Dealing With Spiders

My oldest daughter (5) and my son (4) are each in their respective bedrooms having some solo time before dinner. Late in the day, solo time is a great way to break up kids who are otherwise getting pretty cranky and agitating or fighting with each other and give them some alone time to relax. I'm making dinner in the kitchen. Not unusual for summers living in the woods, the occasional spider makes his way onto the scene.

"Dad! Dad! There's a spider in my room!" My daughter hollers across the house. I put down what I am doing and make my way to her bedroom. Upon my arrival, I see my daughter standing on her bed pointing at this borderline microscopic spider scooting across her floor. This spider is so small, if I took a picture of him he would probably only total like 3 pixels. I literally thought it was just a piece of dust on the floor at first.

"Seriously honey?" I ask. A bit vexed to be drawn away from cooking dinner for such a tiny spider. "What is that tiny little spider going to do to you?"

She opens her arms up wide, "He could build a big spider web! AHHH!" The image of a giant spiderweb entangling her must have followed her words closely because she let out another series of yells complete with an erratic jumping episode, all the while pointing at the spider as it tries desperately to get out of the room. But the spider is so small, it is not covering very much ground. 

"Okay, okay, calm down!" I grab the closest piece of paper, scoop up the spider and remove him from the room. 

Back out through the kitchen and over to the front door where I release this little spider into the wild (however wild my front deck is anyway). Wash my hands and back into cooking dinner.

Not even 5 minutes pass by when I hear my son start up, "Dad! Dad! There's a spider!"  

I literally sigh aloud and start back down the hallway, this time toward my son's room. This is something that comes up from time to time - my son hears his sister doing something and then he has to get in on the act. I get to his room and he is sitting on the floor playing with his cars, totally undisturbed. 

"Alright buddy, where is this spider?" I ask him.  

He stops what he is doing, looks up at me and smiles. Then he shows me the tire of one of his bigger trucks. On the tire is the remains of the trespasser - a spider that was big enough to go toe-to-toe with me in a bare knuckle boxing match. I muttered a few obscenity-laced half-prayers. My son says, "He's dead, I runned him over."  

I am waiting to hear from this spider's attorney.

In The Woods Entertainment

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Bowser And The Raccoons

When my girlfriend and I had our first child, we bought a house near the state forest and game lands and moved in with our small family and two cats. We had been living in the mountains for a while already and so didn't think too much about leaving the cat food dishes on the back porch at the end of the day when we brought the cats inside for the night. Upon awakening in the morning, I discovered daily that there was no more cat food left. Not surprising considering where we are, but I never expected what I saw late one night.

About 10:30 pm, my girlfriend and I were hanging out in the living room watching some Netflix when I heard a ruckus on the deck. Something sounding like a slam and then a loud "MEOW!" of fury. I jolted up and ran to the sliding glass door that opens to my back porch to investigate. Bowser, one of my cats (and arguably one of the most bad ass cats to have ever lived), was face to face with a raccoon!

Bowser growled ferociously at the raccoon who hesitated his advance toward the cat food. Then, out of nowhere, another raccoon appeared on the deck from out of the shadows. Dastardly fucks! I unlocked the door and pulled it open quickly. Not entirely sure about what to do, I figured making a loud noise would be sufficient enough and so I let out a loud "Hyaaaaaa ya son of a bitch!" in a fashion very much similar to how my Grandpa used to holler at my dogs and cats growing up and I stomped my foot down really hard.

Not sure if the raccoons understood what I said or not, but they got the hell out of there lickity-split. Bowser looked up at me with this face like he was thinking, "You know you sound dumb as shit, right?" So I scooped Bowser up and brought him inside against his will. During the summertime Bowser would hang out on the back porch all night, enjoying the weather and probably whooping ass on mice and other trespassing critters.

A bit on Bowser. He was an older cat, about 16 when this happened. I adopted him from my grandparents who adopted him from my Aunt, who adopted him as a kitten way back in like 1993. Yeah, how old do you feel now? I said "way back in 1993." Anyway, my Aunt who adopted him originally had him de-clawed, so he didn't have any front claws. But that didn't stop him from being a cat boxing champion. I've seen Bowser slap the shit out of dogs who got too up in his business. So, now you know that.

