Why do there have to be Big Spiders?

This is a story by memory from 4 years back, when we 1st moved into our last house that had an in-ground pool. This was the 1st pool I ever had to maintain.

So we have our 1st pool, and I'm really hating it. These things are way too much trouble than what you get out of them. That's why there are community pools, that are nice and big and taken care of by OTHER PEOPLE!

Owning an in-ground pool has its own special subset of entertainment. Apparently every creature small enough to fit through the fence is Emo. At least once a week I pull out a dead baby bird, dead mole, a few dead frogs, and a buffet of insects. The worst ever was a tiny kitten. :( I had a hard time with that one.

So, basically my routine was to go out and clean the skimmer basket while I'm letting our dogs out 1st thing in the morning. This is fine in the summer months, as the sun is already peeking out, but when it got into early September, it would still be fairly dark. Since all the above mentioned critters have the potential to be deep six'd in the thing, I had the foresight to keep a bungee cord nearby that I could use as a fish hook to grab the basket's handle and pull it out without plunging my hand into the water.

On this particular day though, it was nowhere to be found. CRAP! Oh well, I just have to stick my hand in, and hope I don't feel anything squishy. Luckily I don't. Unluckily, I feel something tickly. Then more and more and MORE tickly. There are "things" climbing up my arm from the sensation, but I was still sleepy enough to be like "well, isn't that an odd sensation. I wonder what could be crawling up my arm at this hour in the morning? Well, no other way to find out than to look I guess. Ok, let's do that!"

By this time, the ticklish feeling was well past my elbow, but oddly still went down to my hands. Once I had the wherewithall to look down, I was practically face to face with 6 or so of the most ginormous spiders I had ever seen! These things were like the size of those gag gift rubber spiders, easily as big as a computer mouse!

I'm assuming our neighbors were perplexed, in that they weren't aware that a 10 year old girl was a part of our family, and why she would be out by the pool screaming at 5:00am on a weekday.

Yeah, I was a "bit unsettled" by them. After doing that flailing/wiping dance that everyone knows from prehistoric instincts stored in our DNA, I was able to control myself to try to memorize on of the spiders so I could look up what it was.

Here it is, the Rabid Wolf Spider:

Death by Pool Tarp

I'm trying to do this all from memory, since I can't find the original post I made of this. Don't expect it to be the same, as I'm sure I've forgotten the majority of it, but you'll get the gist.

Back at in the spring of 2008, we lived at a house that had one of those abominations of fun and leisure, an in-ground pool. For all you people that have fun and enjoy a home pool, know that somewhere hidden, most likely indoors, is the person that takes care of that pool. We pull all kinds of dead things out of it for you to enjoy it. Just remember that, ok?

So anyways at the start of the year, it was finally getting warm enough outside that I could open the pool. It's had a huge tarp over it for the past 6 months, which is plenty of time for an assload of leaves to fall and dissolve on it, 100's of birds to crap on it, and dozens of frogs to spawn 1000's of tadpoles on it. By May, this is all stewed itself into a green slimy water that has to 1st be pumped off.

That's the fun part.

Once all that water was off, and it was left for a few days to evaporate the remainder off, which never really happens, as random rain showers will screw it up. I have a whole Saturday to myself for "that yard work that daddy likes to do" while the rest of my family heads off to Holiday World. They get to have fun while I'm struggling with this stinky pool. My wife said "just leave it until I'm back, and I'll help you." That's when my wiener reared it's ugly head.

"Just open it yourself, there's only a tiny bit of water on it, so it'll be easy!" it said. "You'll get it done really fast, plus then you don't have to mess with it tonight, you can be done early" it added. "She'll be impressed you did it yourself, so we could get lucky tonight!" That's all the encouragement I needed. Guys will do all kinds of awful things, such as kill things, lift heavy things, or sit through Longaberger parties if there's the slightest inkling of sex as a reward.

Guys should never be left unattended with their wieners. They always seem to make so much sense at the time, but they just get us in trouble in the long run.

So I start to take the tarp off. Granted, it's just a tarp, but it's like 30' x 70', so all in all that's a lot of square footage to be full of stinky remnants. Anyone that has ever taken a pool tarp off will understand the "last few feet" dilemma. All that tiny surface of water that never evaporated looks like it's really no big deal, but by the time you get all of it out except the last few feet, it's collected into 100 gallons of nightmare juice. How the crap do you get that out, without it busting its symbolic nut all into the comparatively clear water it was protecting?

There are 2 methods. You either have to get something to suck out as much of that water as you can, or you heave it out. Since I'm lazy, I took the latter option and tried to heave it out. That may be counter intuitive, but it's much less time than spending another hour sumping out that spooge. Needless to say my plan backfired, and all that goodness came flipping out the tarp into the water, like a big green cloud covering the water. Oh well, screw it. Let the filter get it I say.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was about to kill myself.

