They're baaaack...

And so begins my annual avoidance of the back yard. This guy just came out, and I know all of his snake friends are on their way, ready to swarm my yard and give me nightmares.

Although unlike that other terrible terrible time, I was warned (by Aidan) of his presence while I was safely inside. He was definitely sluggish, but it's not long before he's ready to party and bite my toes off or strangle my neck. (What? That's not what "harmless" black snakes do? Tell that to my nightmares, and the fact that we definitely have copperheads lurking as well.)

Maybe I need to adopt a honey badger? ☺

via

iPhone photo dump {week 17}

 

Highlights:

• The boys had their last tennis lesson last Saturday. They both really improved their skills, but Logan was glad for it to be over because he started to get bored with it. I think Adam's going to start taking them out to practice on their own more regularly now though. 
• Last weekend Adam and I made a Mediterranean pizza and it was amazing. Party in my mouth, for real. 
• Lorelai's summer clothes are so friggin' cute. Love!
• We've had a few dance parties this week. Lorelai and Daddy danced :)
• Lorelai's been in a much better mood in the evenings this week, yay! (She's still really clingy to me though.)
• We've got a family of bunnies in our back yard. I think they live under our deck and they come out all the time to eat our grass. The kids love looking for them every night. Me, I'm kind of worried they're going to get eaten by the snakes.
• My birthday! 
• Some work friends took me out for sushi on Thursday.
• Logan made me an awesome pop up card at school, and when he gave it to me, he was so proud, it totally made me cry. Logan and Aidan also played the guitar and sang me a song for my present, which was awesome. Again, they were so proud of themselves. (Logan is really into the guitar lately, we'll probably need to look into lessons for him.)

Lowlights:

• Speaking of my birthday, Aidan was in a terrible mood on Friday morning and refused to wish me a happy birthday at first. Logan called him out on it so they got into a fight and Aidan got sent to his room. Luckily, Lorelai was more than willing to cheer him up, so we had do over and it was all good.
• And speaking of snakes, I had a nightmare about them the other night. Since I hate snakes (a lot), it was very disturbing. Those types of dreams where you wake up, heart pounding, with the heebie-jeebies SUCK!

It was a pretty great week! How was yours?

Linking up with a good life.

Adventures with snakes, the prequel

In addition to the run in I had with snakes earlier this week, we've had a couple of other close encounters of the slithery kind that have perpetuated my fear of SNAKES(!).

A few years ago in the winter, we were sitting down to eat dinner. Logan and I were already at the table, Aidan was in the bathroom washing his hands, and Adam was bringing our food to the table. As Adam walks over to the table, he sees what he initially thinks is a toy snake, on the floor next to Logan's chair. You can see where this is going, right? NOT A TOY! A frickin' REAL SNAKE had wondered into our warm house through our patio door which we'd inadvertently left slightly ajar for who knows how long.

I immediately jumped up in my chair screaming and crying like a crazy person. I yelled to Aidan to stay in the bathroom and close the door, while Adam frantically tried to figure out what to use to get the snake out. I think Logan was 2 at the time so he was buckled into his booster chair, but somehow I managed to turn his chair away from the snake.  Oddly, despite my hysteria, Logan turned around and waved to the snake. I probably would have found it cute, if I hadn't been freaking out so bad.

Fortunately the snake was very lethargic since it was winter, so it didn't go far while Adam found they boys' toy bug net to corral the snake outside. He ended up killing it (I begged him to) because we didn't know whether it was poisonous. Plus, I didn't want him to come back and bring all his snake friends with him. Yes, I actually said that to Adam.

Turns out it was an eastern kingsnake, so not poisonous, but I'm not any less freaked out that it was IN.OUR.HOUSE!

Eastern Kingsnake (source)

I'm not even sure I finished dinner. Instead I pulled all the cushions of the couches, had Adam lift up each couch, and I pulled back all the covers on every single bed before I was convinced that there were no more snake surprises waiting for me.

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The next run-in with snakes at our house fortunately wasn't by me. We were having our exterior house painted and gutters cleaned a couple of springs ago. One of the painters was at the top of his ladder cleaning out the gutters on our two-story house when a snake jumped out and scared him so bad that he literally almost fell off the ladder. His supervisor said he's never seen a man come down off a ladder so quickly. They never finished cleaning the gutters (understandable) and it took us until this winter to finally get someone to finish cleaning them (bad homeowners!).