Anyway, later that night, me and my girlfriend were still watching Netflix (oh the glamour of a life beyond bed time) when we heard Bowser growling by the sliding glass door, looking out onto the deck. I walked over to the door and moved the curtain aside to see a squad of up-to-no-good fucking raccoons on my back porch eating cat food out of Bowser's dish. And Bowser sees them too, he knew they were coming back. He was waiting for them.

"HYAAAH! HYAAAH! Ya slippery fucks, get off of my porch!" I yelled, and knocked on the door a few times good and loud.

And the raccoons didn't budge. Bowser looked up at me again judging me hard, shook his head, and sighed.

So I picked Bowser up and brought him over to my girlfriend, who held him on the couch. Then I went back to the door, pulled it open and yelled once more at those thieving shits. Two of the raccoons dove off of the porch and into the immediate shadows of the woods beyond, and yet one stayed behind glaring at me. I stomped on the porch a few times, picked my hands up and started waving them wildly around, yelling again "Get the hell outta here ass hole!"

This last raccoon still didn't leave. He stood there looking at me, and in reply to my wilder gestures, he straightened himself all the way up, to show me how tall he was I guess. In the animal kingdom he was saying "Come at me bro."

"Okay, it's like that then?"  At this point, I was pissed. I went back inside to find my air rifle. If this raccoon wanted to be a douche, I could be a bigger douche, guaranteed. As I opened the sliding glass door to retreat into the house and fetch my BB gun, Bowser escaped! He booked it across the deck and lunged at the remaining raccoon, who was still doing his best tough guy impression.

Bowser slap boxed the piss out of that raccoon. He hit him about six times in rapid succession. Right, left, left, right, left, hay maker. I'm standing there like a fucking idiot watching this and all I can think is "Down goes Frazier!" The raccoon could only take so much abuse before he dodged back into the darkness after his friends. Bowser stared after the raccoon for a few moments in the quiet night air on the back porch. Then he looked back at me with all the feline arrogance of a cat who just handled a human's problem for him. He walked over to his food, sniffed it, and laid down next to it purring.

Never saw a raccoon on my deck ever again. 

In The Woods Entertainment

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Words That Rhyme

One of the many things a parent is responsible for is the education of his/her children. This is challenging sometimes if you are trying to teach something that your kids have no interest in learning at the moment. The key is to find what they want to learn and teach them about that. It opens the door to learning other stuff. And then there are times like this... 

My oldest daughter is interested in just about everything from baking cookies to star systems in space. She will ask me a question and then, upon getting my reply, if she deems it cool enough to hear more about, she will literally say to me "Dad, tell me everything you know about [insert cool shit she wants to learn here]."

Her younger brother is not interested in many things outside of cars, puzzles, and memory games. When we were trying to teach him to count, he didn't care one bit. Considering that his favorite color is blue, and he loves to play with his little cars, we began to teach him to count by counting blue cars (Dishwalla?). But it is tough to spark his interest in things he doesn't care about - like most little kids, he just cares about having fun.

Anyway, fast forward to words that rhyme. My girlfriend was teaching our kids about words that rhyme, using some fun examples. "A goose and a moose on the loose! Goose, moose, loose. Lets make a cake by the lake! Make, cake, lake."

Getting ready to leave for work - basically running around the house looking for all the shit I need to take with me because I am the living embodiment of disorganization. I would lose my head if it weren't attached and you would find me playing some interesting "Marco-Polo" to get it back. Since it is attached, I can hear all the learning taking place in the living room as I frantically scour the nonsense littered across my night stand for my work ID.

From the other room I can hear my kids taking turns rhyming words. "Door, more, ploor!" And "Sink, think, Stink!" They are laughing it up, having a great time. And rightfully so - their mother is excellent at making things fun for them and my kids are all about having fun.