The next step is to drag this thing around the house to the front driveway to hose off the half year of bird debris and amphibian fornication. There's still lots of live wiggling going on, and a smell that is hard to forget, or wash off. To add insult to injury, it's a VERY windy day. Wind and tarps are not a good combination, so I carry around some concrete blocks to weigh down the corners. I commence hosing. Since it's such a sunny day as well, to stand on the tarp is really hot, as the water is pretty much evaporating on contact. You can see the steam coming off the thing.

I hate wind.

When I'm about half way finished hosing, a huge gust of wind comes up from behind, catches the tarp despite the blocks, and flings it up and over me knocking me down in the process. Since I'm on an angled driveway, I roll down it a few turns, wrapping myself up in this tarp. And it's hot! And I can't get out! Almost instantly, the air gets so hot inside I'm feeling like I'm suffocating. I'm just imagining myself dead on my driveway, wrapped up like a tadpole and fat guy burrito. My wife probably wouldn't notice and would run me over for good measure.

The only thing I could think to do was to roll myself uphill, and in the process unwind the tarp. Luckily, I was only wrapped like 2 turns, so I got out relatively easy. I'm just covered in failed frog sex and dead leaves, but at least I got out. I finish my work in a huff, as well as somehow cleaning out the pool and all its glory. By the time I go in to shower, I'm more or less dry again. Apparently I had some hitchhikers all day, as two tadpoles washed out of my hair. Ewwww!!

Guess how many times I swam in that pool this year? Answer: 2

Blaxsploitation Provided Free of Charge

(Old message from July 2008)

Something funny just happened. Was on the phone with AT&T paying our corporate long distance. The lady was "overtly" black, and apparently wanted me to know this. I personally do not take any issue with any race, opting to never even utter things like "my black friend", they're just my friends. :)

Ok, so we're going along, give out our info to look us up, and I get an "oh, Indiana huh?" but no other explanation like "my cousin lives there" or anything, so I just sit quiet. Everything's fine, but there's just this vague perception that you could tell she "wanted" me to know she was black.

This apparently backfired on her, big time, which is where the funny comes in. :)

She gets to the point of giving me the confirmation number, which was 1LS4IN. This is how she said it:

"Ok, sir, your confirmation number is the number 1, L as in Luther, S as in Sudan, the number 4, I as in Islam, and N as in Nigge... N... N as in ...."

To which I replied:

"How about N as in Nancy?"

She had it so on the brain I'm assuming that I was going to be some racist hillbilly that she couldn't keep from saying the word. :) I had a hard time keeping my "corporate voice" going instead of laughing.

Please don't call CPS on me

I'm a bad daddy.

So one Saturday night back in April, I just finished giving the kids a bath and was getting them ready for bed. Neal (he's 6) and I start picking on each other trying to whip each other, him using his PJ pants, and me using a towel.

I was swinging slow, so he'd have time to avoid, or he'd block it. Laughing ensues. On the last shot I make, he instead turns to run away, and the towel goes CRACK!!! right behind his knee. One of those 1 in a million, Indiana Jones would be proud, type whip crack sounds. If he was a foot closer or farther, absolutely nothing would have happened.

Being his mother's son, he knows how to lay on a guilt trip. All tear choked he goes "that whip sound hurt real bad. That must be like the whips they used on Jesus at Easter."

So, to even the score, I went out and got the big fatty rubber band from the junk drawer and held it to my arm, and he pulled that bad boy about 1.5 feet away and gave me a good thwack! Then he goes "haha did that hurt? I don't even feel mine anymore!"

My son's a conniving bastard like me.

Odd Conversation with my kids

Whole family's in the car for a drive to the fine local Wal-Market establishment. Everyone who has kids knows how those drives are. Questions from almost angle coming in rapid fire. I'm used to this. I pride myself in having an answer, no matter how deep in my butt I have to reach to find it. Only if I'm grouchy will I resort to the "ask your mother", but since she was there with us that one was off the table already. Then the curveball question from "H-E double-hockey sticks" happens.



My son (age 6) says: "What do people taste like?"



O.O


It's not what you think. Our son is a nice, quiet boy. Never gets into trouble. He's also very helpful and whatnot. CRAP!!! That's like every episode of "Unsolved Mysteries"!! It's the quiet guy that end up having a cellar full of human rump roasts! Don't eat those cocktail wieners!

Ok, yes I'm being silly, but it definitely was a WTF type question. My wife bobbed and weaved with the "correct" answers, that people don't do that because other people would miss that person, we only eat animals X, Y, and Z because of our need for protein, and yes there are weird countries that eat animals not on the normal lists, but that's ok for them to do for some reason. I wanted to say "because they're heathens", but I was too busy blurting out the 1st thing that came to me:

Me: "Well, I think women taste like Long John Silvers, just without that malt vinegar."

I could actually feel my face cooking from my wife's death ray glare. She's a peach. :)

Trying to pull it back on track, my wife says "what are some good sources of protein to keep us healthy?" My 4 year old, obviously having missed that entire conversation due to distractions caused by magic squirrels in her pocket, shouts "we buy it at Wal-Mart!"