I had the most frightening experience last night.
I have this huge fear of spiders- I mean huge. Last year I tried to conquer them - totally unsuccessfully.
Late last night I was trimming the stems off a bouquet of sunflowers so that they'd live another few days. I gathered the bunch of stems and took them outside so that I could add them to my compost pile in the morning. When I walked outside I could tell immediately that the winds had turned. As you all know Southern California is on fire and the East winds (aka Santa Ana's) have been horrific.
This time of the year we always get Santa Ana's, it is as much a part of fall as red and orange leaves. In the 30 or so years that I have lived in this state I have never seen them blow like they have been blowing. They are a weird experience to begin with. You look outside and see the clear blue sky. You know it is mid October. You see the trees swaying. In your mind you expect to walk outside and need a jacket. It looks cold because it is autumn and by golly it is supposed to be cool- even in a southern California beach town. However when you walk outside you are hit with a hot, dry wind. It feels like summer, but windier. I both love and hate the Santa Ana's. They stir up all sorts of allergens so even if you don't have allergies - you get a runny nose, but they feel kinda nice too- sort of like a warm hug when you least expect it.
This time there was no warm, gentle hug. The winds were more like a hot slap in the face. The gusts were strong (gusts were clocked at over 100mph!!!!!). I didn't want to drive anywhere for fear of flying debris. Whole tree limbs were bouncing down our street.
Back to my story.
The winds turned late yesterday and effect was immediate. That cool ocean wind with speckles of moisture gripping your skin. It was a welcome relief. I put the flower stems in a pile of leaves that had gathered themselves on my back patio and walked out to the edge of the grass- just under our wood slat awning. I breathed in deep and felt a web on my arm. I tried to brush it off- but I couldn't seem to get it. I glanced up and, I kid you not, less than 12 inches from my face was the biggest mother fricken spider in the whole world. Huge. I swallowed a scream and ran in the house doing that "get this GDMF thing off me" dance- you know the one-even if you don't have the mouth of a sailor I'm sure you've done the dance. I was gulping screams all through the house brushing every inch of me off. I looked back outside and saw the monster spinning a new web. Ben, who had gone to be 5 minutes earlier came to the top of the stairs to see what was wrong. I made him come down and look at the beast. He is used to my arachnophobia , but even he was impressed and disgusted with the creature.
Whenever he tries to mush a spider for me it inevitably gets away. I reminded him of that as he went for shoes and something to beat it with. It would likely take nothing less than a baseball bat to knock that thing senseless. The homeschooling mom in me wanted him to leave it there so we could go out and look at in in the morning and see what kind of beast it actually was. But then I knew I'd have to make it go away some how or worse capture it for the boys to have play with study and Homie don't do that.
He ended up capturing it in an old yogurt container ( a big one not the single serving kind) and then he taped it up - can't be too cautious here- and we put it in the trash which will get picked up today thank God.
I hate spiders.