Saturday night, as I was wrapping up the August 19 edition of the Hesperia Star, Jenn and James dropped by to take me out to dinner. (Peter calculated a few weeks ago that I’ve written more than 1,200 stories for the Hesperia Star. I probably haven’t even composed a tenth that many pages. Assembling the paper is stressful for me.)
James enjoyed the kid zone Sharon has set up at the front counter; when there’s only one person at the paper to handle processing legal ads and classifieds, it’s important that the kids who commonly come in with their parents are quietly occupied. The toys certainly worked for James.
James turned one on Friday and had a birthdaypalooza of a weekend, including a lunchtime birthday party at Ellis Truss (also a celebration of his cousin Kasey’s 3rd birthday), Saturday at Knott’s Berry Farm (concentrating on their Camp Snoopy kid’s area) and then a Sunday cookout at the home of Beatriz Valenzuela-Davalos, the editor of Fresh !nk, celebrating her birthday.
Monday’s part of the celebration was less fun: He got his one year vaccination shots. You can’t win them all.
The good news is that James is mobile, enthusiastically so.
The bad news is that James is still toddler-clumsy and the edge of a coffee table hurts, even if you’re less than two feet tall and trip. Still, he’s a toughie: He cried for less than 60 seconds and then was off and running again.
The other night Jenn woke me from a sound sleep to go look at this creature in the garage. She had been doing laundry and looked up and saw this “huge spider” crawling on the wall. I sleepily confirmed it wasn’t a spider and was harmless (thanks, believe it or not, to reading a Dungeons & Dragons adventure when I was in middle school — oh, Gary Gygax, your influence extends in so many directions) and went back to bed.
We apparently have these solifugids breeding somewhere nearby. We found a beaten-up one inside, and didn’t know if it was a scorpion or what. Last night, I figured out what was happening: Dainty little Hanna, who sits politely on the back porch when we let the cats go outside, is bringing them in from the garage to torture and kill.
They’re harmless, and pose no danger to James or the cats (or Jenn). They sure are creepy-looking, though. Ours don’t have the large mandibles that camel spiders have, but are about three to four inches long, including their 10 thick legs.
I’m guessing that Hanna will have cleaned all of them out before the Orkin man next comes around to keep the black widow population from coming back.
