A Time and a Place

It’s true that there is a time and a place for everything. Spiders, for example. I have always hated them and they have been my one great fear (I can deal with snakes, with other bugs, lawyers, anything, but no freaking spiders, no matter how big or small). I understand that spiders do lots of terrifically wonderful things – they catch bad bugs in their webs and, uh, I don’t know, give to several charities. However, my living room and ON MY BABY’S HEAD is not the place and never the time. The past couple weeks I have not only not been able to control the roach problem, I now also have nasty little baby biting spiders. Like, baby spiders that bite babies. They seem to love it under the Pack ‘n Play – I was bit by one between two of my toes and it was all swollen and itchy, and then when The Nanny said she’d killed a few and saw one on Jenny but got it, I totally lost my sh*t. I called a local kid-friendly Pest Control company (not ‘Bob’s Kritter Gitters’, although that would have made for an awesome story) and they are coming Friday to soak my house in chemicals or shoot lasers or something. Thank god.

The other lovely adventure I had was last night at 4 am. While smoke detectors are a necessity and save lives and possibly also give to charities, when a battery starts to die and an intermittent yet persistent shrill beeping occurs AT 4 AM, that ain’t cool. Still more proof that God hates me, since the beeping started exactly half-way between Jenny’s two feedings, during that precious time known as ‘I should be sleeping’. The best part was that the detectors are located approximately every two inches on the second floor of this house, so I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. I started to panic that it was the one on my 12-foot bedroom ceiling, which would’ve meant I would have had to sleep in the guest room or downstairs or out in the cul-de-sac, and then call someone in the morning like a helpless girl to bring a ladder and rescue me. However, after fetching a stepstool and standing under 5 separate detectors over a half-hour period I located the offender. And took it down. And it still. Beeped. So I did the only sensible thing and wrapped it in a towel and put it in a dresser drawer and moved the dresser into a closet. And then lay frustrated until the Bean’s next feeding, after which she wanted to play ‘Mama I’m Wide Awake So How About I Punch You Repeatedly in Your Closed Eye’, so then we were up for the day. A-R-G-H-H. She’s lucky she’s The Cutest Baby in the Whole Entire World.