Sunday, September 14, 2008

Learning

1. A conversation that took place last week after I picked Sam up from school:

Me: How was school today Sam?
Sam: It was great!
Me: What is one thing you learned today?
Sam: We talked about earthquakes!
Me: That sounds cool! What did you learn?
Sam: I had gym today.
Me (to myself): Ok...he just switched the subject.
Me: What did you do in gym?
Sam: We have to stand in the closest corner.
Me: (going with the flow) Ummm...why do you have to stand in the corner?
Sam: In case there's an earthquake. That's where we're supposed to go. We practiced disaster drills.

My Michigan brain is accustomed to tornado drills. Not earthquake drills.

2. My mother-in-law noticed something I may never have. No cars around here have rust. No matter the age of them, I have literally not seen one car with any spot of rust. No snow means no salt means no rust.

3. Last night before going to bed, I did my customary check on the kids. I noticed Alina's pillow was damp either from her crying in her sleep or sweating, so I had her sit up so I could flip it over. And when I moved the pillow, a dark shadow moved. And it moved really fast across her bed. I used one of her stuffed animals to squish it and then removed it. I took it to show Ed (in a kleenex mind you) and it was the biggest spider I have seen inside a house. Scratch that. It's the biggest spider I have seen period. Bleh!! It took awhile to get to sleep last night as I couldn't stop thinking of all the spiders lurking out there (I even checked under the covers before getting into bed). So I go to get up this morning and low and behold right when I step out of bed, there's another spider. I squash that one, make my way down the hallway and there's another one! YUCK! I really dislike spiders. I hopped on the internet wondering if there are any poisonous spiders here in this beautiful state. Reading...reading...reading...all these wonderful facts about this disliked insect and that there is only one poisonous spider in WA, but it's rarely seen. The Western Black Widow. Whew! Rarely seen means hardly ever, so we should be good. Then I read that it's only found in one county. Which one would it be? The one we live in of course.
I'm feeling all crawly like now.

11 comments:

Hillary said...

1. Hehehe! I remember when I moved up north for a year and all of a sudden we were not practicing what to do in an earthquake, but what to do if there was a GRIZZLY BEAR on the playground!

2. You mean cars rust? ;) Oh, Jean. Wait till the first snow. Drivers go CRAZY.

3. Bigger than that one in the jar that the neighbour girl found? They DO get pretty big. And if Vancouver's anything like Seattle, there seem to be more of them this year than I've noticed in other years. Sorry!

4. Your blog is still on Michigan time! :) I checked the post time cause I was happy to catch your new post before bloglines picked it up, and I was like, "Heeeey, she's posting from the fuuuture!"

5. Um, longest comment ever. I'm going now! :)

Hillary said...

ps. Re: #4 - no change required, just an observation! :)

Jean said...

HA!! That's so true! Don't run or climb a tree!
I heard that if it snows here, the highway becomes like an abandoned parking lot. That people actually leave their cars on the highway and walk home!?!
SWEEEEEETTT!!!! Who knew I could post from the future...
have a fantastic sunday! :)

Jean said...

since you told me, it would bug me until I changed it, so I'm back from the future now.

Cheeky said...

Thankfully the "you swallow 6-8 spiders in your sleep" is a MYTH. When we lived in Colorado my neighbor got bit by a black widow spider that was in her bed and she lived. We also used to have brown hairy things living out there that were so big I swear they had feathers...brown recluse, I think. Ugh. I hate spiders too.

Jean said...

could you imagine?? yuck! you'd have a lot of wriggling and tickling and juggling inside. like the old woman! :)

Amy said...

Oh no. Then you'd have to swallow a goat to swallow the dog to swallow the cat to swallow the bird to swallow the spider!

anne said...

Ok,I am SO squirmy now!! EEWW!!

I've always thought earthquakes would be kind of cool to live through. Not like a horrid big one, but little ones. They say we have them here, but when you can't feel them they don't quite count.

Yay for no rust! I can't wait to hear stories of you guys tooling down the bare freeway in the "snow"! :)

anne said...

EEWW! I'm so squirmy now! NO thank you!

Yay for no rust...I can't wait to hear stories of you guys tooling down the bare highway in the "snow!" :)

D, L, M, C, J and R said...

That is funny that you mention the spider thing. I have found some crazy spiders and was researching what Iowa had. I HATE spiders above all other insects.

Jean said...

I always think of your spider in the window Anne. I think it's cousins or parents or something live here. Bleh!!! I killed another one this morning and Sunday I woke up from my nap (IN MY BED) and had two bites on my neck (and no...they weren't from Ed...he was on the couch) :) UGH! And thank you Hillary...I'm now going to be a part of the next arachnophobia movie (wasn't that your favorite movie Amy?) with the "there seem to be more of them this year" comment. Thank you.

I'm totally with you Lisa. Thank you Jesus for the internet! :)