Even My Dreams Are Full Of Creepy Crawly Things

I seriously don't know how much more I can take. You know how "they say" that bad things come in three's? Well, I hope it's true.

This summer is chock full of major, time-consuming, hot, hard projects.

We are repainting the trim on the house, and so far we have the front scraped, sanded and primed. That's it. After a three day weekend over the fourth. It's daunting to say the least.

We've already redone two rock gardens that were getting overgrown with weeds from the accumulation of dust and dirt from the road in front of our house before it was paved. We have four more to go. The one we're working on right this minute is the biggest one with very large rocks. At first glance it looked like the easiest one to do because of the big rocks, but when we started working on it, we discovered thousands and thousands of smaller rocks underneath.

Ugh.

We remove most of the rock by hand, wash as much of the dirt off as we can, tear out the existing weed cloth and replace it and then replace the rocks, by hand.

By. Hand.

There has to be an easier way.

Jordan and I began working on it on Monday in hopes of having it cleared by Friday. After about an hour of hard work with very little visible progress we were done in. I decided to keep going for just a few more minutes when I heard Jordan gasp and say, "Oh my goodness! Mom, look!!! It's one of those really poisonous spiders!" And sure enough, it was a black widow surrounded by her eggs.

A. Black. Widow!?!?!?!?

After the rock was removed she began to try to move her eggs into the shade so they wouldn't get cooked. It was HOT. And we could hear her fangs scraping against the rocks. It was freaky. She finally got in the perfect spot for me to just move the rock and smash her. After that I used a smaller rock to smash her eggs; fully prepared to see hundreds of baby black widows scatter. But it was just like cracking an egg. Yellow yolk went everywhere, but no spiders. PRAISE THE LORD. I seriously think I would have fainted dead away.

That was it for that day.

On Tuesday, the Carlson boys came over. They had offered to help Jordan work in the rock garden and their mom agreed, even after I told her about the spider. They all wore gloves, just to be safe and as soon as they got here we headed out while it was still semi-cool. Alia and I were removing the smaller rocks since we didn't have gloves and they were embedded in the dirt where no spiders could possibly be. I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing because the boys' conversation was so interesting. They were pretending that they were really poor, and people were giving them petty jobs out of pity for their plight. They were happy to help them with things that no one else wanted to do even though in reality they had lots of money. LOL

I was chuckling quietly as I inadvertently overturned a larger rock and saw a snake start to slither away.

No. Further. Comment.

The boys thought my reaction was just hilarious and they all enthusiastically were overturning rocks to try to find him again. They worked for probably ten minutes and couldn't find it. I finally told Jeffrey to move a certain rock, and it was as if we both knew it was under there. He paused a second and picked it up and tossed it really fast then jumped back, and sure enough there it was. It was quick. Once the boys recovered from the surprise they all were racing around trying to catch the thing. I was not impressed. Thankfully it got away and hid under the lilac bushes. I promised myself I wouldn't be going near that rock garden or those lilac bushes again anytime soon.

About 9:00 last night, we decided to go for our daily walk. The weather was perfect. I love our walks. Isaac does, too. We take Pepper, and all day long Isaac comes up to me when he gets bored and asks, "Mommy, wowk? Wowk, Mommy? Pepper, wowk." And as soon as Josh walks in the door that's what he's accosted with. :)

We always put the bike trailer that we use as a stroller into the shed, and we have to go past the big rock garden to do it. So much for my promise to myself. There are rocks all over the sidewalk so we had to pick the trailer up. Jordan and I were carrying it, and we were almost there when a frog, a frog, jumped right at me. I've never seen a frog around here before. Ever.

Jordan insisted on catching it so Isaac could see it, and it peed all over him. LOL It was so funny to see Jordan's reaction. And Isaac's, too. He kept saying 'Ewww ick. Acky. Ick." :) After that it was free to hop merrily away; no doubt to plot his revenge for getting caught by thinking up ways to further terrorize me.

While I realize all the work very likely won't get done if I don't help out, I have no intention whatsoever of ever going near there again. And I think I can pull it off with minimal inconvenience. My children will happily assist me out of solemn regard for their mother's happiness and peace, not to mention sanity, given their utter fascination for all things hideous. :/