Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Big and Beautiful Bugs

Isaiah found a bug on a window screen.

"It's a moth," he said. "See how the antennae are fern-like?"

I had forgotten that that is a defining characteristic of moths, but I'm glad he remembered.

In a slightly more heart-pounding moment, I was doing dishes last week (left over from the night before) when a large spider appeared from behind a glass.

It was one of the largest spiders I'd seen outside of bug museums. I had had a ghostly glimpse of (what I hope was) the same spider the day before. I had just entered the RV and what looked like a big bug skittered under the fridge. So I wasn't entirely unprepared for this big spider, but still.

Even knowing that it probably wasn't poisonous didn't make me want to pick it up. There's a threshold of what seems feasible and what doesn't, you know?

In the end, I avoided the spider and it avoided me, but it eventually expired. I think it was a nursery web spider, called the cheetah of the spider world because they pounce on their prey rather than make a web to trap their food. That would explain the speedy hiding.

In non-bug news, I think I have fully turned the corner, now at 20 weeks. I went to church and, though I ate almonds through service to keep nausea at bay, I didn't suffer four days of ill effects as I had a month ago. I am gradually trying to work my way through four months of accumulated debris and random papers. I figure if I do an hour or two a day, eventually I will have a clean space. Perhaps that's delusional. And we went to a friends' house on Memorial Day and I had no horizontal time for the whole nine hours, and even did the driving each way.

I did the driving because Phil had taken a nap all morning. I didn't think much about it. He doesn't usually take three or four hour naps, but I figured he was extra tired from late nights of work. He got up about noon and went outside almost immediately. He felt the world spin a bit and put his hand on the chicken plucker. Next thing he knew, he was on the ground, chicken plucker pulled over. He had passed out. So when we left a bit later, I did the driving.

At our friends', Phil grew more and more out of it. "Maybe I ate something," he said, and sure enough ... he had gone to a pot luck the day before without me there to remind him that salad dressings almost always contain MSG. (The pot luck was hosted by a family with similar clean eating to ours, and he was lulled into a false sense of security, forgetting that not all food was provided by the host family.)

Happily, as he spiraled down, he was able to enjoy their bathtub. As I drove home, he filled a gallon Ziploc with the most unbelievable quantity of stomach contents.

That must have been the key: his stomach had saved the poison and kept it from moving through his body. Because rather than the standard three day migraine, he felt a bit woozy, but mostly okay today.

And today the boys and I read for many hours from our beloved Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, one of the best books in the world. Set in the Middle East: an adventure story, a coming of age, a lesson in business, some sweet and less sweet family relations, the world's best romance, all from a story passed down in Iraq for over a thousand years.

5 comments:

  1. I'm caught up. :-) Hooray on reaching the 1/2 way point! Glad to hear you are feeling better. Sorry your husband wasn't. Sounds like an interesting book, we'll check it out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! Thanks for getting all caught up! One of my Christmas presents the last three years has been blog books, and that's a LOT of words.

    I am curious: have I re-learned a lot of things? I wonder sometimes if I just keep having the same inspiration every year. Like this spring, when everything was so green and thick and lush: was I impressed with the increase in fertility every other spring, too? I think it's possible. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I know I'm impressed every year! It's a part of marveling in God's creation and His continual renewal and sustaining of it. It's being joyful and open-eyed to "this particular moment" and rejoicing in the simple things. But then, living here with the long cold winters, Spring is a tremendous relief every year!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Um...you put the ENORMOUS spider on your hand!!!! Brave, brave woman! Haha!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, don't be too impressed with my bravery as I didn't put it on my hand until it was dead. It was pretty fast, so I would have had to hold its leg, and what if I broke the leg of the spider? That would have been too bad.

    That was one big spider, though!

    ReplyDelete