Bye Bye Baldwin

With some sadness, we note "the passing" of this great old piano. As it cannot be repaired without significant cost, we are going to offer it for sale on Craigslist in hopes that somebody can return it to its former useful self. We hate to see it go, as it has been part of the family for many years. However, since we have a replacement, it hardly makes sense for us to have two pianos.

The Halls Are Decked

The tree and the "Polar Express" (as Joseph calls it) are up and running.

The Snowman family has come to visit our desert home.

One of my favorite items is Santa Claus flying around the world. It's so kitschy.

Prindsessen paa Ærten

With the new baby coming (or is he), we knew that we would have to find furniture for Angelina's bedroom and use her current furniture for the baby's new room. For months, we have been scouring Craigslist, ebay and sales advertisements in hopes that we could find something girly for Angelina that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

Eureka! Julene found a beautiful bedroom set on Craigslist for a very reasonable price. However, when she went to look at the set, the seller told her that he only had it in full size, but that he would give it to us for the same price as the twin size set. We decided that a full size set would fit better in Allyse's room, so on Saturday, we played a game of musical rooms.

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I took apart the crib and took the baby furniture down to the new baby's room. Then I took Allyse's bed apart and moved her furniture into Angelina's room.

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It was really hard to gauge how Angelina was going to react, as she tends to be quite possessive and she has invested heavily in being the baby. Since the crib is a primary symbol of her infancy, we thought that she might reject the new bed. However, when it came to bedtime, she seemed pleased to be in a new big bed, and she slept all night without any incident.

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With Allyse's new bedroom set, I brought most of it upstairs by myself, but I had to call on a neighbor to help with the desk and the dresser. However, the toughest part was the shopping. I needed to find bedrails for Angelina and a boxspring and mattress for Allyse.

Every pregnant woman in Southern Nevada, along with her shopping entourage, must have been at Babies R Us when I went to buy bedrails. It seemed nearly impossible to get around the store, but not because of the bellies. Everywhere I went there was a pregnant woman holding court with her family and friends cooing, oohing and ahhing over anything that she would touch or display.

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After I bought the bedrails, I went to look for a mattress set for Allyse. I went to four stores trying to find somebody who actually had something in stock. At the fourth store, they were determined to sell me something. When I found what I wanted, of course, they didn't have it in stock. They went through several mattresses, each progressively more expensive, offering it to me at the same price as the one that I first wanted. By the time they found a mattress in stock, they were offering it to me at less than one-half of its retail price (which gives me a little insight into the markup).

I finally got the mattress set home and we finished Allyse's new bed. When I looked at my little Allyse atop her new bed, I was reminded of the Hans Christian Andersen folktale, The Princess and the Pea (which is the title of this post, in Danish). She truly is a princess.

Under Siege

I was doing some work in the living room when Julene let out a yelp. She was startled by a rather large something crawling on the floor near the laundry room. This spider was about one and one-half inches from tip to tip.

I am not the best at identifying spider species, so I took pictures of it before I separated its spirit from its earthly tabernacle. Living in the desert, I am only concerned about two species of spiders: the ubiquitous black widow and the brown recluse. This was obviously not a black widow, so I Googled the brown recluse. Fortunately, our spider did not fit the profile.

However, looking up the brown recluse, I found the following news story:

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A UC Riverside study shows that where brown recluse spiders are common, people can co-habitate with them and bites are infrequent. The study by Rick Vetter, staff research associate in the department of entomology at UC Riverside and an internationally known expert on spiders, focused on 2,055 brown recluse spiders collected in a Kansas home of a family of four. Despite the abundance of spiders, no one in the family received bites from the potentially dangerous arachnids.

I know the point of the story is that the brown recluse might not be such a big threat, but I kind of lost any possibility of not being completely creeped out when it said the researchers found 2,055 brown recluse spiders in one house. Now I'm a tolerant guy, but I cannot imagine sharing my home with 2,055 brown recluse spiders. I'm pretty sure that I could not sleep another night in that house.

At least we have the comfort that our bug defenses are working, somewhat. We found the beauty below, which was TWO INCHES from tip to tip, stuck in the sticky trap at the corner of our garage door. However, without the trap, we wouldn't have even known such a creature was lurking around in our garage. As it turns out, the trap has probably caused more discomfort than peace of mind. It's kind of like the ocean: if I could actually see what was swimming near me, I would probably spend a lot more time building sand castles!

All I can say is 2,055! I mean, sheeesh, what finally motivated them to take care of the problem.

"Uh, honey, we now have over 2,000 brown recluse spiders in our home. Do you think we should we call an exterminator?"

"Yeah. 1,900 was okay, but over 2,000, well, that's just a few too many."