To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

I will miss many things about Hawaii.

This mountain range.

The ocean, and especially this beach.

There are also a fair number of things I will not miss about Hawaii.

Such as this 5-inch centipede that was on the inside of our screen this morning. I noticed it an hour and a half after I opened the door; who knows how long it had been inside. I'm so grateful it didn't sting me when I opened the curtains, and I'm especially grateful Raid kills these buggers.

But I will especially not miss where the centipede was located.

Yup, right above the spot where Nadine plays every single day. All it had to do was drop on her, and she would've been in some serious pain. Eesh. I have the heebie jeebies.

Aloha.

I can't do it Captain, I don't have the power

I miss this blog. And I am lame because I tried to get rid of it just two weeks ago. Dangit. I'll try to be strong and not post too often. But post I will.

Apparently I am just antsy. I'm not sure why, but I seem to be taking it out on my blogs. I am lame. And weak. It reminds me of the title of my first blog post: "But I also know, that you know, what a weak-willed person I am."

But, and also, I can't post pictures of spiders on the baby blog. Not next to cute Nani.

This spider was sitting on the plants outside our gate--the very same plants we brush against when we take Nani out in her seat. I saw it early one morning when I returned, luckily empty-handed, from the trash ("rubbish" in Hawaii). I screamed, then ran into the house to get my camera and the Raid.

Then I stood as far away as possible, and then I contorted my body to keep it further from the spider while allowing myself to get a good picture. I think it's a jumping spider, and I swear it was preparing to pounce. After I took a picture I sprayed the spider. And screamed when it fell, continually screaming as I ran into the house. Ugh. I think it's dead, but I didn't stick around to check, so who knows. I dare it to cross our pest controlled barrier, though.

The body of this thing is the size of my pinkie to the first knuckle. No lie. I don't know what kind of spider it is, because I learned not to Google spider pictures. Here it is compared to a penny.

You've got a sparkly

We were in Kauai earlier this week, and at one of our stops we saw this spider. It looked like it had a jeweled belly; I swear it sparkled. And the spider was large and therefore scary, but I thought it was fascinating how its legs are situated; definitely different from traditional spiders.

Luckily we took the above close-up photo, because it was so hard to find in the picture below. I couldn't find it on the computer screen, even zoomed way in--Todd found it.

I love examples of how things are supposed to work--the spider is camouflaged, and we know camouflage works, but wow this is a great example of how.

The spider is about the length of four of those holes in the pole. I told you it was huge.

Also and seriously, you'll be my hero if you know where the title of this post came from.

I looked out the window and what did I see?

The legendary Hawaiian centipede from hell crawling on our beautiful plants.

Yes folks, we've finally had our first sighting of the stinging, freaky reason we get our house sprayed. (And notice in this picture--it has antennas or something in the front, and then equally long stingers in the back. Eew eew eew.)

BUT, our bug man told me if they're around during the day it's because they're injured, because they're nocturnal. And this one was falling off the leaves and moving pretty erratically, which I'm hoping means it encountered our pest control barrier.

It then moved from the plants to our entryway, which elicited a squeal of panic from yours truly. But then I learned another happy fact--these bugs (at least the injured ones) can't climb the one step we have that leads to our door. Score!

And as always, the bug man wasn't lying when he said rain brings these things out. Nothing like a tropical storm to really welcome us to Hawaii. Mosquitoes out at noon, and a monster centipede. Nice.

So yeah, it was about 6 inches long, and incredibly and freakily fast. It moved like a dragon*, very serpentine-like. I have before and after photos--meaning, Before Raid and After Raid (BR, AR). I waited about a half hour AR until I dared put a penny near it. I didn't waste a quarter--this coin is going to be outside until the dead bug is gone. Just in case it starts moving again. I wonder if birds eat this nastiness?

* I have never seen a dragon, but I've imagined how they would look and move. Plus, I'm reading Eragon again, so dragons are on my mind. And I'm a dork.

It's tough to be a bug

Just so you don't think our Hawaii adventure is all about the beach, I'll tell you about our first real, nasty bug experience (note to the cosmos--thank you this isn't about the rumored centipedes). This morning Todd went to the hardware store to get me a flag hanger (yea!). This is what he found on our gate, right below the latch you have to touch with your unsuspecting skin.

We did an "after" shot of the nickel to show you how big this thing is. Well, was.

I know it's not a thick desert spider of nastiness, and that it doesn't have a red hourglass, but still. Look at it! And apparently in all my worrying about ginormous stinging centipedes and flying cockroaches I forgot there might actually be abnormally large spiders here too. I was thinking maybe spiders are like how snakes aren't supposed to be on an island.

