I am going to be lazy and recycle an old post from an old blog…

(In my Twitter feed I saw a tweet about a large spider, and it reminded me about this night that I wrote about on my old blog…)

Last night I went to bed late. Midnight to be precise. I was sort of ok with this, because 5 hours is the least amount of sleep I can get and still function semi decently.

Emphasis on semi.

Should I get 4 hours and 55 minutes, then it becomes semi indecently. Really, my mind just sort of implodes at that point.
Anyway, confident in a full five hours I pulled the covers up and started to drift off.
Mid-drift I heard growling, and snarling and thumping.
It came closer…
and closer…

Till I had one large cat with a kitten in hot pursuit galloping all over my bed.
I yelled and they ran off.
The husband…he was breathing the deep breaths of a soundly sleeping man.
I pulled the covers up and started drifting and achieved full sleep.
Then “Mom!!”
I screamed in terror.
My daughter screamed and then laughed at me for screaming. She was hovering over my head and shaking me.
The husband…he kept breathing.
“What? Are you ok?”
“No…there is a HUGE spider in my room.”
“Ok, where?”
“In my room!”
“Yes, I know that, but where?”
“On the wall”
“Which wall”
“Come see”
I struggled out of bed and grabbed my glasses so I wouldn’t be trying to catch a blurry spider and since this was a 7 yr old, I figured her big spider would really be small and I would need glasses to see it.
We get to her room and I ask where it is and she points.
“That grey thing on the wall”
“WHAT THE…..???!!!”
(I was tired at this point and not sure what really came out of my mouth, but I think I kept it in my head and didn’t teach her any new words)
This was truly a spider that qualified as HUGE, like Jurassic era, caveman spider, horror movie stand in spider.
I ran for my trusty Dyson that I use to suck up any manner of creepy thing I find in my house.
I dragged the Dyson up the stairs. It is now 2am.
The daughter disappears into my bed and leaves me to fight off this horrid thing…alone.
I plug in the vacuum and pull out the wand that makes an awesome clicking sound when I am using it…reminds me of the Terminator and I always say “lock and load” when I am using it to suck up a creepy thing. (yep my life is THAT awesome and exciting that I need to do things like that)
Anyway, I aim the end of the wand at the spider…he moves.
The vacuum sucks it into the opening of the wand, and the damn thing got out, and crawled on the wall a bit. It just wiggled its giant spider legs and heaved itself out of the suction generated by the vacuum that never loses suction.
It started to dawn on me that my Dyson was no match for this creature, and I had to be hands on.

Thankfully, my restless sleeper of a daughter had knocked her pillow onto the floor, and the spider fell onto that. I picked up the pillow,oh SO carefully, and carried it to the bathroom and talked to the spider words of comfort and happy things, and lies.  Lies about letting it go, free to wander.
Because really, I took it to the bathroom, knocked it into the toilet and flushed.
Twice.
Spiders that big can probably hang on and climb back out of toilets, you know.
I head back to bed, and shove into the middle between happily deep breathing, deep sleeping husband and restless sleeper daughter.
I drift off…and then I hear. “Yip!” 30 seconds later “Yip!” and so on.
So I start yelling from my bed. “DAISY SHUT UP!”
Amazingly, no one wakes up.
At night it is like I am a ghost in my own house.
Now it is about 3am. I fall asleep.
4:30 am and the dog is barking incessantly, she needs to go out.
I get up and take her out.
Normally I wake up between 4:30 and 5, take her out, start the coffee and read or write.  This morning I stared at the coffee maker, thought about the non-sleep I had, and went to the couch and passed out till 7.