My mother killed Big Red last night. Of all the epic battles fought in my house (like The Ongoing War of Getting My Mother to Stop Leaving the Bathroom Door Open When She Goes, or The Battle of “Quit Putting Balled-Up Socks in the Laundry”, or The Perilous Attempt At Cleaning Out The Freezer, which ended in retreat) this will go down as the greatest.

It began months ago, on an evil day. I’d gotten up that morning (way too early for my bum ass), wincing from the bruises on aforementioned bum ass from the previous night’s spectacular demonstration of grace (one of my many): falling down the stairs with two (count ‘em) glasses of liquid in my hand, both of which splattered the walls as I came crashing down. It must be a record of clumsiness from the clumsiest girl in the cosmos to spray a drink on both sides of the wall. What’s more, I was getting up early so that I could fail my driver’s exam (which I did in record time, five full seconds), then go to work for Satan’s worst fear who I quit working for not long after. Other little nuggets of bad day non-cheer were sprinkled through, general nastiness and rotten luck that leaves you able to cheer yourself up only by saying, “At least I’m not a quadriplegic with an itchy nose”.

But the more disgusting of my bad day tasks was this: taking on a battalion of teacup-sized spiders in my basement, a task for none but the Orkin man in his gas-masked, spray-canned, titanium-suited glory.