hear the shows they were watching, but tried my best to let it become nothing more than background noise (something I also learned to do whenever hubby used to watch pro wrestling.)

Regardless of not really getting into the TV series, the title always made me smile. You see we have our own Life with Derek here. And trust me, life with our Derek is anything but boring.

When Derek was around three years old, he told me that he choose our family long before he joined us. According to his story he was in heaven with God, looking at different families and trying to decide which he’d choose. God pointed us out to him. Well, we just happened to be at Disney World at the time he was checking us out and were having so much fun that he agreed that we were the right family for him. I remember feeling a sense of wonderment as my baby told me that tale. Sure we had talked about God before and probably mentioned heaven too, but how he came up with the idea that he was there before he was born is still a mystery to me. BTW, we were at Disney World a year before he was born, but of course he probably heard stories about that so I guess that doesn't prove anything other than he had a pretty great imagination even at three. Still, I have to admit that I do like to think that he might have really picked us.

My son’s physical entrance into our family should have given me a clue about what was to come in our Life with Derek. Both of his older sisters choose 2:30 am as the perfect time to jump start labor, so when I woke up at 2:30 am that fateful morning I just knew that it was the day. The problem was, there weren’t any contractions. There was only…dampness. It wasn’t pain that woke me up. It was some kind of spastic jump/kick that was apparently strong enough to break my water. On the way to the hospital, I kept waiting for contractions to begin. They didn’t. Looking back now, I think I can finally understand what happened. You see, he probably got bored and thought that it was a good time to be born and so he made a beginning effort to start the whole process – with the karate kick - but instead of finishing whatever it is that babies do to trigger labor, he obviously got distracted. After all, there was that interesting umbilical cord in there with him. He most likely thought, “hmmm…I bet it would be fun to get all wrapped up in this thing.” So that’s what he did. He twisted the darn thing around his neck. By then the doc had bullied, I mean talked me into that horrible pitocin stuff to start contractions. And so, for the first time in his life, the world forced Derek into doing what he should have done on his own.

It wouldn’t be the last.

Naturally Derek finds ways to be himself regardless of how much the world tries to mold him to what it wants him to be. Sometimes I worry so much about if he’ll ever find a way to fit in. Other times I just have to laugh. Sometimes I do both…like when I read his answers to a worksheet on “Dealing with Peer Pressure.”

Q. What was your friend or friends pressuring you to do?

A. Study

Q. What kinds of things were your friends doing or saying to pressure you?

A. to study

Q. How did you feel about being pressured?

A. Weird

Q. What did you decide to do at the time?

A. Fart

Q. What happened as a result of your decision?

A. I farted

Q. How did you feel about your decision?

A. farty

Q. Would you do anything differently today? Is so, write what you would do differently?

A. Yes, break the world record for the longest fart.

Yes, my son is brilliant.

To be continued….

My near brush with death...

Ok, I've already confessed that I hate shopping, right? Have I ever talked about my dislike of cold weather? What about how my issues with crowds and noise levels?

Welcome to the Christmas season!

Oh joy. I just wanna hide out till May, but life won't let me. Today, I had to brave it all. Well, not so much the cold since it got up to nearly 80 today, but it WAS a dreary wet day if that counts for something. It's going to be COLD on Wednesday. The high won't even see 60! I may freeze solid! Just knowing that such a horrid cold front is on it's way was enough to make me think that it was cold today too. You know, except for that part that it wasn't. But I'm getting off subject. The point is that when I woke up this morning, I knew that it was going to be a rough day. I knew that because today was the day that I was going to start Christmas shopping.

The plan was for me to get the kids off to school, go to the bank and then start off easy with Hobby Lobby (which is such a wonderful place that I sometimes forget that I'm actually doing the shopping thing when I'm there) first. Target was next on the list. I don't care much for Target as it's only a slight step above Walmart, but it had to be done. Bed, Bath and Beyond held one item that I needed, then I would zoom over to the mother of all panic attacks - the mall. There I would get the water filter from Sears and then make a beeline for Bath and Body works for the hand soap gifts.

Yep, that was the plan. It started off pretty good. The kids got on the bus just fine. Then I came back inside...and decided to make a cup of tea first. I don't know how it took me two hours to drink that cup of tea. I'm going to blame my procrastination on extreme anxiety and not Farmville. What? I needed to plant some blueberries! Blueberries are good. And there may have been some laundry done in that missing two hours. The floor REALLY needed sweeping too. And I couldn't just leave the breakfast dishes unwashed.

Around 9:30 I realized that there was no way I was going to get everything done if I didn't get going. Grabbing my keys, I took a deep cleansing breath, jumped in the van and drove down my driveway. When I got to the mailbox, I remembered that I needed to mail a bill, so I turned around and went back into the house to get it. And since I was bringing that to the mailbox, I figured that I should send Cheaper by the Dozen back to Netflix. Of course, I had to find it first. It was almost 9:45 by the time I finally made it back to the mailbox. I opened it and realized that I hadn't picked up the mail on Saturday so before I could put mail IN the box, I first had to take mail OUT of the box.

That's when I saw it. The agent of death.

He took the form of a brown spider. I did not yell (but I might have jumped a bit). I simply swatted the demon away with the mail that was already in my hand. Then as quickly as I could I made the exchange. Incoming mail was taken out of the box, outgoing mail went in. I brought the mail to my van. Then it was on to the bank.

After sending my deposit through the little chute thingy, I reached down to plug in my phone charger. Then, suddenly...he was there. ON MY LEG! (Thankfully, when I got dressed this morning, I knew that it wasn't going to hit 80 today so I wore long pants. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I had worn shorts instead!) I did exactly what any other self respecting female would have done in that situation. I threw my phone on the floor, screamed bloody murder and pretty much had a spastic attack. The people in the car next to me were trying very hard not to laugh. I didn't think they quite understood the situation. You see, in my efforts to get the thing OFF OF ME, I didn't realize until it was too late, that I had missed the best opportunity I was going to get to kill it. Once, it was off my leg, it did what spiders do best...it hid.

Somewhere.

In my van.

By that time, the teller was finished with my transaction and I realized that I had to move the van. Which meant that I couldn't get out and run away as far as I could. I had to actually stay IN the van...with the spider. I prayed and drove to the car wash where I spent every last quarter I had on the vacuum, hoping, hoping, hoping that he'd show his eight legged self to me. No luck. At least the carpet got cleaned.

Out of quarters, I cautiously got back into the van and drove home. I had one last idea. He was waiting for me under the carport. "Oh, brave and mighty Ke-Kat," I pleaded "find the mean old spider." I lifted him gently and put him in the van - the same van that he clawed his way into the day that I left the windows down. Did he appreciate my help? No. He jumped right back out! Then he gave me a "I'm really only in the mood for lizards today" look and stretched.

I left all of the doors open for fifteen minutes in hopes that Mr. Spider would realize that escape was possible. If he did, I never saw him leave. Of course, he is kinda little so maybe he just slipped by. Eventually, with my very life on the line, I got back into the drivers seat and set back out on the road. The traffic was awful. The stores were noisy and crowded. The lines were long and slow. And because I got such a late start, I wasn't able to finish before returning home for the kids - which means that I'm going to have to do this all over again at some point this week.

Meanwhile, the spider is probably still in the van...just bidding his time.