More Than Four Legs Are Too Many

Iowa reached a heat wave last week.  It was short lived, but that’s Iowa.  In Iowa, we often say that if you don’t like the weather, stick around a day – it will change.  For a few days we enjoyed 70 and 80 degree sunny weather.  During Drake Relays week sunny days are a premium.  Normally, the relays occur during our April showers monsoon. 

I took full advantage of these sunny days.  I’m sure the fact that it was the Drake Relay’s Centennial contributed to the great weather.  I camped out on my deck with a book and watched a few box elder bugs thawing out.  The bugs are an important part of our life because they define one of my husband, Pat's, critical purposes in life - bug removal.  The rest of our household members don't much care for anything with more than four legs.  As far as I am concerned, bugs put the creepy in crawly.

Outside bugs may have a good purpose for them. Outside they play an important role in flower pollination.  Also, for other outside creatures, bugs are an important part of the food chain.  I’ve noticed a few woodpeckers at my birdfeeder, but they seem to have a little trouble with the seeds and apparently prefer food that moves.  Inside the house should be absolutely off limits for bugs.  (Inside should be off limits for my husband’s bikes, too, but we'll work on these issues one at a time.)

We've had some memorable moments with bugs.  Some of these moments involve repainting spots on walls to cover up bug remains.  We prefer that my husband catch and release insects, preferably by flushing them down the toilet.  But catch and release isn’t always possible and not everything sponges off.  

A number of our bug moments involved our youngest daughter.  We now have a regular pest company come and spray because our house has settled enough that box elder bugs were able to march into her room one sunny morning and crawl on her before she was ready to crawl out of bed herself.  No one wants bed bugs – or even box elder bugs who want to cuddle up as bedmates.  But then being the youngest of three required this daughter to be tough; just maybe not that tough.

By the time she was six, we owned a van, which was great for hauling kids, pets and gear for kids and pets.  It was a conversion van and a silver behemoth.  One particularly nice fall day, this youngest daughter and I had stopped at a restaurant for lunch and then were off to search for beanie babies.  The van became an oven when it sat in the sun.  So we left the front van windows rolled down when we went in for our lunch.

At this point in time, our youngest daughter had long dark brown pig tails with matching bows.  She was wearing denim bib over all shorts.  We climbed into our seats, carefully buckled up, and checked a newspaper for the address of the store with the beanie babies.

We still had the windows down in the hot van as I drove out of the restaurant parking lot.  My daughter began screaming hysterically, clutching frantically at the seatbelt, and trying to levitate herself and the van.  I thought the metal buckle on the seat belt had gotten hot and was burning her bare legs.  As I flipped the seatbelt open she jet propelled herself into the far reaches of the back of the van.

I discovered the real problem was a giant spider swinging precariously back and forth in the open passenger window.  I instantly understood Miss Muffet's terror.  No one wants a spider to sit beside her. 

This was just the two of us and in emergencies like this bug removal falls to the Mom.  There was only one thing to do.  I rolled the newspaper into a serious weapon and flung it at the taunting spider, sending it and the newspaper airborne.  Thank heavens for electric windows.  I quickly rolled up the window before the spider could return – or send in any friends.  Then I tried to convince my daughter it was safe to return to her seat.  What finally did convince her was that I assured her that I wouldn't still be in the front seat if there was a spider anywhere nearby.  This she believed.  So did I.

We drove to a nearby small town where we refreshed ourselves with ‘real’ cherry cokes from an old fashioned soda fountain.  We also added generously to her beanie baby collection.  After all, a scare like that deserves a few extra stuffed animals. 

 But from that day forward I harbored a secret from her for years.  As we got to the store and parked the van, I noticed something when little Miss Muffet climbed down from the van that day.  Smack in the middle of the behind on her very cute denim bib overall shorts was a squashed quarter sized brown disk - with 8 legs!

It had rained earlier in the day and possibly sprinkled when we were eating lunch.  I can’t remember anymore.  So it is possible that this far from itsy bitsy spider mistook our silvery van as a shiny water spout and climbed up our van instead.  Following this logic, when the sun came out, the spider must have dodged death from frying in the sun by rappelling down our open van window.  Then it defied death once again by parasailing into the van as I was randomly smacking space with a rolled up newspaper. But, unlike cats, spiders must not have 9 lives as this spider met its demise by being squished when my daughter plopped back down on the passenger seat.

