If I have to have a scorpion in my toilet, I should at least get a blog post out of it
I don’t have much to say about this:
Oh, wait. No, I do. Until I saw the picture to refresh my memory, I had forgotten that my charism is freaking out about scorpions.
[Before I get started, let me apologize to any new readers who may have mistakenly thought this was a classy blog and were not prepared to see a close-up picture of a toilet and a scorpion when they checked for new posts at Conversion Diary today.]
So anyway, I was walking by the hallway bathroom yesterday morning and noticed some object in the bottom of the toilet. In this house it could have been any number of things, none of them good, so I was relatively prepared that my findings were not going to improve my day. I was not, however, prepared for it to be a scorpion.
My first thought was to reflect that Yaya, for whom potty training is a second religion, so effectively whipped everyone into shape around here that even our scorpions use the potty now.
The joking ended abruptly, though, when I realized: it got in there by itself. My husband was out with the kids, and it hadn’t been in there when they left. The most likely route would be that it crawled under the space between the bottom toilet seat and the bowl, i.e. WHERE NO ONE COULD SEE IT. Which means…well, lest I cause Feedburner’s servers to melt down from mass use of the “unsubscribe” button, let me just leave it at this: I was prepared that our family might have to deal with stings on our feet from scorpions hiding in shoes, or on our torsos, backs, arms, legs or faces from scorpions in the bed at night. But there was one thing I had not considered. And the possibility of it is now seared into my brain forever.
That night we went to dinner with my dad and grandfather, and I knew that this wasn’t going to be an impromptu support group. I’ve mentioned before my Texan relatives and I just cannot seem to get on the same page about scorpions. As I said in this post, when I would shriek about the very real possibility of being stung in bed while sleeping, my relatives would think that the problem was simply that I couldn’t figure out what to do in case of a nocturnal scorpion attack (“you just brush them off”) or that I was concerned only about the toxicity level of the sting (“it’s not like they’re rattlesnakes…though I did see one the other day…”) But they did try.
When I recounted the story to my dad, he nodded like I was telling him that I went to the store to get some milk. Then he remembered that I had that hang-up abut scorpions, and dutifully put a very kind and sympathetic look on his face. You could just see his mind in overdrive to think through all the angles to try to figure out what bothered me about this. You could tell he wanted to comfort me with some fatherly advice. So finally he offered: “They’re no worse than tarantula bites.”
I just kind of stared at him, wondering if there’s an official repository of Most Epic Encouragement Fails to which I could submit that statement.
He tried again: “Remember that time I woke up to that scorpion stinging me on the knee? “
“Yeah…” I said, eagerly waiting to hear the part about how it didn’t hurt or the sting ended up giving him superpowers or something.
“I didn’t die,” he said. Sensing that that might not have caused my quirky phobia to instantly dissipate once and for all, he tried another angle: “Plus, it’s not like that time Uncle Benton had one fall off the ceiling and sting him on the face while he was sleeping,” he added, pointing to the bedroom about five yards away from where I was sitting, where my uncle had been staying when he was stung. “His eye sure did swell up!”
And to think, if I had been in my dad’s situation of waking to a scorpion attacking my knee, I might have thought my glass was half empty! It was nice to have that little helping of Chicken Soup for the Texan Soul to inspire me for the rest of the evening, especially as I was falling asleep.
I mentioned it on Twitter, of course. This is one of those times that people who follow me on Twitter get a payoff for all the inane and boring tweets they put up with. It’ll be weeks of “I’m tired,” and “I stayed up too late,” and “Why do I stay up so late?”, and then, boom! “SCORPION IN MY TOILET!!!!!!”
