I know as well as the next person that when you move to a new place you inevitably must deal with new inconveniences. In the southeast these took the form of cockroaches. In the southwest they were scorpions, and snakes, and mice, and poisonous spiders (wait, why did I like the southwest so much?). In the northeast it’s ice and snow and depressingly grey skies. And in the west it was earthquakes and bugs whose names I never learned because that would have made them all to real. Now that we’re in southern Oregon, we have bears (cute) and cougars (the animals not the older women; also, cougars?! I kind of thought those were make believe), but honestly I’ve never seen either in the eight months we’ve been here (though Bambi and his family make regular appearances on our street). What I have seen, in hoards, are spiders.
Sometime in mid-June our rental house was invaded with spiders. Big spiders, small spiders, spiders on the ceilings, spiders on the floor, spiders smack dab in the middle of the wall, spiders in the bathroom, spiders in the hallway, spiders on our sheets (!!), spiders in the kitchen. Really, spiders everywhere. And while none of the spiders I saw looked particularly poisonous, spiders are still the creepiest creatures of all. They have so many legs. And if you look away for even a second they can fly across the room and disappear. And then reappear on your face when your sleeping. And then they crawl all over you. And then you spend the next two weeks swiping at various parts of your body because you swear there’s a spider there only to have your husband tell you it’s just your hair that your baby pulled out when he grabbed a fistful and wouldn’t let go, but it’s too late and now the whole world thinks you’re slightly unbalanced because you keeps swiping at yourself and oh-my-god spiders freak me out so much that I write stupid-long run-on sentences. Someone stop me. [Read more...]
Caleb isn’t one to sit still. At six months, he isn’t one to sit at all, but that’s neither here nor there. In general, he’s a baby that prefers to be occupied. He’s not a fan of simply sitting and snuggling, even sitting to read books strikes him as a little dull, and most of the time I understand: there’s a lot to explore in this world, a lot to figure out, and I would guess that growing bodies itch to be moved. But as one who would be content to sit and stare at nothing for hours on end without ever getting bored, I am at times overwhelmed by the constant energy required to keep Caleb entertained and happy.
