Freaking Out

It was a normal, mundane Sunday afternoon until it took a turn into the dark side. The day started innocently enough. It was rainy and cool (for us) and we were taking advantage of this by having baked potatoes for dinner.

We had a bag of baking potatoes left on the counter from the last time we used them. I opened up the bag and pulled out two potatoes. My eyes focused on the second one because it has a lot of sprouts on it. Then all of a sudden one of the biggest spiders I've seen in recent memory crawled over the potato, across the counter and into the abyss of our cluttered play room. This thing was a huge mama -- literally as it was carrying a sack of babies on its underside.

Now I'm not one to scream at little things. I really don't even scream on roller coasters, it's more of a hysterical laugh. But when the thought that this spider was thisclose to me and that I actually reached into the bag and might have even unknowingly touched it finally sunk into my shocked brain, I let out a scream.

Then I yelled out something like, "Come here! Huge spider, huge spider!" Tom and Noah, who were in the office, came running into the kitchen. Now the level of hysteria was threefold. We all put on shoes and crept into the play room.

I was fully prepared to go into the creepiest battle I've ever experienced. I figured that spider ran for its life and just kept going until it got into a nice hidey hole (an opening between Noah's plethora of small Happy Meal size toys). I was ready to start pushing things aside with a long stick until something moved on its own.

To my pleasant surprise, Tom spotted the mama hanging upside down on the edge of the counter. Noah, being a typical 5-year old boy wanted to get a close look. We had to keep pulling him back. He was trying to find a sufficient toy to wrestle that spider. He grabbed his bug vacuum, but the batteries were run down and the opening was not big enough.

Then Tom said, "Get the vacuum."

I have to admit, I wasn't sold on this idea at first. But I knew what motivated him...using the vacuum's hose would allow for a sufficient distance between he and the 8-legged monster when contact was made. He doesn't like spiders any more than I do.

I prepped the vacuum. The canister was emptied so we would be able to detect if our mission was a success. The cord was plugged in, the hose extended and handed to Tom with a surgeon assistant's precision.

Then I noticed the size of the opening on the metal hose. "That thing is not going to fit through this," I said.

"Oh, yes it will. This Dyson has a strong suction and the force will pull it through." My stomach tightened at the image.

"Here we go!" he exclaimed. "Watch the canister! Watch the canister!" (note: hysteria in his voice).

He pushed the purple 'on' button and we immediately heard a vlump! The spider was sucked up and took a 2 second ride down our 4-foot vacuum hose. I was amazed at how much sound that sucker made as it traveled into the bowels of our vacuum.

At first I didn't see it in the canister, but I knew it had to be in there somewhere. We shone a flashlight on it and there in the back was the stunned monster lying on its back. Its remaining legs curled inward and its torso shined in the light. The egg sac had been obliterated on the ride down the hose and the spider lost a couple of legs.

We relished in our success for a few minutes before we emptied the canister into the kitchen garbage can right on top of a Wendy's soda glass. Now, if I had been thinking clearly, I would have taken a picture. A victory picture, so to speak. But it wasn't until after Tom disposed the garbage bag into the outside trash can that it donned on me that I missed a big photo op.

I might have been freaking out with my heart racing a mile a minute, but I was still able to realize a blog-worthy picture moment had slipped away. It would have been a wonderful image to capture -- a dead spider upside down next to the very potato it crawled over. Wait a minute...you weren't expecting me to eat that potato, were you?

Goodbye Aloha

If you go to Aloha Airlines website, you will receive a message that I find kind of chilling: "Sorry....after more than 60 years of serving Hawaii, Aloha Airlines is no longer operating". This might not be big news on the Mainland, but it has occupied much of Hawaii's news this week.

So what does this mean for Hawaii? It means 1,900 people lost their jobs. Some of the people who lost their jobs were married with small children. It means thousands of stranded travelers scrambling to find a way to their destination. Four days after the announcement the newspaper showed pictures of people still waiting to fly home. It means Hawaiian residents now only have two airlines to choose from when flying to the other islands. One of these airlines, go! Mesa, has been struggling financially for a long time.

The other surviving airline here is Hawaiian Airlines, which is the #1 airline serving the Hawaiian islands. When Aloha announced they were closing, they stepped up and allowed travelers with Aloha tickets to fly standby with them. Since priority was given to these individuals, that meant that any Hawaiian employee who wanted to use their benefit of flying free via stand-by were out of luck. This unfortunate set of circumstances affected our friends, Marty and Heather. Heather works for Hawaiian Airlines and they had arranged for Marty's parents to fly stand-by from California to Honolulu for free. When news of Aloha's closure was publicized, they had to fork over $1,000 to fly them here. Ouch.

The last flight operated by Aloha was from Kahului, Maui to Honolulu. The news camera showed people coming off the plane with leis and tears sliding down their cheeks. When I watched this on tv I couldn't help but think that this could have been us. We flew from Kahului to Honolulu just eleven days prior. What if we had been some of the unfortunate ones stranded in Maui for days? I suppose there could be worse things.... after all, it's not like being stranded in Chicago during a blizzard.

And now ATA is closing down. Unlike Aloha, they didn't even give a warning that this was coming. I felt bad for all the people who were flying with them and got the news from a posted letter at the abandoned check-in counters. I saw on the news that a couple had to pay $2,000 to get home. They might have had a fantastic time here in Hawaii, but those memories will forever be tarnished because after their wallets were emptied from vacationing here, they had to dig deeper in their pockets just to leave. The way ATA handled things left me with a bad taste in my mouth. They might have flown into Hawaii, but they certainly didn't have Hawaii's aloha spirit.