Luckily the Twitterati had my back, and I got some advice for how to handle this all with prayer and grace. The guys at Creative Minority Report were able to offer me encouragement from a Catholic perspective:
And Scoutsigns weighed in with some practical suggestions:
Scoutsigns pointed out in another tweet that it was probably still alive — scorpions have been known to live for more than a day under water. OF COURSE IT WAS STILL ALIVE. I have no idea why I thought a mere few hours submerged under water would mean it was dead. Since I keep having to learn this lesson over and over again, I guess I need to make a flowchart to put on the living room wall to review in case of a scorpion sighting:
Anyway, I hope you’re all enjoying your Memorial Day. If you’re not, you can always remember that at least you didn’t just find a scorpion in your toilet.
A day in the life of a Scorpionator
Some people have asked if there was any one last straw that led to my sudden internet fast a couple of weeks ago. Others have asked for details about the nature of my hysterical tweets from the afternoon of Friday, October 2nd. In this post I shall address both inquiries.
The afternoon of Friday the 2nd started out perfectly lovely. I’d put my youngest two children down for naps and had set up my three-year-old daughter and five-year-old son for a little quiet time. All day I’d been drifting over to my computer, checking email here, reading blogs there, and I couldn’t wait to finish up all the things I’d started in my sporadic computer time throughout the day. Just as I was settling down into the couch and opening up my laptop, I heard the worst four words that could be uttered in this house:
“Look, mommy, a scorpion!”
My three-year-old daughter was pointing to a scorpion. That was about six inches away from her leg.
I tossed my computer onto the couch and jumped up to confirm that it wasn’t some new scorpion gag toy that some soon-to-be-ex friend had planted in the living room. Nay, it was real. And big — one of the largest scorpions we’ve seen in the house to date. I didn’t want the kids to panic, so I said, “Run! Run to the couch NOW NOW NOW before it stings you! Hurry! It’s going to get you! Run! AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!”
The commotion prompted the scorpion to saunter over to the middle of the living room floor. And this is where the story would end for most people. Most people’s internal dialogue would go something like:
“I will grab the nearest heavy object and drop it on the menacing arachnid.” Boom. “I’m glad that’s over with.”
But we’re talking about me, and nothing can be that simple, especially where scorpions are involved. My internal dialogue went something like:
“I will grab the nearest heavy object and drop it on the menacing arachnid. But WHAT IF IT DOESN’T WORK?! My ‘killing scorpions on carpet by dropping heavy things on them’ success rate is 0%! And what book should I use anyway? Is my husband’s Corporate Finance textbook big enough, or is this an Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary job? I know, I could ask the internet! If I want to seek advice from people on Twitter, how could I summarize this in 140 characters seeing as how I’m going to need AT LEAST 100 characters just for exclamation points?”
Meanwhile, as I was standing around analyzing my situation from every possible angle and thinking of how I could turn it into a clever tweet, the scorpion moseyed on over to a location under our long walnut buffet. This was bad. This was very bad. The buffet stands less than a foot above the carpet, making it impossible to get a book on top of the scorpion as long as it was under there. And then, just to make sure the suck-o-meter was dialed up to a 10, the scorpion crawled onto the side of a large book under the buffet.
The situation had gone from bad to worse. There was no way I could get it.
I seriously considered just staring at it for three hours until my husband got home from work, but the scorpion was headed toward the dreaded toy pit. To fully understand the ominousness of this trajectory, you first have to understand that my husband and I are both the only people of our generation to have children on both sides of our family. The result is that our children are blessed with many, many toys. Many. Like, I sometimes have dreams about frantically writing thank-you notes only to have dumptrucks overflowing with new packages addressed to my children come and pour their entire contents down upon me as I write. The result is that it looks like a Toys R Us exploded in the southwest corner of our living room; we’ve given up on fancy organizational techniques like throwing toys in boxes when the kids aren’t playing with them, and just kind of rake everything over to one part of the living room at the end of the day.
And I knew that if the scorpion made it into the toy pit, it would be all over.
“All over” as in I would never in a thousand years be able to find it, and if I did it would undoubtedly involve being stung. “All over” as in despite all my “ha ha I’m moving” jokes I would NEVER SET FOOT IN THIS HOUSE AGAIN if that scorpion got lost in the toy pile. I had to get it.