So after taking the above picture, Todd ran into the house to get (1) Raid* and (2) his combat boots. Because, seriously, who's going to step on that thing with flip flops? He sprayed it with Raid and it JUMPED and ran away, quickly. Jumped! Good thing he had boots. Then he tried to step on it and it was too fast. Eeew! Apparently it just ran about a foot away then stopped. Probably taunting him.

Luckily the second attempt at stepping on it worked. He sprayed it again, just in case, and sprayed a circle around it, which is always a good idea. Then he sprayed the gate lock. Then he woke me up. Probably so I could take a Bone Collector picture.

This is a nickel, but still! Look how big it is, even smooshed and drenched in Raid.

And here's my hero. Combat boots and all. They come in handy even on his day off.

* Yes, when I move into a new place I buy food, cleaning supplies, and a can of Raid. You must always have a can of Raid. Maybe even before you have food.

This blog is slowly devolving into a forum about bugs. What does that say about me?

We went to my happy place this weekend, my parents' cabin in southern Utah. I love long weekends and church in Pine Valley. It's such a beautiful building.

We did many happy things this weekend. We went on a happy hike up a volcano, and it was a tougher climb than I imagined, but the view at the top was totally worth it. I love these white and red mountains. And you can't tell from these pictures (even though I do have an awesome Gollum thing going on with my bangs) but I got my hair cut a few weeks ago. It's a really cute bob, shorter than my hair has been for years. I love it, and some day I'll get around to posting a picture of it.

Sisters are happy.

We had a Foosball tournament, and it was happy. Lindsay and my dad, whose team name I won't repeat because most people don't work in the medical field and therefore don't appreciate its humor, won the tournament. They were amazing. I was impressed because we all are actually pretty dang good Foosball players.

We also played this crazy (but happy!) game that we called Around the World Ping Pong (I think that's what we called it) where you run around the ping pong table trying to hit the ball. It was fun but totally dizzying.

So overall, my happy place was happy. But the following story is not happy.

My favorite bathroom in the cabin is in the basement. It's bigger and has better water pressure and no one uses it because it's in the basement. Where the mice die in the toilet and the daddy long legs retire in the corners.

I got out of the shower the first morning, after I had done what I thought was a complete sweep of the bathroom. There, staring right across from me, was this bug. If it hadn't been on its back, things would have been really sad. And naked.

(You'll notice I again used my forensic skills to show the size of this thing.) I still used the bathroom the whole weekend, but it was a bit disconcerting to see it laying there, staring at me with its alien eyes. And no, those black things under its face aren't outlining its chin--those are its pinchers. Which it was waving at me the first time I saw it.

I was going to ask you guys if you know what bug it is (those of you from Idaho are probably shaking your heads at me, wondering why Nevadans don't know these bugs). Yesterday I contacted What's That Bug to try to figure out what this is and on their site I discovered--it's a potato bug. What?! And as my sister Lindsay so eloquently said, "Could you imagine one of those things just waving from a russet?"

. . . and frightened Miss Muffet away

This post has a picture of a spider. So if that freaks you out, don't scroll to the bottom. Because spiders are gross, but I took and posted a picture of one anyway.

I have had our house bug-sprayed every month, like clockwork, since I bought it 3 1/2 years ago. So there is a pretty nice perimeter built up. Which is great, especially because this summer has been an infestation summer (see my tomato caterpillar story below) but we have been blissfully free of spiders. The first year I owned the house and started fixing my front yard, I made the perfect environment for black widows and had a major black widow issue outside (although I do hunt black widows, which Todd thinks is weird but I find highly enjoyable).

So, back to my bug-spray perimeter (I just realized this post is only about bugs, and I'm a total freak. Thanks for reading it anyway, despite the fact it might be giving you heebie-jeebies). There is a fairly large spider in our garage. It's nasty and large, but I found it dead. Which makes me really happy because that means my perimeter takes care of these types of freaky pests so I don't have to waste half a can of Raid on them (previous experience with this kind of spider, though, shows Raid has NO effect, and only the potent stuff from my bug man can affect it, which is uber nasty). This large thing was trying to live in our garage. Eew.

Caveat before spider picture: using the forensic skills I learned from The Bone Collector, I tried to show you how big this spider is, even dead. I realize some of you may live places where there are bigger spiders. And that is nasty. But if you do, please feel free to share. We'll try to make this the nastiest blog post ever. (Jess, your stories of hobo spiders in Spokane still haunt my dreams.)