I have never claimed to be a very good domesticated woman. Really. I do love cooking, but that’s about it. I hate cleaning, and feel like it is more efficient to NOT always put things away “Just So”.
However, two things I do try to stay on top of is keeping bugs out and keeping things from stinking.
BOTH of these items I have struggled with this week.
As I’ve mentioned before, my personal and ONLY irrational phobia is of roaches. I seriously cannot function with one in sight at all. And if I see one within twelve hours of going to bed, I will dream of them all night.
However, I really don’t have phobias about any other bugs – even spiders I can handle. Spiders are Chris’ pet phobia.
When we got home Saturday night, I ran upstairs first, with Chris and Ali trailing behind me.
All of a sudden, I heard Chris yell out in a wavery voice for me. I came to the stairs, and he said, “Take Ali. It’s bad.”
I looked down towards the basement, and even though it was 15 stairs away, I could see him.
A MONSTROUS spider. Like the ones in Harry Potter that lived in the woods and ate people for snacks.
I offered to do it, since I am not horrified of spiders, even though one that large IS pretty disconcerting. But Chris’ “Man of the House” instinct outpowered his dislike of arachnids, and he got a piece of Gladware out of the cabinet and went downstairs.
After a bit of him dancing around it and me throwing him things to help in his task, and Ali giving a running commentary of the chase, he managed to catch it.
He brought it up, and it really was HUGE. We put him (in his Gladware home) on top of a quarter, and his BODY (not counting legs) was longer than the quarter.
Now what?
After discussing options, the only non-gory, non-risking-letting-him-out way we could think to kill him was to freeze him.
So we stuck him and his Gladware coffin in the freezer.
I felt guilty about this because it just seemed like a long, cruel way to die. But I went and checked on him in an hour, and he was already on his back and curled up.
But just in case he was playing dead, I left him until the next morning. When I took his Gladware out the next morning, he clanked around it like an ice cube. A very large ice cube.
Needless to say, He AND his Gladware were thrown out.
Now. To smells.
It started on Monday. A funky odor coming from the kitchen.
Trash? I took it out.
Putrid odor still there.
I tore apart the fridge, which I had surprisingly not-too-long-ago cleaned out. I thought it was the cilantro, so I threw it out.
Putrid odor still there and getting WORSE.
I tore apart the fridge AGAIN. Found a bag of tomatoes that were hiding. Threw them out.
Putrid odor still there AND ABOUT TO DRIVE ME MAD.
I begged Chris to check and see if he could find it. He found nothing.
For the THIRD time, I smell tested every shelf, nook, and cranny in the fridge. And I finally found it.
I hadn’t found it before because it should NOT have smelled yet. It shouldn’t have even been rotten. AND it was in a sealed container with NO leaks!!
But let me tell you. Black beans can make some F-U-N-K-Y odor.
We had made Burritos not long ago, and I have been enjoying the black beans at Moe’s lately, so for the first time ever, I cooked some. They were quite delicious!
However, I now know something about black beans. If you leave them for longer than just a few days, they create an unbelievably puke-inducing smell that will penetrate rubber, metal, plastic, 10 foot thick stainless steel walls, and The Great Wall of China.
We, of course, had fun discussing the newly-discovered Weapon of Mass Destruction that we had unknowingly grown in our fridge. Was there anyone that we would like to bomb?
In the end, after choking our way through throwing them out, we decided that NO ONE deserved that sort of fate.
And now, you’re all making a mental note in unison to never accept a dinner invitation to my house.
HA! I love the spider in the freezer!!
No pics of the frozen spider? What a bad little blogger. :)
The thought certainly occurred to me. I even saved him for a bit to photograph him. But the thing is, killing things and posting the pictures on the internet is something that terrorists do, not housewives. :)
Oh, I'm so glad I'm not the only one with an irrational fear of roaches. I can handle any other creepy crawly, but roaches just do me in every time. (I'm also the resident spider killer as my husband screams like a little girl when he's around one!)
I have a healthy fear of both roaches & spiders! When I was in college, I went to our church's children's camp & the cabin was infested with hundreds of roaches! We finally moved to a new cabin half way through the first night, but I couldn't sleep because I keep imagining roaches crawling all around me, it was awful!
Ok… the WORST odor I have ever experienced in my house has, unfortunately, occurred SEVERAL times over the last few years.
The first time it happened, I, like you, nearly tore the whole house down, cleaning madly and seeking out the offending odor. Nothing worked.
Finally I discovered the problem: old grass clippings left behind (in our HUGE commercial mower) to rot in our humid garage. When I checked the scene out close-up (very CSI like, with gloves, mask and all), I discovered clumps of runny, rancid green grass goop. HORRIBLE!
Of course, since we have a lawn business, this smell sneaks back into our lives now and again (due to a forgetful or tired hubby). But at least I know what it is and what to do. NOT knowing the first time around was enough to lock me in that rubber room with a box of not-pointy crayons! ;)
Yea! I was hoping the spider story would be told.
My husband kills spiders with wasp spray–the kind that sprays 15-20 feet–and he stands just that far away.
The last two nights at 1:00 a.m., I've walked into our bathroom and found a spider on the 10 foot ceiling IN THE SAME EXACT SPOT. I knocked it down and stomped it the first night (I used the edge of a rubbermaid lid to hit it and then I ran). Last night the lid squished it on the ceiling. I had to scrub the ceiling with a Clorox wipe precariously balanced on the edge of the lid. Fun stuff, and not as easy as it sounds!
The EXACT same thing just happened to me and my fridge! Except kidney beans were the culprit…I could NOT figure out what was smelling and went through the fridge about five times before I discovered them, just like you, in a sealed tupperware…and they too were not that old! Weird, stinky, beans. :)
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who deals with these kinds of things. Sometimes the boys smell, but I can't just throw them out!
LOL I had to laugh….. because I to like your hubby have this huge fear of spiders…. when C was a baby i found a HUGE one like the one you described in my bed… i was able to actually catch it with the help of a clear glass (Aaron was at work) we slide a notebook between the glass and the bed to get him contained and I called aaron and made him come home from work to get rid of it…. only I decided that since i was able to capture it, he could set it free far from my home…. so down at least 5 houses! Maybe he made his way down to your house???? LOL I wouldnt have been able to sleep with him in the freezer or any other part of the house… as it was, i was hyperventelating that he was going to get that heavy glass off him and escape! LOL
LOL!
Girl, I was bitten by a Black Widow Spider and I have not been the same since (Spidey powers you know). Not a fan!
But snakes are my "go running and screaming into the night" phobia of choice.
Black beans – note made.
Would you believe I killed another bathroom ceiling spider tonight? This one was in my son's bathroom. I the little sucker off the ceiling.
Time to call the pest control guy…
We have so many bugs here that it's unreal. Scorpions, Brown Recluses, Tarantulas, Palmetto Bugs, and HUGE orb weaver spiders. The first time I found the dead scorpion in the house was to freak out and tell my husband that I wanted to move back to civilization (Chicago) and that I didn't sign up for Mutual of Omaha's Animal Kingdom. Actually, I didn't tell him. I screamed it. I have more crazy spider stories, but it would take me forever. Glad you caught yours!