“I have GOT to get this thing before it goes into the toys and I lose it and then it stings one of us when we least expect it!” I thought it a blind panic. To calm myself down, I decided to call my husband for reassurance. It would be nice to hear the voice of someone who could just laugh at the whole thing and point out how silly I was being. When I described the situation to him, he responded:
“You have GOT to get that thing before it goes into the toys and you lose it and then it STINGS ONE OF US WHEN WE LEAST EXPECT IT!!!!!” Or something like that. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as frantic as I perceived him to be through the lens of my scorpion-induced mania, but suffice it to say that his answer was not to chuckle and tell me that it would be fine.
My husband did have a good practical suggestion though: Since it wasn’t in a good smashing position, I should use bug spray. I went and grabbed the last can of Raid from the laundry room, aimed it at the scorpion, went to push the plunger…and hesitated. Not pushing the plunger right when I had the nerve was a fatal mistake. I’d psyched myself out. The problem was that I had major hesitations about using wasp spray for scorpions. I mean, seriously, THESE THINGS DON’T DIE. If the fancy exterminator chemicals only get them to pretend to be dead, why on earth should I believe that some namby-pamby grocery store wasp spray would do anything at all? Shoot, for all I knew maybe that’s what they like to drink for breakfast! This train of thought ended up with me imagining spraying the Raid only to find out that it actually gives them more speed and strength, the angry arachnid now running right at me as I trip and fall and find myself unable to move as it stings me over and over again while I scream and the children come to my aid only to be stung themselves and…yeah. Suffice it to say I psyched myself out.
After some all-caps Twitter updates, Google searches to find out if wasps and scorpions are in the same genus, countless prayers requesting the support of the unknown patron saints of both scorpion killing and neurotic wimps, and rearranging the living room furniture to make the ottoman and some couch pillows into a scorpion-proof bunker behind which I could hide, I got ready to spray. For real this time. My finger was on the trigger again, but then I thought: What if this doesn’t have the range it says it does?
In what I would later come to think of as famous last words, I said to myself, “Ah, yes, I should really test it first!” So I went outside, picked out a threatening blade of grass and showed it who was boss with my Raid spraying skills. Then another one. OK, good, this stuff definitely had some range. I went inside, moved my bunker back a couple feet to give me even more room in case this spray only made the scorpion mad, and got ready again. Then I decided to test it inside the house. You know, in case it, uhh, spayed differently in indoor air. After squirting it at a blank spot on the wall, I was ready. Well, just one more time. OK, now I was ready.
But wait! Maybe what I needed was some music to help me get up my nerve. I put my iPod on shuffle and got back down behind my bunker just as some Matisyahu song was finishing up. In a you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up moment, the next song that came on was the ultimate “one chance to prove yourself and win a great struggle in a David-and-Goliath sort of way” theme song, Eye Of the Tiger. As those first DUNH…DUHN-DUHN-DUHN guitar riffs started (OK, that’s hard to write, but y’all know what I’m talking about, right?) I focused my eyes on the scorpion 12 feet away, aimed the can, and sprayed.
And to my abject horror, I heard only a weak phhhhhhhhhh sound as a light cloud of chemcials came from the can.
I’d used up all the spray in my many tests. The can was basically empty.
In the split second it took for a couple of minuscule droplets to float over from the can to the scorpion’s hideout under the buffet, the thought flashed through my mind, “This isn’t going to be good.” And it wasn’t. One of the drops was a direct hit. The scorpion was unamused. And when scorpions get unamused, they get fast.
In a flash it got down from the book and took off, its stinger ready to take someone out. I instinctively started running the opposite direction, in the back of my mind thinking that I would eventually stop, perhaps somewhere around the U.S.-Canadian border. But when I glanced over my shoulder I saw to my horror that it was not running in my direction, but towards the toy pit. And it was only about a foot away.
