Creepy crawly

I'm sure my neighbors love me in the morning. All summer I held a morning curfew on the kids, keeping their hullabaloo all to myself. But school has started and all bets are off. Any given morning, rain or shine, they are outside around 8 am. I remind them of being considerate of the people who may still be sleeping. (I used to think this morning monologue fell on deaf ears, but now I realize that Zack, who wakes up early every day, simply can't imagine a world where people sleep past 6 am.) It's a foggy this morning, and a little cold, so I snuck back into the house to grab another cup of coffee. That's when the screaming began. Loud perils of 'MOOOMMMM, MMMOOOMMM' echoed from the driveway. (See, the speech therapy worked, good M sounds.) What now? My Grandma is in the hospital, Greg has pneumonia and my Mom told me this morning that she is experiencing pain in her tweaked knee akin to childbirth (which is a gold standard for rating pain in our family. My Mom and I both had back labor, not the 'it's like cramps' labor, for the record.) I really would like the rest of our small extended family to stay intact. I step outside, berating myself for leaving them unsupervised, as if I am this omnipotent being who stops bike accidents by supreme oogling.

It turns out there is no blood or broken bones. It's the exquisite spider web they found, the first, they agree, of the fall.

Isn't it amazing, Mom.

Just look at the workmanship.

Wow.

Suddenly it's like Christmas in October. And I am not surprised. I love this season. I love the webs and spiders. (I am under the impression that orb weavers stay outdoors to catch juicy morsels, so they are ok by me.) I love pumpkins and their respective patches even more. My love for pumpkins borders on obsession and I can't explain it. It makes me wonder how many other odd things we are passing on to our kids. Greg and I love fiction, fantasy worlds and creepy creatures. They have the complete set of Lord of the Rings action figures. Zack was Frodo for Halloween when he was 2. He couldn't talk, but he had heard the trilogy by then. Lexi plays vampire slayer and can name all the characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So when the kids aren't screaming for me at the bus stop, I wait for the phone call. You know, the one that starts with, "Mrs. Milton, we have some concerns..." It's bound to happen.