Why I Can't Sleep At Night...or...Wolf Spider Babies

So did you read the title for this post? Really...that does say it all. However, I will tell you a long and convoluted version of what my post title really said oh, so succinctly...

Rewind to Saturday night: As I snuggled down into my covers on that chilly fall night, I noticed what I perceived to be a hairball on the covers over my chest. My cat, Bella, has long hair and has a tendency to shed large hairballs. I flicked the covers to move the hairball...and watched it scuttle away. SCUTTLE!!! Hairballs aren't supposed to scuttle.

The lights were still on, and I looked down and saw a giant spider sitting on my Kindle. It was HUGE and brown. My first inclination when I see spiders is to get a tissue and pick up the spider, squishing it in the tissue before throwing it away. There was no way I was doing that with this big of a spider. It was every bit of 3 inches across. Before I could get something to kill it, the spider went under my bed.

Now, I don't keep a bunch of stuff under my bed. At the time there was a duffel bag and a clear, plastic comforter bag. However, I couldn't find that spider anywhere.

I was understandably freaked out. I hadn't been able to really inspect the spider, but I remember it being all bumpy looking and wondering to myself if those were baby spiders on its back...but I dismissed that as crazy-thinking.

Fast-forward (although we're still in the past here...) to Monday night. As I was pulling back the covers and checking for spiders, the huge spider came out from under my covers (MY COVERS!!) and stopped at the edge of the bed. As I went to go get a shoe (the tissue method was out), my cat jumped at the spider and it went under the bed...again. I got on my knees with my Converse in hand, but still couldn't find the spider. I then spent a restless night sleeping, but that was nothing compared to what was coming.

I started talking to people at work about my spider problem. Work reactions did not make sleeping any easier. Then I did the worst thing possible...I Googled "large brown spider". I found a spider website and couldn't really find anything that looked like my spider. The closest thing was a Wolf Spider, but it just didn't look big enough or bumpy enough. Then I found it...

Oh, yeah... A wolf spider with babies all over its back! BABIES! Around 100 spider babies! Oh my gosh!

Now I really couldn't sleep. What if all the babies decided to leave the mother ship? Every time I laid down, I would imagine those baby spiders crawling all over me! It's been terrible. I keep thoroughly checking my bed. I mean, this spider thinks my bed is its house! I did find a wolf spider trapped in my tub Thursday morning and killed it, but I'm sure it wasn't as big as that mother spider with all the babies.


I decided I was going to have to bomb the house if I didn't kill or catch (I'm afraid to try to kill it because I doubt hitting it with my Chucks is going to kill all those babies!) the spider in the next few days. So, I picked up a bug and spider bomb (3 actually) at Wal-Mart tonight. I'm going to try to bomb the house while I'm at my parents' house tomorrow. At least it'll make me feel better!

Wish me luck!

The Perils of Online Ordering

I hope to never have to order things online for other people ever again.

My father is getting ready for his annual elk hunting trip and wanted me to find him a specific hand-held GPS online. Dad doesn't do the internet and Mom has a hard time ordering stuff online because of their slow dial up connection. That meant that Dad asked me to find and order the GPS for him. As if finding one and going back and forth as to if he should get a refurbished one or a new one (he went with the new one), wasn't enough trouble, he then wanted me to order one for his buddy that was going with him. I guess Ted also can't get online and order stuff for himself. Ted wanted a refurbished one, which meant I had to order from two different sites.



Fast forward a week later...neither GPS had arrived. Dad was in a panic. I told him that his could take up to 8 business days, so he wasn't too worried, but Ted's should have arrived already. Well, it gets worse... When ordering the GPS units I had to create an account on each site. I decided I didn't want to get emails from these places, so I put the accounts under my Dad's name and email. Only I got the email wrong. I thought his and Mom's gmail account was the same as their Socket (their service provider) account, but it wasn't. So I ended up having all the order and tracking info sent to an email address that we didn't have access to. Yep...stupid, I know. I didn't realize what kind of problems that would cause or I would have double-checked the email address or just used my info.

I didn't even save the web site addresses of the places I bought the units from. I had to go into the history of my computer and try to figure out which sites I bought from. I looked up the contact information and gave the numbers to my mom so she could call them. But she waited until today...almost 2 weeks after I originally ordered them. One place she couldn't get a hold of, but the other said that the order was canceled. She neglected to figure out which order was which. However, I was supposed to re-order it.

After doing some more research (and to make a long story short..er), I found out that I was mistaken on the two sites that I had used and as to which was which. Both sites had canceled the orders for various (stupid) reasons...which I would have known about if there hadn't been the whole email address debacle.

I was so frustrated. I was mad at myself for the whole email problem, then I was mad that Dad didn't just order his own stuff. I was mad that Mom didn't ask more questions when she called the company.

In the end, we got them re-ordered and they'll be here in time for the guys to figure them out (hopefully) before they leave for Colorado.

I hope I never have to do something like this again!

Ms. Fixit and the Weird Smells

There has been a weird smell in and around my kitchen for several days now. The smell reminded me of mouse urine. Yep...mouse urine. I'm not even going to go into how I know what that smells like, but I have cats that like to bring in mice to play with...sometimes the mice escape. 'Nuf said.