It wasn't until she was in high school that I told the truth about the spider.  Understandably, she was quite upset to learn that the spider had been flattened by her.  As for me, I will be calling our pest control company.  I suspect that my husband will be busy on bike rides and no where to be found when it’s time to combat and capture of the spring invasion of things with too many legs.  

Life In the O'Zone

One thing that I can say about my life is that I am never bored. There's always something interesting going on around here. Sometimes it's aggravating, but aggravating is not boring. For example, the other day it was Saturday and it snowed here. It snowed a LOT. It snowed too much for my husband to ride his bike. Frequently, on Saturdays he leaves early in the morning, while it is still dark, rides his bike with a bunch of guys to another town where they have a huge 'he-man' breakfast. Then they ride their bikes back. In our case, my husband leaves a stinky pile of bike clothes, which I wash. He's not allowed in the laundry room. But, that's another story for another time. The breakfast guys have turned out to be a bunch of fair weather bike riders. This means that now that there is a foot or more of snow on the ground, they go to the gym and do spin class, like 'normal people' would do. But my husband is not one of those kind of people and he has continued to ride his bike. He just mainly rides by himself these days.

But on this particular Saturday, there was too much snow for even his studded bike tires (that's another story, too). But he was bound and determined to head to his office to fetch his computer to take it in for servicing. After all, the only reasons for driving a car would be to carry cargo (like a computer) and because there's too much snow on the ground for even studded bike tires - that and the fact that all the bike paths are impassible.

Because there was so much snow on the ground, and because my husband drives a car we call 'Decrepo' (because it never runs), he was driving my daughter's Jeep. This Jeep is made for weather where there's too much snow. It's a 1998 classic Jeep. In other words, it goes in the snow. Put it in four wheel drive and you could possibly drive it straight up the side of a building.

The thing is, my daughter's Jeep has been to college - where break ins occurred. It also was in Minneapolis - where it gets really cold and there's lots of snow. So this Jeep has a remote start and an alarm on it. This means that if one tries to open the locked door by brute force, the Jeep's alarm will go off. It also means that if one just jams the key in the door, without using the remote device to open the door, the Jeep's alarm will go off.

The Jeep apparently doesn't like my husband very much, or perhaps it feels snubbed because if he drives, he usually prefers 'Decrepo'. But, for whatever reason, my husband manages to set the Jeep's alarm off frequently. So frequently, that we've stopped locking the car with the remote device and we don't use the car alarm on the Jeep anymore.

This came after the Jeep sat quietly in our driveway for six weeks, quietly being the operative word. The very day that I started to work on a new movie, Boy Genius set off the alarm on the Jeep - and called me on the set. Then we stopped using and setting the alarm on the Jeep. And so, the Jeep sat quietly in the driveway - until this Saturday morning.

Until this Saturday, the people in our neighborhood had been used to getting up by 6 AM and going out to start snow blowers to clear their drives and sidewalks of our growing mountains of snow which occurred on several weekdays. But this was a weekend - and apparently no one had to go anywhere because there was just the sounds of silence as pretty white flakes of snow fell from the sky - a foot at a time.

But that silence was pierced when my husband wandered outside, somehow managed to activate the Jeep alarm and then set it off quite early in the morning. I ran outside in my pajamas and slippers waiving my arms. I was sure that waiving my arms would turn off the Jeep alarm. It didn't. But as the foot deep snow seeped into my slippers I did manage to pull the battery out of the remote device, put it back in, reactivate the alarm and turn it off. All of this in a mere 20 some minutes.

Then I stood in our driveway, snow still seeping in my slippers and still waiving my arms, I think, as my husband backed down the driveway and drove off in the Jeep. I think maybe the neighbors were waiving back from inside their warm toasty houses, all the while sipping hot coffee no doubt. Perhaps they were thinking that there must be simply too much snow outside even to run a snow blower because the crazy guy next door wasn't riding his bike that day. After all, he has studded bike tires, a Jeep that hates him, and a very friendly wife who waives a lot.