For Science
She may be thirteen now, but the puppydog eyes retain all their power
Yesterday I got on a housecleaning jag and without really meaning to, I found myself going full-throttle A Bowl Full of Lemons on the basement and laundry room. Except: as I told Scott later, during the laundry-room deep-clean I faced my most difficult parenting challenge yet. In nearly 24 years as a mother, I’ve never been put to the test quite like this.
Our laundry room is in the (finished) basement and has one small high-up window. When we moved in, the house had been professionally cleaned and was immaculate except for a spiderweb in that particular window—a large web, quite old, thickened with lint and age into a heavy cobweb the size of a saucer. No sign of a spider—the original webspinner was probably long gone—but we left the web just in case. Nearly two years and seven million loads of laundry later, the cobweb is the size of a cloth napkin. There’s no spider. There never was, not in our time.
But when Rilla saw me on a stool, vacuum hose in hand, she begged me to spare the cobweb.
I’d just finished hoovering up every speck of dust and lint from the rest of the room and I was all set to decobwebify that window. And wash it, even!
But Rilla implored. “For science!” Heh, she knows my weak spots.
So I gritted my teeth and left it. For now, I said ominously. She grinned, unfazed by my direful tone.
When Scott came home later, I told him the story.
“So you left it there?” he asked. “WHEW. That thing is cool.”
“That thing is the size of a wedding veil.”
“Like I said. Cool.”
Well, he does all the laundry, so I guess if he wants a year-round Halloween theme, he can have it.
(For the record, if I believed that old circus tent was still the home of a spider, I wouldn’t have needed any persuasion to leave it alone. No Aunt Sponge or Aunt Spiker here.)
Fairies Don’t Sneeze
Huckisms to Remember
Context Is Everything
Planning ahead
But Jumping on the Couch Will Be Fine with Her