I decided to take everything out of the pantry, get rid of any out-dated food and clean everything. Add to that the fact that the middle shelf in the pantry has been about to come crashing down at any minute because of a screw that is loose, and it was time to do something about the pantry. I took all the food out a shelf at a time.

Here's the Before Pantry

Here's the stuff from my bottom shelf

Here's the stuff from my middle shelf - along with the shelf!

Here's everything that's getting thrown away.

When I went to figure out how to fix the shelf that was about to crash onto the pantry floor, I found that it wasn't because the weight of the food, but because of shotty building. Apparently the builder who put in the shelves tightened the anchor too much and put a huge hole in the sheet rock. Instead of replacing the sheet rock like he should have done, he just put a small piece of wallboard over the hole and screwed the shelf onto that wallboard that was about 1/8 inch thick. The ONLY thing holding up the shelf on that side was the second screw.



I was soooo... mad. Why in the world anyone would think that would actually hold any weight for an extended period of time. What a lazy way to fix something.

It took me awhile to finally figure out how to fix it. I tend to be a fix-it person. I always work to fix things myself. I tend to be a handy-woman. The ability to fix things without the proper tools or supplies is one of the genes I've gotten from my dad, so I got out the toolbox and started digging through it to find some way to fix the shelf without having to move all the shelving braces to a new spot in the wall. In the end, I just got a new anchor and used it along with the aforementioned piece of wallboard.

The "After" look

After getting everything put back into the pantry, I decided to mop the floors. It was while mopping the floors that I finally figured out where I think the smell was coming from. I just turned the heater on this week, and remembered that I hadn't cleaned the filters yet this year.

The filters actually looked like they hadn't been cleaned in over a year. I don't know when the last time I cleaned off the filters was, but it's done now and I'm hoping the smell is gone with the dust!

UPDATE: After cleaning the filters, I've decided it wasn't the filters that was causing the smell. It was two sacks of nonburnable jars and cans that I had in the pantry. I'm waiting for a good time to drive them down to the dump. I didn't want to put them on the back porch because animals get into them. I didn't think they would smell because the jars had lids and the cans were rinsed out. Or at least I thought they were rinsed out...

Please Tell Me Why...

I have a question to pose...why do students not care about their grades? I mean, that has to be the only reason they don't do their work after I spend days explaining how to, then give them a handout that explains how to (just in case they forgot or weren't listening), then give them a book that explains how to and THEY STILL WON'T/DON'T DO THE WORK!!!

Honestly...why? I just don't understand. My students are working on their research papers. Today their notes and works cited were due (150 points) at the beginning of the hour and 90% of the students didn't have them done. I gave them until the end of the hour (my plan all along), but after 7 days of computer time to research and work on notes, most were still completely unprepared. How hard is it to look at the text citation information given to you (via the database source; this is information like: author, title, publisher, etc.) and compare it to the instructions for putting it in MLA format. It is literally just plugging your information (which was provided for them; they didn't have to go find it themselves) into the provided format. This takes no English abilities. It's just following instructions. Regardless if a kid ever plans on having to research anything ever again, they do need to know how to follow instructions.

I HATE research paper time...more than the kids ever will. It is full of whining, complaining, me having to end up doing part of the papers myself, and, of course, the grading, grading, grading. Why these kids think I do it for fun is beyond me. As if!

So, if anyone out there has any suggestions as to why kids act this way or how I can combat it or fix it, let me know!

I'm A Reader Again!

I love to read. I always have. My earliest childhood memories always include me reading something. I would escape my own life and become someone else by just opening the pages of a book.

I still love to read, but somehow I have relegated reading to that 10 minutes right before I go to bed. Every once in awhile over the last few years, I would get a hold of a really compelling book and read for hours at a time. Most of the Harry Potter books were read strait through with only a short nap to sustain me through the hours of reading. However, that was not the usual, and 10 minutes a day was just not enough for me, and so I have been feeling the pull of reading.

There are still times when I want, need, or simply, love, escaping my own life and becoming someone else. Maybe this is why I tend toward Fantasy and Regency fiction. I love the regal lives of the British aristocracy and the glimpses of life among the elves and faeries. Both are totally opposite of my small town reality.

I have been reading much more lately, spending an average of 45 minutes a night reading. And I'm loving it! Today, when I got home, instead of turning on the TV and vegging out to relax from work, I turned on my Kindle and spent almost 2 hours finishing the book I was reading.

I've been taking advantage of all the free Kindle books on Amazon. I have to be careful, because many of them are the first in a series that are designed to suck you in so you purchase the rest of the books in the series. I love a good series, but I don't want to have to be buying that many books. Still, there are a lot of free Kindle books out there by new authors or authors who want you to be introduced to their genre or style of writing and are willing to give away a few books to do so. I am actually starting a series right now, but with the first book free and the other 2 under $4 each, it's still a pretty good deal if I decide to read all three books.

I have gotten skunked a time or two with the free books. There are a few that I never read past the first chapter or so, and one that I read all the way through waiting for it to get good (it never did), but I've discovered some great books as well.

So, if you're a reader who has lost your way, pick up a good book and start reading again! There are lots of sites to help recommend good books, or just take a chance. Sometimes, a book IS as good as its cover suggests!