One of my worst nightmares....

Sometimes I sleep in later than my kids....
Don't be jealous, it's a luxury I have homeschooling.
But if that happens, I'm not far behind them, and they dive right into their chores while I jump in the shower.

Well, such was the case this morning. When I awoke to blood-curling SCREAMS!
I truly know the definition of that word now!!

Natalia was screaming, a new scream, one I had never heard before, and she has an arsenal. Her 'give me back my toy' scream, her 'you just left me alone in this room' scream, her 'you hurt my feelings' scream, etc......
So normally I wouldn't jump and run just because she screamed, but this was different.

Her scream was punctuated by Ian yelling MOM!
That would have been bad enough. Waking to screams. Really, stop there and my heart is beating fast.
But as I arrived in the kitchen .5 seconds later, I realized my situation was worse. Now you may be thinking, there must be blood, who got hurt? No, I would probably handle that better.
This was a SPIDER!!
I'd hold a snake, a rat, gut a fish, many other things before I'd elect to touch a spider. And it was big, black, and ON MY 3 year-old!
She had old-fashioned pink pjs on....buttoned down the front, like a man's night shirt, with matching pants. The spider was on her pj shirt, and started racing around her body as she screamed!
Herein lies my issues with spiders....I know they are supposed to be MORE afraid of us, because we're bigger, but they outnumber me in the leg department. This makes them likely to run faster than I move when I'm frozen in fear. I further loathe the ones that have mastered the long jump! But this one, whose size rivaled a half-dollar coin.....didn't seem to want to jump off of her!

As my boys stood staring in amazement, and our doofish Weiner dog kept jumping on her to see what was wrong......I analyzed the situation. Where WAS the nearest shoe??
I found the SMALLEST flip flop...and tried smacking it OFF of her tummy, to which it proceeded to run down her leg.....and UP under her shirt! Aaaaaaah!!!

It took me two more swipes to get it onto the floor, and smashed onto the back of that purple shoe. Sweet girl, she is our dog lover, and I guess she had been hugging Dash, our Weiner Dog. So we think he brought the spider in from outside!
Ick!

My oldest's analysis of the situation is that it was a female, because it's tummy was HUGE.....
Male, female, I don't care, I just want to put it's body outside as a warning......

"Beyond this threshold.....all eight legged creatures WILL be squished!"

I so want to go back to bed and start this day over again. My skin won't stop crawling!
Alas, we will jump back into school after this break......the boys have a book about Tarantulas they want to study!
*sigh*