The Wild

My parents live in the middle of nowhere. The local library is called, not after the town, not after a famous person from the area but instead, Wilderness Library. That should give you some idea of how far out in the boonies we are. They have a house and a lawn, but it is not the lawn that you might typically think of. Their lawn, and the lawn of everyone else out here, is just forest that has some grass growing on it. It really feels like we are living in the woods.

After my first few weeks here I realized that not only are we living sort of in the wild (uh, except with indoor plumbing and a widescreen tv of course), but the wild sees us as temporary, not permanent. Outside things keep trying to preemptively dominate my space. And by wild things, I mean bugs and spiders.

Look, I have lived in many a basement apartment. I am no stranger to bugs. I am cool with spiders. But seriously, there is a limit to the access they can have to my stuff. A first it was kind of funny. I left my stroller out overnight, the next morning the bonus was all the cookie crumbs were gone. The not-so-bonus was that there were a bunch of squash bugs or something I had to scoop out. Not a big deal. But there were three spider webs in the stroller. Spiders? You are setting up house after just one night? I have not abandoned this stroller. It has not been 12 hours. The presumption. Kind of funny, but not a problem.

Then I start noticing that even if I have been to the park the day before, there are spider webs on the entries to the slides, and on the bridges. I start thinking. Whoa. These spiders are crazy. The stroller? And now the playgrounds? What are they trying to catch anyway?

The final straw was when I was at the playground helping Soapy up a ladder or something and Jojo starts to stir. I go to get her and find a spider web of course. It was connected from the sippy cup in the cup holder, to her head. TO HER HEAD!

Uh, Jojo is waking up right now so. That's all for tonight. In conclusion it is now winter and this isn't an issue anymore.