“Get it, mommy!” my son shouted as the distance between the scorpion and a toy tractor closed quickly.
The awareness that I would literally never sleep in this house again if I lost that scorpion flashed through my mind, and — with Eye of the Tiger still blasting — I turned around, slammed open the childproof gate and ran back into the living room, knocking over a stack of laundry and kicking over a pile of children’s books that were in my way, stepping on a baby doll and reaching out to within a few inches of the scorpion to douse it with the last few dribbles of Raid.
In one of the more anticlimactic moments I’ve experienced lately, it just died. Instantly. The spray worked just fine.
I’d just thrown a book over it to stall any sneaky coming-back-from-the-dead moments until my husband got home, when I heard my two youngest children waking up from their naps. I went to get them, and when I came back downstairs it smelled like…well, like some idiot had sprayed Raid all over living room, so I announced that we were all playing outside until daddy got home.
A while later my husband walked in to behold the dismantled couch, the ottoman bunker, the scattered laundry and toys, the chemical residue dripping from the wall. To say that it looked like thieves had ransacked the place would be to imply way too much of a feel of order or purpose to the mess; to say it looked like thieves intended to ransack it but decided to stay and get drunk and just thrash around for a while would be getting closer to reality.
When my husband asked me how my day was, I said with a sigh, “It’s been tough — I haven’t had any time to relax and do stuff on my computer today!”
He looked back at the house, looked at me, and observed: “Today one of the kids came close to being stung by the biggest scorpion we’ve seen around here in a while, you stared at it in agony for the better part of an hour, hosed down the house with Raid, finally killed the scorpion, somehow tore the living room apart in the process…and your take is that it was a bad afternoon because you didn’t get enough computer time?”
And that’s when I decided it was time for a break.
RELATED
- Brother Scorpion, Sister Mosquito
- 20 things I learned in a week without my computer
- Greetings from the House ‘O Scorpions
Thanks to Emily for suggesting the word “Scorpionator.”
Best of Yaya
By popular demand, I’ve put together a “Best of Quick Takes about Yaya” post collecting all the times I’ve referenced my mother-in-law in 7 Quick Takes.
December 5, 2008
Matlock has become a verb in our family, specifically when used in the phrase “getting Matlocked.”
When Yaya is in town, one of the activities that we can all agree on as fun and not offensive is to watch reruns of the 1980′s show Matlock, which we record on our DVR specifically for this purpose. What has happened more than once, however, is that we end up getting sucked into one of the mysteries only to find out that we accidentally recorded a two-hour made-for-TV movie or that the episode we’re watching is continued in a Part II. But by the time we realize it we cannot rest until we see how it ends, so we end up staying up ridiculously late to see the story through to the finish. This is called “getting Matlocked.”
December 19, 2008
Yaya is visiting for a week. This picture pretty much summarizes the trip:
(Yes, that’s a cup in a potty chair.)
March 13, 2009
To my great distress, we saw a scorpion a few weeks ago (“a few weeks ago” as in “IN FREAKING FEBRUARY DON’T THESE THINGS EVER HIBERNATE!!!!!”). It is somehow not surprising that Yaya was involved (longtime readers may remember this classic Yaya + scorpion story). I heard her urgently calling the kids to come out on the back porch and ran out myself to see what all the commotion was about.
When we all got outside she was forlorn, explaining that she’d found a scorpion under the kids’ toy box and tried to catch it for them to play with but, alas, it was gone now. Having long since given up on trying to have the age-old “Are scorpions appropriate playthings for young toddlers?” debate with her, I feigned disappointed and turned to go back inside.
Just as I was about to close the door, on a hunch I asked, “Where did the scorpion go?”
“Oh, it ran in the house,” she said casually.
Scorpion season has begun.
