This morning I took a bath in hot coffee.
Not on purpose. I’m not quite that addicted…yet.
I suppose, now that I’ve had time to think about it, having scalding coffee splashed all over my chest might not have been the worst thing that could have happened in this situation. Once the burning stops I’ll try to think of a more terrifying scenario, but for now…I’ve got nothing.
So anyway, there I was minding my own business, drinking my absolutely necessary morning coffee while checking Facebook, when suddenly I got scared out of my wits and my coffee jumped straight out of its cup and did a swan dive onto the front of my jammies.
I’ve mentioned before that morning isn’t my best friend. In fact…it isn’t even an acquaintance.
I’d quite happily stick it on a boat and shove it out into the middle of the ocean…after drilling a small hole in the boat of course.
Needless to say…when things such as ‘burning a layer of skin off my body’ happen…it’s normally done first thing in the morning before my brain has properly woken up.
Here’s what happened…
My four year old daughter, Lexi, was playing quite happily on the floor in my bedroom.
She had a pair of fuzzy pink winter gloves on her feet and was pretending to be a monkey, complete with an array of monkey-like noises.
Suddenly, I heard the most piercing scream, and saw her almost fly through the air toward me.
She was crying hysterically and desperately trying to get onto my bed, but kept sliding off.
I should mention I have one of those beds that have a HUGELY thick mattress, so it’s higher than normal. If the blankets happen to be piled at the edge – which they were in this case – my baby girl has a bit of difficulty climbing on.
Normally this would be a hilarious thing to watch, but since I was now covered in scalding hot coffee and imagining an assortment of threats such as rabid dogs, maniacal clowns crawling on the floor, and God forbid…monsters under the bed who managed to get free, it was not humorous in the least!
Don’t forget, my brain hadn’t quite woken up at that point.
Grabbing her arm, I yanked her on the bed with one hand while carefully putting my coffee on the bedside table with the other.
It took a good minute to figure out what had happened, because as we all know, when children are trying to say something while crying it comes out as “Waaaah, mumble, mumble, scream, blah blah, mumble, waaaaah!!!”
I was finally able to decode her child-cry hysterics enough to make out…
“IT ALMOST ATE ME!!!”
I then realized she was talking about a spider.
Falling back on the bed in relief, incredibly glad I wasn’t going to have to fight off any insanely scary creatures, I started to laugh.
Apparently this wasn’t the appropriate response to her terror, so she cried even harder.
Sighing loudly, I got off the bed, walked carefully over to where she had been, and found the evil spider who had threatened to eat my darling child.
The poor thing must have had a heart attack when Lexi screamed, because it was on its back, with its tiny little legs in the air.
Did I mention the poor thing was incredibly itty bitty?
Grabbing a tissue, I picked it up, showed it to Lexi – proof of the spider removal – and then deposited it into the garbage can.
It has been half an hour now since the incident, and she still refuses to step foot off the bed.
Knowing her, she’ll probably learn to fly so that she never has to almost be eaten by an itty bitty little creepy crawly creature ever again.
I wonder sometimes how we adults ever survived the horrible creatures and monsters of childhood.