We have a ‘look’ we give each other in our family when something is….scary. The look has been around forever, but is most remembered from that fateful day in the loft.

We had a big room above our garage in the Florida house. It was such a cool house……there were two staircases in the house. One of the staircases went from the living room to the hallway outside the master ‘suite’ and the other ‘hidden’ staircase went up from by the garage to the room we named the loft.

The loft was cool because it was huge. It wasn’t a bedroom, although we used it as that for a while. It wasn’t a family room, although we did house the tv and some couches up there for a while. It wasn’t an office, although my stamping stuff ended up there last. The loft was like a liquid…changing its purpose to whatever was needed at the time.  The walls were straight for about three feet and then angled sharply up to the peak of the roof. There was a small window at each end of the room that let in just a titch of light from between the myriad of leaves that hung from our ‘Columbus’ trees. (another story there)

It was a fun room and we spent a lot of time up there between it’s many morphs to different room titles.  At one point, I even used the entire room as a craft room and held classes in it. It was a bit tricky due to the slanty walls, but…it had character!

It was on one such crafty day that ‘the look’ became the warning it will remain til the end of days. I was sitting at a table doing something fantastic with paper, ink and scissors, when my daughter Mae came to talk with me. She stood next to me and said what she said and then I turned a bit and looked up at her. Behind her head, I could see the ceiling and the monstrosity sitting there, planning his evil attack. I gave Mae ‘the look’ and said “MOVE.” When we talk about this story, we are both certain she leaped Over the table in one graceful bound. I scooted out of my chair and into the fetal position four feet away. There was screaming and even a few tears as we cowered in terror beneath (but not directly) the enormous wolf spider on the ceiling.

The question wasn’t whether or not we would kill it, it was how we would do it. His evil position was too high to reach with the trusty combat boot, and if we threw anything at him….he could be dislodged and fall on us, OR, get lost. The only thing worse than seeing a spider is LOSING a spider. There were a few small girls over crafting with us that day and I remember one saying, “I’ll just throw my shoe at it!” First off, how dare a small girl be braver than me….and second…remember the ‘losing the spider?” Yeah, her plan was nixed pretty quick.

Every now and then I am reminded as to why I have boys. Aside from the obvious joy of increased volume in the home, they are most helpful when it comes to killing things….like spiders.  Our shrieks of terror finally roused the men from their dusty caves and Thorin came to our rescue. “I’ll shoot it with my BB gun” was his solution. I gave him a stern look and asked him if he was sure he could hit it. It was a stupid question, apparently, because he snorted as he went and got his gun.

We all stepped back and watched in morbid delight/terror as Thorin took aim and pointed his gun towards the spider who sat mocking him on the ceiling.

All that was left after the shots wwere two tiny holes in the ceiling of the loft and a curled up brown arachnid. The corpse went with Thorin to the toilet where it enjoyed a water burial. The holes remained until the day we moved. We often looked up at those holes and remembered our hero and the evil monster he bested. I’m sure those holes stood as a warning to the rest of the creepy crawlies to keep their distance or they too would suffer such a fate.

This story comes to mind because I found a large brown evil wolf spider in my bathroom last night. You’d think I would be a big, tough, brave single mom. But dang it, that little (huge!) creep scared the scream out of me! Once again….I called Thorin in to save me.  Let it be known that Thorin likes spiders about as much as I do, but he is able to get over his fear and ‘be the man.’ Something I will be forever grateful for. He didn’t use his gun this time, but rather a bath brush and a flip flop. Regardless, the spider was reduced to a juicy tangle of legs….(I’m getting creeped out just writing this….shudder!) and flushed down the toilet.

As I sat talking to my daughter later on my bed, she gave me what I thought was “the look” that implied something was either crawling on my head or sneaking up behind me. I was about to leap to the floor and run down the street screaming when she quickly explained what she was saying. I had totally misread the ‘look.’  I guess that can happen when one has just had the crap scared out of them by an evil night crawler jumping out of her jammies as she picks them up off the floor. The lesson here is to keep my laundry done….or at least in the hamper. Cause I said so.

photo credit:http://www.brokenwisdom.com/you%E2%80%99re-doing-it-wrong-dating-advice-warning-signs/