The irony is that I was talking to the painters that very morning about them having to leave the front door open while the paint on it dried (it was going from blue to red so they needed to do several coats). I said I was worried that a snake may wonder into the house based on my previous experience of leaving doors open and snakes wondering in. He basically looked at me like I was crazy for being so paranoid and said he seriously doubted a snake would come anywhere near them or the house. Famous last words...

But yeah, I totally worried that we had snakes in our attic that got in from the gutters. (I'm still hoping we don't—I never actually checked).

BTW, the snake in the gutter escaped so fast down the downspout and out of the yard that the painter never got a good look at what kind it was. Not sure if copperheads are good climbers or not, but we're kind of assuming (hoping) it was "just" a black snake.

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I wouldn't be surprised if googling snakes for this post give me more nightmares tonight. Maybe I need therapy...

I'm never going outside ever again. Ever ever ever.

And after Aidan witnessed my complete meltdown, I'm not sure he'll ever go out again either. Parenting fail? Oops.

I should preface this by saying I have a very intense fear of snakes (no matter whether they're poisonous or not), although ideally I'd like to not pass that fear along to my kids (a healthy respect, of course; intense fear, not good).

So Tuesday afternoon, I went out to the back porch for a minute with my camera while Aidan stayed inside to do his homework.

The scene: our back patio and deck

I closed the patio door behind me (which I don't always do because it's a PITA to open/close) and took a step up onto the deck when a SNAKE (I have to type it like I'm yelling it because that's how I feel when I think about them) slithered past me towards the patio door under the grill. Thank goodness I closed the patio door because he might have accidentally gone into the house!

That's about how close it was to me (the grill is directly to the right of the chair)

So naturally I screamed like a crazy person and ran to the far side of the deck, where I promptly look over and see ANOTHER SNAKE slithering into the wood pile by the fence away from the deck.

Duh, wood pile=snake haven. We have plans to move it ASAP to work on our flower bed.

.

I'm terrified because there are SNAKES! ALL AROUND ME! (oh the drama) and I can't get back into the house through the back patio door because in my mind, the SNAKE under the grill is going to jump out and get me. I know, I know, they're supposedly more scared of me than I am of them (WHATEVER, I'll give 'em a run for their money in the scared as crap department) but you never know when you're going to encounter a stupid snake who runs into you our your house in the process of getting away, or a very angry snake who's pissed because his last meal got away from him and your cute little pink toes look like a yummy replacement. Yes, this stuff goes through my head.

Trapped outside!

So I decided to walk all the way around to the front of the house for Aidan to let me in. That is, until I saw ANOTHER SNAKE(!!!) in the flower bed, coiled up with his head up, looking at me, plotting his strike (I think he was the "pissed cause his meal got away" variety).

I wish I had thought to get a picture of the snake coiled up and staring at me,
but I was too busy being hysterical.

Unfortunately, I'm in near hysterics at this point and Aidan is witnessing the whole thing. I'm trying to talk him into opening the patio door for me so I can make a running leap into the house and close the door quickly behind me, but he's too scared to open it. (Hmmm, wonder why?!?)

Between the SNAKE to my right, the SNAKE to my left and the SNAKE in front of me, I had to get out of there so I made a mad dash inside. I had a sick-to-my-stomach feeling from getting so startled and scared, and it took me a while to calm down. By the time I calmed down, I just happened to look out on the patio and saw a SNAKE frickin' AGAIN!

I was so traumatized that I had several nightmares about snakes that night. I'd wake myself up, heart pounding and freaking out, only to go back to sleep and have more nightmares. It was bad for realz.

For the record, these were the "harmless" black snakes, so at least we weren't dealing with copperheads (which Adam has killed in our yard, BTW) and I know they serve a purpose so I'm not on a mission to hunt them down or kill them or anything. I just want them out of my yard and I don't want them on the kids' playset.

It looked like this black rat snake (source)

Also for the record, despite my title, I did go back outside to take pics for the blog (do I get points for dedication to the blog? No? They'd probably be cancelled out by my lack of blogging lately anyway...) but I did carry a big stick and banged on the grill with it to make sure nothing was hiding under there.

I'm ready to fend off any snakes that try to attack!

PS: I know our flower bed, yard and "grass" look like crap, but we've got terrible soil so aerating and reseeding has failed twice for us. I had plans to get out there and weed, patch seed and create a new flower bed, but based on the SNAKE incident, I can't say I'm all that motivated to get out there...