Spider-Killing and Kicking Butt at Baby Showers

The hour of David Letterman has nearly arrived and I am still sitting at my computer, peering at the screen with contact lenses still in place. I am creating documents and maps and beautiful works of art to aid me in my presentation tomorrow. I am training volunteers to work during our week of Vacation Bible School. I need to hand them gorgeous hand-outs, complete with cute little clip-art lions and elephants and zebras, oh my.

Even though my throat hurts (only when I swallow . . . must . . . not. . . swallow . . . gulp . . .).

Only two more days of school. Who are we kidding, though? We've sputtered to a dead stop. The public school plans parties on the last days . . . and now I know why. The kids have pretty much done all they can do.

I keep forgetting to tell you about the baby shower game. I am a ruthless competitor when it comes to baby showers. You know how you have to do a handful of silly games before the mom-to-be opens her stacks of gifts ("awwwww, how cute!")? Well, I can't help myself. Suddenly, I turn into fourth-grade Mel and I must finish the test game first. This time, it was a word scramble and instead of zooming through it with embarrassing quickness, I struggled a bit. This scramble was a challenge! Everyone was finally "cheating" out loud and yet, they still didn't have all the answers. I puzzled and grimaced and rewrote the letters in the margin and finally shouted, "I'M DONE!"

I won a $10 gift certificate to Cold Stone Creamery.

Usually, I sweep the games completely, but this time the other games were random and unwinnable by simple will-power and brain-power.

As for spider-killing (and, yes, I know--spiders are good, spiders are our friends). Tonight, my mother called and asked if I could come over. I was going out anyway to buy posterboard, so I stopped by her house first. She launched into a tale of a spider, a spider so gigantic, so enormous that she could not walk through her kitchen to her bathroom for fear this arachnid would . . . well, I'm not sure what the spider would do to her since she is ten thousand times the size of a spider, but she is terrified of spiders, especially bigger than average spiders. (None of our local spiders are venomous, either.)

I am not fond of spiders myself. I don't like how they look at me. But I rarely kill them. I'm too scared to kill them. (I know, irrational. What a girl! What's wrong with me?!) I ignore them if they are not bothering me or have someone else kill them if they are lurking in the bathroom sink or something, standing between me and my toothbrush.

But my mother is beyond mere fear. She cannot sleep in an apartment if she's seen a spider crawling around. So she called me.

As we chatted a while later, sitting on her bed, clipping her new kitten's claws, the spider lurched toward us. She began to babble and scream incoherently, leaving me to be the brave rescuer. I had to spring into action. I grabbed a crockpot box sitting on her bedroom floor (why? because she's a packrat) and slammed it down onto the spider.

Then we both clutched our hands to our chests and felt our hearts pounding.

Eventually, I gathered enough courage to lift the box, poke at the smooshed spider with a fly swatter and flush it down the toilet.

I hate it when I'm forced into being the Brave One. Aren't mothers supposed to do this? I mean, shouldn't my mother be the one protecting me? When did this shift happen?