Don't Tread on Me!

As if coming home to a snake wasn't a bad enough omen, it had to be a black one. I came home Sunday from doing a ward audit and find stretched out in all its glory, a black snake just outside our front door, underneath our front window. Its tail was barely touching our steps and its head was pointed away from them. It was a bigger snake than I had seen in a while, I think that is what shocked me the most, to have that big of a snake near our house.

It looked like a bigger version of the snake that Christy had fall on her when we first moved to the area and were moving our stuff into her parents basement. Who'd have thought that a real snake would fall on you from the ceiling inside of a home?! It was in her parents backroom and they didn't have sheetrock on the ceiling, so the snake must've been on top of a pipe or something that was along the floor studs. She screamed when it fell on her...then thinking it couldn't be real and must've been rubber she calmed down slightly, until it slithered away. Her dad and I then tried to capture it, then when that failed, we killed it.

So back to our snake. I thought that I'd have at least a minute to come inside and put my scriptures and papers down that were in my hands. As I hurried back outside, thinking at best it might have moved a foot or so, or not at all, I was somewhat alarmed when I couldn't find it anywhere! My mind raced as to where could a snake that big go to in such a short amount of time? Then I thought of the spaces in the concrete of our stairs outside that would allow a gopher, mouse, or rabbit to burrow under our stairs...and how I'd never seen any gophers, mice, nor rabbits going in and out of those spaces.

This isn't good, I thought. That's the last thing I want is to have a snake in our house. After looking in the bushes and around our house for a few minutes, I hurried inside to do my googling about black snakes in Maryland. Black rat snake, non-poisonous, good climbers, sometimes can find their skin in trees, eats birds, small animals, can burrow in wood piles, mulch, sometimes (rarely) found in peoples ATTICS OR BASEMENTS!!!!

I wouldn't say I'm terrified of snakes. I mean I was ready to get a long stick and somehow maneuver this thing on it and throw it deep in the woods behind our house. However the thought of this thing being in our basement or living under our stairs outside creeps me out. I find myself going into our laundry room which the outside steps connect to, and looking up at our unfinished cieling for a snake that is waiting to drop on me. I keep thinking of what a pansy I have become...or have I always been a pansy? Either way it frustrates me.

So my solution was to go get some dirt and cover up all of the open holes that surround our concrete steps outside and check around it everyday for signs of movement or burrowing. My only hesitation in doing that was that I might trap the snake under the steps and it would find an escape to our laundry room. But the thought of never knowing if anything lived under our steps drove me to my solution. We did have a mouse in our mousetrap downstairs in the laundry room a few weeks ago, that is a good sign. If there's mice in our basement, probably no snakes. Of course I think if there are mice, a snake would have a reason to come inside... I can justify either situation.

Well in looking up black snakes in Maryland on google, somehow it led me to this video which I had seen before, but it was such a relief from the worry of snake hunting that I kept laughing and laughing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUT9eQ90EvM

which led me to one other video that had me going...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0eINGyJHz8&feature=PlayList&p=7269120F5CA72C18&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=7

Light your Face up!

I enjoy learning. I'm not the best student/learner out there, but I do enjoy learning new things and piecing the world together one new thought at a time. So I was reading tonight how we may be too hard on our kindergardeners and pushing too much information on them before they are able to process it. Our oldest starts kindergarden in two more weeks. I can't believe that he will be in school all day, nine to three, five days a week. I want him to be better prepared than I felt I was when I entered school. I remember learning my letters and learning to read in 1st and 2nd grades. It was tough for me and I remember there being different learning groups depending on our reading skills. I wasn't in the top level so I felt like I was behind. Then in 3rd grade I was placed in an "advanced" math class where we were able to advance through the book at our own pace and go ahead of the regular class teachings, so while the teacher was teaching the other students the math lesson, we would just simply have to go to the next lessons and do the problems. This only lasted for a few weeks for me before I was in tears and frustrated because the teacher saw I was falling behind. I felt like a failure.

So tonight after our oldest was done with his bath I decided I'd better introduce him to addition. He's never seen this before and I thought this would be fun to teach him something new, and the surpising thing was, it was fun for both of us! His little face lit up as he saw he could do basic addition on his fingers. He was so excited that he didn't want to read two books for bedtime, he wanted to do math. Of course the thought crossed my mind that I've created a monster...and by monster I mean nerd, but being a nerd is cool these days in this high tech world we live in. When I put him to bed tonight I told him that tomorrow night we could do something called subtraction. He might be too excited to sleep. Seriously.

But I can tell from his response to it that he loves learning new things too. That will be a desire that will serve him well in life. The desire to learn. I'm secretly excited that he is in school because I am selfishly excited to teach him and share in those "light your face" up moments when he learns something new.