Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Frozen in Time.

My husband and I had just gotten back late at night from our Friday-night date.

We walked downstairs to our bedroom. I threw my purse on the floor and we flopped on our bed to lie down for just a few minutes before getting ready for bed.

Then, looking above me, I saw two itsy-bisty white spiders hanging from the blades of the ceiling fan above us. And when I say itsy-bitsy, I mean that literally. They were really small - like babies. In fact, they were babies.

I jumped up to squash the two little invaders only to find that as soon as I squashed them two more were hanging down from the fan. Once those were squashed, two more were hanging down. "What IS this????" I shrieked.

"Heidi, look..." my husband said and pointed to a dirty looking streak on our white ceiling. What looked to me at first just to be a streak of i-don't-know-what ended up being at least two hundred baby spiders all crawling in a thick line waiting to take their first little journey-of-life off the edge of the ceiling fan and into my bed!

Disgusting.




You all remember the old version of Charlotte's Web where at the end Charlotte dies and then all of her babies are born and then they all fly away off of the barn post and into the wind, right?
Well, that's exactly what these babies were trying to do....except they wanted to fly into my bed!

So-incredibly-disgusting.

And, can I just say, I am SO glad we got home exactly when we did, and laid on our beds exactly when we did, so that we actually saw this happening from the beginning?? Can you imagine having two hundred baby spiders jump on you all night in your sleep only to wake up to a nightmare????

Adam started spraying the ceiling with Raid and then they all just started to lower themselves to the floor with their webs and he started spraying the air to kill as many as he could.

We slept on the couch that night.

The following night, I bought Raid bug bombs and before we went out on our Saturday-night date (I know, two dates in a row! I was so excited!) we set the bombs off in each of the bedrooms downstairs as well as our upstairs living area in order to kill every living bug, spider, or other pesky nuisance still living in our house.

What I came home to four hours later interested me.

On our bottom stair-step there was a [sorta] big spider laying dead. It had come out when we were gone and had been frozen in its tracks.

"Interesting to see what happens when I'm gone," I thought.

Then I sat on the couch and saw another spider - only this one was hanging from the ceiling by it's single-threaded web about a foot above the coffee table. This spider had also come out when we were gone and had literally been killed in action. It's position was frozen in time for us to see.

The good news was that I could rest assured that all the creatures in my house were dead - I had obvious proof.
But observing these two spiders that were killed in their track and showed me what they were doing when I was gone got me to thinking:

What if people could see me when I think no one is watching?

What if my secret actions were frozen in time and put on display for all to see?

Would people be surprised? Would I be ashamed?

So since this weekend, those are some things I've been pondering. How would I act if the curtain was pulled back and people saw my secret actions? How would my speech be different if I knew others could hear me? Would my attitude change?

Now, I know we all are human and need to relax once in a while, but just think for a moment. What is the REAL YOU that comes out when you think no one is watching? Because we all know that in reality, someone IS watching. And HE is the one we actually should care the most about.

So, I'm just thinking. Pondering. Hopefully improving some behaviors.

And I'm also reflecting on how grateful I am for Raid bug bombs.



PS...This isn't the only lesson that I have learned from spiders. Read about my other lesson here.






3 comments:

  1. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!! I can't IMAGINE coming home to that! much less sleeping w/ the spiders! ugh! Well I'm glad you caught them! And I will definitely say that the GROSS experience caused for a very well written story/blog!

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  2. I would have had to clean my whole house immediately before going to be anywhere. Gross!!!!!

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  3. I love that we both learn so much about life and ourselves through BUGS!! hehe :) What a great picture as well! Happy Thanksgiving girly!

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