Visitors: Expected and Unexpected

Aunt Elner’s house was a disaster, with pictures hung all over the wall helter-skelter… and her front porch was a mess. She had all kinds of things strewn everywhere: rocks, pinecones, shells, birds’ nests…

Fannie Flagg, Can’t Wait to get to Heaven

Our house very much resembles the description of Aunt Elner’s front porch. I have collections of birds’ nests, rocks, dead insects, jars of pickled reptiles, amphibians, and embryos, skulls of small creatures, and on it goes, all over the house, not just on the porch. My friend Judy once said she thought she could come and spend some time just looking at all the stuff I have on shelves and window sills because she said she seems to notice something new each time she visits.

Richard’s long-time friend and his long-time girlfriend, who live in Seattle, are due here in the next couple of hours for a visit. They are headed to one of the Carolinas for a family event and decided to stop by here. He has been here before, quite a few years ago now, so he will have some recollection of our house, but I have a bad feeling about what his companion is going to think. Of course I can’t do anything about that but still…

There is too much stuff structurally wrong with the house--part of the ceiling looks like it is going to fall down at any minute, the “fronts” have pulled off several of the drawers in the kitchen cabinets, the linoleum on the floor is cracked and pieces are missing—several remodeling projects that were started have not been finished…so fixing those things is not in the picture, but we have been working like maniacs for the last couple of days trying to make it look a little better than it has been.

Not too much dusting is going on, but the most egregious of the cobweb streamers have been knocked down, the bathroom is cleaned, the floors vacuumed. I am somewhat limited in my ability to do anything because I must get around the house on the knee walker, but yesterday I was working my way around the perimeter of the house with the “webster” and arrived at the kitchen at about the same time that Richard was preparing food at the counter.

I knew what was going to happen as soon as I started in on the curtain above the kitchen counter and sure enough….

“Do you really have to do that right NOW?”

But then something totally unexpected happened… and I would have stopped even if he hadn’t been there because….

“Richard, look up there" said I, pointing to the curtain that I had just breezed over with the webster.

He looked up there.

“Is that a fake spider?” He says in a very surprised voice. It is not an unreasonable question because I have a large fake spider by my computer.

“No, it most certainly is not!”

 What we had there on the curtain, friends and neighbors, was a huge fishing spider.

How huge was it? Well, I wasn't able to take a picture of this visitor, but here is a picture of one that I saw in our basement about 6 years ago.

 The board that it is on is about4 inches wide. Does that help explain why he wasn’t real anxious to let it live with us in the house?

After some discussion about how he was going to catch it and take it outside (and it moved incredibly fast for such a large insect), he eventually caught it in a large plastic bowl with a lid and let it go by the compost heap.

Now I am hoping that no more unexpected visitors join the party