2001-04-09 - 8:54 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Madonna's "Crazy For You", which dates me. I was in 7th grade when it came out.

Arachnophobes or the spider-squeamish should skip this section.

This morning on my way down the stairs to the 3rd floor (I'm on the 4th; guests are on the 3rd), I saw a dark blob with legs on the carpeted steps. It was dark on the stairs so I couldn't see it clearly. I nearly shrieked, thinking it was one of those big dark brown spiders like we had in Fishkill. With their body and legs (when bent) they take up space about the size of a nickel.

Well, what it WAS, was, the fake plastic fly I gave to the girls last night. Usually it sits among the heads of garlic that are a constant presence in the kitchen. When I told them they gave me a good scare, they were thrilled. I'm glad to be of such entertainment value to the kiddies.

We had a ton of those spiders in Fishkill. They were everywhere, especially hanging out in between the screen door and main door in the back. If you opened the door they'd all come running into the kitchen. I don't particularly mind spiders (even though I scream when I'm not prepared for them, especially when I am about to step into the bathtub), so I'd just ignore them. The landlady was visiting once when the spiders came in the door and she started shrieking and stomping on them, leaving a big mess of oozing brown spider carcasses for me to clean up. Joy. It's cleaner when you just leave them alone.

In our last rented house, we had a lot of crickets. In this house, as yet, we have gnats that come in on the produce.. Is our house more airtight or something, since it's so new? Fewer cracks for bugs to get in?

Well.

Right this minute I am feeling a little worked up. There were a few things in my grandparents' house that Pop-Pop doesn't need and I wanted to have -- a china cabinet, hope chest, and dresser. Problem is, they're big, awkward, and heavy, and I have to get them out of there ASAP because the house is on the market. Current plan, I think, is to rent a truck and drive it back Easter Monday.

Getting them into the house is going to be a bitch, too. I hate dealing with large items of furniture. But these are things I will actually USE, and KEEP FOREVER, and and I LIKE them (unlike some of the ratty hand-me-downs they're replacing), so it should be worthwhile overall. It will be nice to think of my grandmother every time I go to get clothes out of the dresser or china out of the cabinet.

But in the meantime, getting them out of Pop-Pop's house and into ours ... ugh.

We are having fun with the girls. On Saturday we went down to the Capital Children's Museum -- on Keisha's recommendation to MIL, I believe. That place RAWKS. I love it. I am how old, again?

They have an exhibit called "Mexico!". They've got a little plaza/marketplace set up in a huge room, two stories high with skylights. It has a facade of one of those buildings with the pillars and a second-story balcony and -- get this -- you can GO UP ON THE BALCONY. They have a little not-to-scale "Pyramid at Chichen Itza" that goes up to the ceiling (some 20 feet up, I think), and you ARE ALLOWED TO CLIMB ON IT.

Wow.

Every other activity in this museum is something that anyone else would never let you do for fear you'd fall and sue them. It's incredible. And the building is old and has a lot of character -- big old windows with sills big enough to sit on.

The girls LOVED this place. If you've got kids visiting (up to age 12, I'd imagine), take them there. I have heard warnings that it's in a rather worn-out neighborhood, which is true, but it's only one block from Union Station, and that entire block is the bridge that goes over the railroad tracks. I wouldn't let it deter you.

There was a couple there, looked to be in their late teens/early 20s, who were there on what looked like a date. They had no children with them. They were having fun, too.

Yesterday we took the girls to the park down by the elementary school. It was hysterical. They were like wind-up toys. They were completely wound up when we first got there -- they RAN from the car to the playground, and RAN from one piece of equipment to another. As the hour wore on, you could visibly see them getting tireder and tireder until they were mostly just sitting on the equipment doing nothing. We figured it was time to take them home.

Yesterday I picked up these ... well, it's a small figure cut out of foam -- in this case, bugs, although you can also get dinosaurs and farm animals. They are compressed and placed inside a capsule so they look exactly like Tylenol capsules, except in in different colors.

You put them in hot water, and the capsule melts, and the bug "pops out". I brought them up to the girls when they were in the bathtub, and they shrieked the whole time. "IT'S CHANGING!! IT'S CHANGING!!" Then they'd look at the package to see what kind of bug it was. There were 12 of them, so it kept us busy for a while.

Very, very exciting. I'll have to go out and buy the dinosaurs and farm animals now. It's just too much fun.

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