So ever since the 1990 release of the movie Arachnophobia, I have had a more "serious" fear of spiders. The shower scene in that movie (you can look that up on YouTube if you're not familiar with it) just freaked me out! For months after the movie, I was thoroughly inspecting the shower for spiders before entering. When I moved to Pulaski in 1996 and stayed until 1998, I had a problem with these large brown spiders, not much different in size than the ones in the movie. Finding a spider in my shower there (amongst other places like the kitchen, bedroom, living room, etc) rekindled all of my fears of large spiders...especially in the shower. Well it's been a long time since 1998, so my fear has passed a bit...UNTIL this morning when I got up at 3:30am, went to the bathroom and then got ready to shower. I opened the shower curtain and this is what I saw. My heart started pounding 1000 times per minute! Tarantulas don't move nearly as fast as the cockroaches I spoke of earlier, so I knew I had time to deal with both my adrenaline and the spider. I grabbed my camera to take a picture - after all, it is one of God's creatures. I had 3 choices: 1) leave it there, 2) kill it, or 3) scoot it out the front door.
My head quickly reasoned through all 3 responses. If I left it, there'd be a chance it would crawl back into the room onto one of our couches or worse yet, into one of our beds! If I killed it, that would mean I'd have to get pretty close to it and then try with all my might to pound at it with a shoe or a rock, leaving a yucky, fuzzy yet gooey mess for me to clean up. Yep, I'd have to go for option #3. I opened the front door and grabbed the broom. I scooted it out of the shower, but then it ran to hide behind the sink pedestal and the wall. So I needed to cram the broom bristles back there to scoot it out. When it came out, I brushed it out of the bathroom into our main room. By then I could tell the spider was ticked off since it froze with its front 2 legs up and its head raised. So quickly I started scooting it out the front door and then over the porch ledge onto the grass. There...now I can say I let a tarantula loose out into the wild, or back into nature - and I didn't kill God's precious (yet creepy, crawly, gross) creature. :-)
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My morning encounter in the shower |
All I can say after this experience is that I'm glad it happened in year #8 down here in Honduras rather than year #1!!!
So I did not need coffee this morning as I was already awake. I quickly took my shower and then did devotions. We left our room a little early since there were around 16 girls still in Veronica Castro's Medium Girls' House (there are 2 medium girls houses here) that we didn't get measured. Monica came over by me and offered her help which once again, we were VERY thankful to have! We got all 16 girls measured before Big Circle began. Since we are at the Toddler House this summer, we didn't have the opportunity to participate in Big Circle, which was a little sad but Alina and I have participated in numerous Big Circles over the past 2 years, so we were okay with it.
At the Toddler House, we cut the vegetables, watched the children in the 'sala' while the teen moms had their circle devotions outside, served breakfast when they came back, and then took the children to the chosa. Ana and I went to the dining area around 10am so that I could work with her in practicing her mathematics review for the college entrance exam again. It's coming along okay, but there are many problems to do. I'm hoping that we can get through them all before I leave on Wednesday next week.
We served the toddlers lunch around 11am and they headed into the 'sala' to take their nap while the older girls cleaning the dining area, halls and front play area. I headed to our room to change from pants to shorts as the sun was shining brightly by now and it was rather hot out. I stopped by the store to grab a large bottle of soda and some Doritos for the girls to eat while watching Maleficent later. I had a boy run into town yesterday to get a copy of the movie Maleficent for me. I'll leave it here with the girls. Ana, Alina and I watched it while the toddlers were napping since Ana wouldn't be here later on in the evening when the other girls were watching it.
When nap time was done the toddlers came out and played for a little bit before we served them supper. As I did the dishes and helped Ana give showers to the 4 boys she's in charge of, Alina was helping with the cleaning in the dining area, and halls. She absolutely loves to mop with the girls, and the girls like her help. I'm not sure that many volunteers help with mopping.
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Alina mopping the hallway |
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Alina washing out her mop |
I worked through another 12 math problems with Ana before I headed out. Karla and I put a bunch of toys away back into the 'back room' of the 'chosa' and while she was trying to lock up, the lock on the door broke. She was very concerned that since the door was now loosely open, the kids would just be a wreck going back into that room and pulling EVERYTHING out. So I left early to head to Mike and Karen's apartment (which is next to our room) to ask Mike if there was anything that he could do to seal off that door before tomorrow morning when the toddlers would be in the chosa.
At the end of the evening, we took 2 pairs of running shoes (size 8) to girls we had measured earlier this morning that didn't have tennis shoes and we also gave the brand new pair of size 7 tennis shoes to Veronica Castro's 11-year-old daughter who has been growing like crazy! All 3 girls were SO excited to get some new shoes. We also took the 2 baseball gloves, 4 baseballs and the pack of plastic baseballs (for hitting practice) down to Max who told us that he'd use them with his house of boys because he's been trying to teach them how to play baseball. That about wrapped up our day.