Home Invasion

* Edited to add - Grrrr. What's up with Bloglines? I posted this yesterday and it still hasn't shown up in Bloglines :(

Thanks for your comments on Rogue and the baby Camo. Rogue is just a wee bit stalled until I finish this baby sweater. A word to the wise: The directions are not entirely clear in my opinion. As a result, I've had to frog and reknit sections of it several times. I can't believe that I can handle the cabling in Rogue but can't handle this simple sweater. Maybe I'm just an idiot. Anyhow, I still have the second side to finish and its due tomorrow. It is a quick knit but when you hate the yarn and the pattern, it makes for lots of grumbling. Guess what I'll be working on this evening? Rubble, rubble, rubble.



And many thanks for all of your wonderful thoughts and prayers for my little brother. I've really been feeling the love and truly appreciate it. It's never easy seeing your loved ones intentionally put in harms way but I know that we'll get through it just as many other families in the US have.

So what about the home invasion? Wednesday, the Things and I arrived home afterschool. They scattered in different directions, Thing 1 to the kitchen for a snack and Thing 2 to get his guinea pig (always a top priority). Thing 2 bounds down stairs and casually says to me...

Thing 2: You know those bugs with all of the legs that are always in the playroom downstairs.
IM: (freezing in my tracks with a sudden anxiety attack) Yes. What about them?
Thing 2: There's one in the corner of the stairwell.
IM: (serious panic setting in) Which stairwell?
Thing 2: The one that goes upstairs to our bedrooms.
IM: Oh shit!

I couldn't even hold it together for the boys. I just melted down right in front of them at that very momentt. The kids know that I'm am a nut when it comes to creepy crawly bugs. Truth be told, they are too but for my sake they try to be brave. Now a few of you in Bloglandia are familiar with these horrible creatures and have even blogged about them. They're house centipedes or millipedes, have five million creepy legs and very quickly slink across the floor, hang pendulously from ceilings and walls and inflict terror on their victims. I was mostly panicked because we've never found them upstairs and I thought that was my safe haven. Now I'm freaked out because we're no longer safe. They've invaded the entire house.

IM: Crap, I meant to say crap.
Thing 1 and 2: (snickering like Beavis and Butthead) Mom said shit.
IM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's the bug? Show me.

We all cower by the stairwell as we look up in the corner at the biggest damn bug we've ever seen. It looked a lot like the spawn of Predator and the Alien. I was too paralyzed by the fear that it would scurry into my bedroom (which is the first door that it could have climbed into) that I didn't take a picture.

IM: Um, what do we do?
Thing 1: Duh, just knock it down.
IM: Duh, have you seen how high up the stairwell is? (just so you know, the distance from the floor to the stairwell corner is only 25 feet)
Thing 1: Oh yeah. I'll get a broom.
IM: A 25 foot broom!?! How about we knock him down with something?
Thing 1 and 2: YEAH!

They run to their rooms and come back with bouncy balls, slippers, stuffed animals, anything we can throw. Meanwhile, I get the brilliant idea to spray water on him with a squirt bottle. We all converged on the stairwell and started firing away. The creature was not amused. Even after getting soaked in water and getting whacked by stuff, he refused to budge. We didn't fair as well. Bouncy balls in a stairwell are kinda fun at first. But they hurt when they hit you in the eye or privates. Flying slippers and stuffed animals are very unpredictible and hurt when hurled at high speeds from many different directions. And water will eventually start to run down the walls if you spray enough and with a 25 foot ceiling, there's no wiping it off so you have to pray that it will dry without streaks. Just as the brave warriors were about to give up, Thing 1 squirts the bug one last time. He rears his ugly head (I coulda sworn that it screamed), dangles off the wall and plops onto the stairs. This is where all hell breaks lose because he's now on the move. I started screaming and the kids scrambled to find some Raid. After several squirts of the toxic stuff and lots of leg thrashing, we finally subdued the monster.



We've left his carcass right where he met his bitter end lest it be a warning to others who dare to try to get upstairs. We mean business creepy bugs! We're watching you. Don't mess with us. We have squirt guns and bouncy balls and we know how to use them.

** PS - I'm usually quite the pacifist but I can't sleep at night with these things in my house. I did say a little prayer for the bug and asked for forgiveness. I know that it still doesn't make it right though...