Little Miss Muffet...

Riley is known for telling some tall tales and whenever something gets broken or isn't right, he always says "Tate did it, I guess?"  So when he comes downstairs SCREAMING in a panic, during naptime saying "There's a monster spider with white dots on his back and tried to grab at me!"  I do not believe him. Not for a second.   I scolded him for making up a lie to get out of bed and sent him back to my bedroom (which is where he sleeps during nap)

Now, this isn't the first time Riley has FREAKED OUT over a spider.  He has frequently gone bananas in the van over a spider on the window or climbing on the seat next to him and he acts like the scene from tommy boy…

He screams like he has a flesh eating disease and acts like a cat in water, all at the same time.  It is comical and irritating.  Ryan and I lecture him that spiders will NOT hurt you and they eat the bugs that will bite us, so it's good they are around. And on days when our patience is thin we simply say "calm down you wheeny, smack it with your shoe!"

So today, after his freak out at nap time over the "spotted back monster spider" he eventually calmed down and went to sleep.  I worked out and quietly snuck into our bathroom (riley still sleeping in our room) to take a shower.  I just put shampoo in my hair and I noticed something moving on top of the shower door frame.  I got on my tip toes and saw that it was indeed the SPOTTED BACK MONSTER SPIDER!!!!!!  I gasped and held back a scream of terror, knowing that would not only alarm the whole neighborhood but also wake my 3 sleeping children.   I did the next best thing and threw my loofa at it and jumped up on the shower seat, only to get a better view of the MONSTER SPIDER.  I grabbed a shampoo bottle, determined to squash it and that evil spider puffed up and raised it's front legs at me.  That's all I needed to get the HEDOULBEHOCKEYSTICKS outta there!  Shower running, me cover in suds, I search below the sink for something with long range spray power…my first find, Axe body spray…I  jumped up on the toilet and sprayed the heck out of that thing and again it raised it's legs at me (who does this spider think he is?)  Well, the axe didn't work and now the bathroom smells like a middle school dance and I am suffocating.  I searched the sink cabinet again and found a bottle of peroxide, with a convenient squirt top!  I again jumped on top of the toilet and shot the peroxide across the bathroom and point blank knock that spider off the top of the shower door…..I see through the glass door, him hanging by his web, squirming and burning from the peroxide. I think to myself, I've done it.  But wait, he climbed up his webbing and hid between the doors, "oh no he didn't!"  It's time for the big guns…Listerine!  This stuff makes my mouth feel like its on fire, it's got to kill a spider.  I drowned him with the mouthwash until he crumbled to the shower floor and I grabbed for the shower head and finished the job.  I waited a second, just in case he somehow climbs back up the drain………Whew!  It's done.

As I looked around the bathroom seeing the bottles of axe, peroxide, hair spray and mouth wash, my loofa in the sink, and the mirror with a smear mark from where it hit, and me, my hair almost crusted from dried shampoo, I asked myself…am I a hypocrite for lecturing and giving Riley a hard time about his reaction to spiders, when I just acted like a mad woman, treating household products like weapons of mass destruction for the annihilation of one measly spider?  I feel kind of bad I didn't believe him about the MONSTER SPIDER, who was indeed real.

I thought.

and concluded.

If I do anything in this life for my children, it is to teach them to respect their elders…to vote republican and to never, ever be so scared of spiders you stand on a toilet butt ass naked spraying axe and tossing mouth wash across the room as a means to kill it. That is the best gift a parent can give.