Hello again. I’m back this week with another column about my family; specifically another “Daddy Day” story. The last one saw my husband take our kids into town to pay a parking ticket and then they wound up on a field-trip-like tour of City Hall. You never really know what the kids and their dad will get up to on Daddy Days. It usually ends up being messy, costing money, involving treats, or any combination of the three. It always ends up being a fun adventure with a story to tell. Here’s this week’s story:
I recently sold my old electric lawn mower to a couple who’d moved house but forgot to bring their mower with them when they moved and didn’t feel right about going and asking for it back. What’s done is done, they thought. They’d just find a used one and carry on with life. (I talked to my husband about it, and we likely would have done the very same thing if we’d forgotten to pack our lawn mower, too.)
I was at work the day the mower was to be picked up. It was a Daddy Day. My family was in the backyard playing in the sunshine anyway so my husband tricked my son into washing it up and making it pretty for the new buyers by telling him he could play with the hose.
Bad idea.
I wondered how wet my husband got because if you give a small child a hose, there is a 100 per cent chance his father will also get wet. It’s just science. Or math. Or hydrology. Or whatever. Anyway, I didn’t have a chance to ask because not long after I received a sweet photo of my son hosing down the mower, I got another text. It was another photo. This time of a giant spider in a container we use for watering.
“It was in the lawnmower. It’s huge,” he texted.
Gross. I’m not a fan of spiders.
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Fine by me, I thought to myself. The new owners can keep it. Free spider with purchase! What a selling point.
My phone buzzed again. I had another photo waiting. My dear old husband had picked the spider up and it was on his hand. I made a mental note to have him keep his hands to himself that night.
“It’s trying to bite me,” was the accompanying text.
I noticed in the background of the photo, he was elevated.
“Are you on the deck? Get off the deck, don’t put that thing near the door!” I wrote.
Then another photo came in featuring the arachnid climbing up his arm. (Thankfully in that one he had moved down to the lawn.)
“It lives on me now,” he said. I knew he was trying to push my buttons.
Fine, I thought to myself. They can both live outdoors.
Why is he doing this to me? He knows spiders creep me out. I’m OK with them outdoors because they are supposed to be there but that doesn’t mean we need to make friends and play.
I certainly did not expect the final text.
It was a photo of my clearly chuffed husband and his new eight-legged friend… which happened to be perched on the top of his big bald freshly buzzed head.
The texts stopped after that. I didn’t know whether to call 9-1-1 and report a spider bite or simply be grateful the photo barrage was over.
What I did decide after that was that I would ask the buyers if they’d take both the spider AND my husband along with the lawnmower. Either or. I could always just step on the one that they didn’t take.
sarah.simpson@cowichanvalleycitizen.com
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