Spider

There’s a spider in my basement.

This wouldn’t be a big deal, except that I just convinced my teen that the basement is an acceptable place to be with her friends or to watch TV on occasion—after many, many, many years of her refusal to go anywhere near it.

I hate spiders. I’ve pretended to be okay with them so I don’t create some phobia in my kids, but I really, really, really hate them. So I’m not killing it.

My other teen is morally opposed to killing creatures. I’d be more okay with this if creatures didn’t include spiders. Her preferred method of disposal is to deposit them outside. Well, that’s where the spider started out, and he figured out a way to get inside once. Putting him back outside is not a long-term solution. Plus, she’s noisy about it. Actually, she’s noisy about everything and there’s no way I’ll be able to keep her quiet enough to prevent her sister from finding out. And then she’ll never go in the basement again.

Why don’t I have my husband kill it? Well, a few reasons. The most relevant one right now is that he’s 5,000 miles away for the next two weeks. If it’s still there when he gets back, I’ll ask him to take care of it.

I could be a total wimp and call my dad. Don’t laugh, I’ve done this before, except it was a cicada on the inside of the window in my living room. I tried calling my husband to take care of it, but he was at work and refused to come home to kill a bug. Do you have any idea how big cicadas are? HUGE. So I called my dad. And he was great. He came right over. But he deposited it outside. Which means it could have managed to get back in my house. It didn’t, but that’s beside the point. So even though my dad is retired and has plenty of time to come over and get rid of bugs for me, I’m not calling him. At least not yet.

For now, I’m leaving the spider where it is. It has eight eyes and eight legs. I figure if it’s going to be in my house, I can put it to work, looking out for bogeymen who might try to hide in my basement now that my husband is away.

Because I’m even more afraid of THEM!

It's been there for two days now. There's a small chance it might be dead. I don't know and I'm not checking. But if it is dead, i'm still leaving it there as a warning to its friends and family: "Don't let this happen to you!"