March 27, 2009
If you were to look up “setting yourself up for failure” in an English phrase dictionary, this is what you would see:
Yaya brought this life-sized Easter bunny when she came to stay this week. It’s evidently something she’s had for a while that she wants to keep nice, so she’s adamant that the kids not touch it. It is sitting in the middle of our living room. Our older kids are ages 4, 2 and 1. This awesomely huge bunny has his own little outfit, an Easter basket, floppy ears and moveable arms and legs. And they’re not supposed to touch it.
About every ten minutes my husband and I have to run off to another part of the house to secretly laugh hysterically when Yaya reacts with shock that one of the kids is yet again playing with the rabbit. Many a joke along the lines of “Maybe we could put a mountain of candy in the middle of the floor and tell them not to look at it!” has been made.
April 3, 2009
He’s gone.
Yaya took him back to her house, the rabbit riding shotgun all the way down to Houston.
I have to admit, I miss the Sisyphean drama that unfolded hourly when he was here (described a bit in #2 here). Yaya would get the rabbit fixed up just right, then one of my little girls would bounce up and put a bonnet on him or take his little basket away. Yaya would react with shock — utter, complete shock — that the toddlers weren’t following her stern admonishment to not touch the brightly-colored, life-sized toy rabbit in the middle of the living room. She’d get him all fixed up again…and then my four-year-old son would come racing up and see how many times he could rapid-fire karate chop the rabbit before Yaya yanked him away. She’d get the rabbit all fixed up again and then…well, you get the idea.
After a glass of wine on Friday night I was inspired to do an interpretive performance of the events week, and went outside to yell at moths to tell them to STAY AWAY FROM THAT LIGHT. (Yaya was only mildly amused.)
June 26, 2009
Speaking of my tendency to write about stinging insects, here’s a Yaya story from this weekend: Shortly after we arrived, I was on her back porch with the kids and looked up to see a thriving wasps’ nest right above my head. Under normal circumstances I would tell you that it’s important to control your phobias so as not to impart your own irrational fears to your kids. However, when I looked up to see 100 (OK, maybe eight) wasps buzzing around their nest about a foot away from my head, my reaction was something along the lines of “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! NOW! NOW! BEFORE THE WASPS ATTACK US! THEY’RE GOING TO STING US!!! AAAAH!!! IT’S SO TERRIBLE!!!!!”
I had just dragged all the kids to safety out in the yard when Yaya walked outside, holding some scissors she’d gone inside to get. I shrieked a warning at her just as she walked under the nest. She looked up, shrugged, and knocked the wasps’ nest down with the handle of the scissors. The nest fell right next to her feet, angry wasps darting all around her, and she took a moment to wipe off the scissors with her shirt before strolling off.
And you guys thought I was kidding when I said that she’s nonchalant about being stung by scorpions in bed!
Repayment for a friend
Let me begin this post by saying that I would like for you to do me a favor: Go to the fashion and modesty blog Betty Beguiles right now, subscribe to the feed, leave 10 comments saying what a fantastic site it is, make it your home page, email everyone you know and tell them to stop what they are doing and read the entire archives, and solemnly vow to read it every day for rest of your life.
Never has there been a better blog. Betty (a.k.a. Hallie Lord) pens odes to cute dresses as if from the mouths of the angels themselves; her sagacious date night tips contain such potent wisdom that the Gosselins would still be together if they’d only seen them; she shares insights into modesty that will knock you off of your chair and leave you motionless on the floor, stunned by the profundity of what you just read. If Shakespeare could read her blog he would weep bitter tears at his impotency in the face of such prose!
Now that I have said that, let me tell you about my day:
On what may seem like an unrelated topic but I assure you has an ominous connection to what I said above, yesterday I read this post by Megan at Sorta Crunchy about how her toddler pooped on the floor at the library. “Hah!” I chuckled. “What a terrible story. I’m sure glad I’m not in her shoes today!”
I was about to move on what I saw a comment from Sarah at This Heavenly Life in which she wrote:
I tried not to laugh, for fear of bringing down the wrath of the poop-fates upon myself. Oh dear.