When I am getting prepared for work, running a little behind schedule, and still cannot find all the things I need, I get a little agitated.

"Soup, poop, goop!"

I enter the living room, "Hey, have you seen my work ID?"

"ID, mighty, bitey!" Kids learning to rhyme will rhyme sounds without regard to the actual language - kind of like Lil Wayne. 

Frustrated and with no help from the peanut gallery I run back to my bed room to double and triple check the places my ID should be but alas it is still not there. I holler out, "Where did you put it when you washed my pants, honey?"

"Honey, funny, wunny!"

You know that feeling you get when you are agitated and you can almost feel your blood boiling? Nobody is doing anything to me, but I can't help feeling this frustration. I can't find my ID and every time I ask for help my kids are rhyming words at me like some terrible Mother-Goose-rap-along from hell. Where the hell is my stuff? I want to yell, but I don't. When you are a parent, you slowly but surely master the art of the maniacal forced-smile instead of yelling obscenities in the presence of children.

"I still can't find my ID, I am gonna be late!" I call out in desperation. And in reply I hear my girlfriend getting on the case.

The kids don't miss a beat, "late, great, jate!"

My girlfriend, being the pinnacle of order and organization quickly finds my ID, effortlessly, as though she knew where it was the whole time. She tells me so and I hurriedly scurry out of whatever crevice I am searching and obtain it from her. Victory!

"Thanks Honey!"

"Honey, funny, lunny!" The kid chorus goes followed by a right fit of hysteria.

Calmer now that my head is firmly reattached to my neck, I acknowledge my kids' learning. "You guys are doing well with rhyming! Good job!"

"Job, blob, tob!"

I get to the door, look over my shoulders and say, "Can you guys think of words that rhyme with BUCKET?"

Dumbstruck, both kids cock their heads sideways, like confused puppies trying to piece together this new challenge.

Close the door and off to work I go! I am sure I'll hear about this later!

In The Woods Entertainment

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Human Crush - For FB Game Players!

The Dookie Deception

When you are a parent, you see a lot of poop. Straight up, no way to tip-toe around this fact of life. Furthermore, there is not a single parent in the history of parenting that will tell you that they enjoyed teaching their kids how to wipe their own asses. The reason I say this with absolute certainty is because I know how one teaches kids to wipe their own asses. It involves wiping their asses for them. And who wants to do that? Exactly; nobody.  

Now, I'm not sure how things work in typical households, but in my house when one of the kids needs help wiping they will procure this help through one of two ways; one is a screaming declaration about what just transpired ("Dad, I pooped!") leaving us parents with the assumption of what is needed from us and the other is a knock on the wall - a technique that was developed by my wife and I to send signals to each other throughout the house without yelling for each other, which was subsequently hijacked by the kids for all things bathroom.  

I get to the toilet and see kid poop sunk in the bowl every single time I am summoned for dookie-duty. And of course it is there! You don't flush until after you wipe (aside from the "courtesy flush" - a totally separate topic)! 

So what happens when Mommy gets there to wipe?  I imagine she sees the poop as well! 

So one day, when the stars aligned just right, I stalked the bathroom, waiting for one of my kids to ship a dookie. Eventually, my son comes barreling across the house for a potty break. I wait for him to call in assistance after the fact, specifically aiming to volunteer my help before he calls out for it. Quickly. Quietly. Efficiently. He runs out of the bathroom to go play, but I remain. 

Then I take a nasty poop, just absolutely disgusting. You know when you can tell in your gut that it's going to be abominable? That is what I meant when I said earlier that the stars had aligned just right. I was ready to go. 

And then I knock on the wall and hide in the shower - a complete forgery. Seconds later, I hear Mommy making her way to the bathroom. If she was expecting kid poop sunk in the bowl she will be in for quite a surprise this time!

In The Woods Entertainment

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A Good Chuckle

Welcome to A Good Chuckle!  Bringing you the funniest original content on the web! Be sure to stop by everyday for a laugh and remember - we can ALL use A Good Chuckle.

In The Woods Entertainment

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