Thursday, September 11, 2008

Just leave the light on for me

Wow.

So this is what this place looks like, huh?

By some miracle, I am still up.  For how long--well, that's another story.  Hopefully I can get through this without drooling on the keyboard.

Not much new going on in my house other than a lot of same-old-same-old routine:  get 'em up, move 'em out, and pick 'em up, do-your-homework; sprinkled in with trips to the grocery store, my work, and the gas station.  Lots of trips to the gas station. 

One night last week, I fell asleep in the living room, which is not all that surprising.

I woke up and sleepily toddled off to our room, making a pit stop in the bathroom.  

I had just stuck my thumbs into my waistband and was in the process of the mid-drop-trou sitdown when my spidey-sense started tingling.  

Something caught my eye on the ground, right under my foot...because it was moving.  Fast. 

I stood up, yanking my foot up in the process, expecting -yuck- a cockroach (it was that type of moving fast).

Oh.  Just a scorpion.  About six inches long.  Under my foot.

I gasped loudly, that "huugh!" intake of breath that makes you shiver.  I stepped back and bent over a bit to get a better look, goosebumps erupting, forced to evaluate and formulate a plan.

I wasn't fully awake, but you know, that fight-or-flight thing is pretty good at making one snap-to.

Running through the potential weapons I had in the bathroom at the time, I decided an eyelash curler probably wouldn't do the trick, so I opened our bedroom door to go in search of a shoe.

Preferably something along the lines of a size 20 Doc Marten, but alas, Mr W has small feet and all we own are pretty much sneakers.

The light from the bathroom, combined with my "huugh" woke Mr W.  "What?"  "There's a scorpion in here."  "Kill it."  "Duh.  I'm getting a shoe."

Quickly, I grabbed one of my heavier shoes, and I hurried back into the bathroom.  I closed the door and took a deep breath, aimed and gave it a big whack. (You cannot hesitate, it's gotta be a good one, or why bother--it will scurry away.)

It crumpled a little, and oh, is that tail still moving???  WHACK.

I decided beige goo = dead enough so I cleaned it up off the floor and gave it a burial at sea.

I did my business, shuddering at how close I came to stepping on it.   At this point, I was a little too adrenalized to sleep, and decided to watch a little tv to calm down.  (I really wanted to go room to room and make sure I had no more guests, but 5 am is kicking my ass, so I knew I better settle down and go to sleep or live to regret it.)

Turning off the light, I exited the bathroom, and expected to hear a "did you get it?" and maybe a pat, pat, "are you okay?" but instead I heard...snoring. 

My hero, I sighed as I walked down the hall.