Immediately I realized what I had done. It’s like in that movie The Ring where after you see the video you know it’s only a matter of time until freakishly terrible things start happening to you. I had laughed at another mother’s poop-related misfortune. My time was nigh.
For a while, things seemed to be fine. With our Kidsave child arriving tomorrow I was completely focused on getting everything ready for her visit; even though my husband and I had hired a professional housecleaner to help us with the basics there was still plenty of decluttering, deep cleaning and organizing to do, and I wasn’t sure how I could get it all done.
My friend Betty Beguiles told me that her husband had the day off and offered to have him watch their four young children so that she could come over by herself and help me get ready. I started to give my usual knee-jerk “No, I couldn’t possibly…” reaction, but I remembered that I’m trying to work on accepting the help that God sends me so I said a reluctant yes. “Besides,” I thought presciently, “Letting someone else help me organize my messy house will be a good lesson in humility.”
Little. Did. I. Know.
I had been cleaning my office while Betty was on her hands and knees getting some spots out of the upstairs carpet when I thought I heard some noise from the room where my two middle girls were supposed to be napping. I crept upstairs and listened at the door; all was quiet. I was about to head back downstairs when I caught a whiff of something foul. Following the parenting axiom that “If you think you might have smelled poop, YOU DID,” I decided to push the door open to take a quick glance inside the room.
I was not prepared for what I saw.
Imagine, if you will, that someone hooked up a fire hose to a septic tank and sprayed it around a room on full throttle for a moment. That gives you an idea of what awaited me when I walked into my daughters’ room. My 21-month-old has had a penchant for taking off her diaper for a long time with no serious results, so I guess I thought I could keep playing the odds until she was potty trained. Today she hit the jackpot. She had taken off a messy diaper and had evidently engaged in some Montessori-style play with its contents. It was everywhere: on the crib, on the pillow, on all the toys, ground into stuffed animal fur, smeared into the sheets and pillow — some had even fallen down onto the freshly-vacuumed carpet.
I was in shock. My daughter looked at me and giggled, happy as a pig in…well, you know. I kept starting for her crib then stopping. I didn’t know which horrific aspect of this situation to deal with first. I couldn’t open the window because of safety locks and the smell just kept getting worse. I thought I was going to throw up. Just when I’d decided that the best course of action would be to curl up in the corner and cry until my husband got home from work, Betty walked in behind me and immediately took over. She told me to wrap my daughter up in a blanket to transport her to the bathtub without getting the mess all over me. I walked zombie-style into the bathroom, wishing I had a hazmat suit as I peeled off her clothes and plopped them directly into the trash can. I sat in there for a while, cleaning my daughter in a daze as I tried not to look at the wash cloth or think of adjectives to describe the texture of the water.
Finally I got her out of the bath and dragged myself back into her room to attack the feces apocalypse that awaited me. I tried to think of something I would rather do less than this task; I came up empty. I pushed the door open, lifted my eyes to her crib, and saw that it was clean. Spotless. As if it had never happened. My friend Betty had taken a break from scrubbing my carpet on her hands and knees to clean every last smear of poop out of my child’s room.
What could a person ever do to repay that kind of generosity?
If I were rich I would have just started pressing $100 bills into her hand, perhaps signing her up for some kind of Lexus of the Month Club. But, alas, I don’t have the means to compensate her financially for her heroic waste removal services. Finally, after thinking of everything from offering to babysit her children every weekend evening for the next five years to tattooing her name on my back to show her how very serious I was when I said I appreciated what she’d done, I recalled that she is a fellow internet nerd, and I thought of something she might like: A link to her blog. So I will just come clean and tell you that the entire purpose of this 1,100-word post about poop is to tell you to go visit my friend Betty Beguile‘s blog.
RELATED
Normally I try to include an image related to the subject of my post. Notice that I didn’t this time. You’re welcome.