If you read last week you’ll know that given the heat my family had relocated to our deliciously cool basement. With beds, books, a beer fridge and a television, it’s actually a pretty comfortable place to be.
When the heat dissipated for a few days we opted to return to our regular beds upstairs, closer to the bathtub, the books about space and the My Little Pony toothpaste. You know, the important stuff.
We had spent just a few nights upstairs when the region was hit with another blast of heat.
Back to the basement we went.
But we didn’t make the decision at a normal hour, we made it long after both kids were asleep, but sweating profusely in their upstairs beds. I had had a particularly taxing day and went to bed early so my husband carried the load (literally), schlepping some 65 pounds worth of sticky, sleeping, limp lumps of children down to their comparatively cold basement beds. He slept in the basement with them and I rolled over upstairs and went to sleep.
Anyway, the following night the kids were down and I was preparing for another early morning.
I went into our basement bedroom and noticed my husband hadn’t made the bed. It was an honest mistake. He had intended to sleep there but ended up being an awesome dad and camping out with the kids instead. However, it’s pretty much a cardinal sin in our house not to make your bed. Not only does it allow you to begin your day by accomplishing something (read Admiral William McRaven’s Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life… And Maybe The World) but it looks better and at the end of the day, it’s nicer to get into a bed that’s been made.
Most importantly though, it keeps out the bugs.
I began to make the bed so I could unmake it and get into it when I saw it. A spider. ON MY SIDE OF THE BED. Just perched there like it was his bed now.
Because it’s 2018, I texted my husband upstairs. It was a photo of the situation along with this message:
“THIS IS WHY WE MAKE THE BED”
Then I texted my friend.
“My husband didn’t make the basement bed and there was a (redacted) spider in it. I’m so (redacted). I made him come and take it away and he was like ‘meh’. And I was like ‘are you (redacted) kidding me? How is a (redacted) spider in MY BED ‘meh’? How am I supposed to relax when I think there are BUGS in my BED!?”
My amused husband did come down and remove the spider, but not before he let it crawl all over his arm, coaxing it into his palm to take outside. However angry he made me, I still love that he takes the spiders outside.
I maintain he was totally taunting me with it though.
While I got busy with a grid-like search, inspecting of every layer of that bed before I could get into it, he meandered over to the beer fridge, spider still in his hand, to grab a beer.
No big deal. To him anyway. He still doesn’t understand my perturbation. That night I learned there are two different kinds of people in the world: those that’ll scrutinize every fibre of their sheets to ensure a spider-free sleep, and those that’ll take their new eight-legged buddy out for a beer.