Spinskees and Happiness

Spinkees are spiders. I have this desire to cute-speak everything – even things that creep me out. I remember being newly engaged to my husband and as I waved my parents away from the house, I turned to face a spider.

‘Eek! Spinskee!’

‘Did you just say “spinskee”?’

‘Uh oh.’

I’d like to say he was surprised but in reality he grinned all-knowingly, with eyebrows raised. Perhaps he didn’t know I called them spinskees, but he knew might. He knew I would.

Some months later,  I text him:

‘There’s a spinskee on the loose in the house!’

It was a huntsman. They’re quite gentle but large spiders and I believed it could wait for capture-and-release when he got home. I believed that until it disappeared.

The only thing worse than a spider in the house is a missing spider and after moving serveral pieces of furniture I found it behind a bookcase. By the time my husband arrived home, I had it secured by a fishbowl vase and fixed against the wall with books. I’d completely rearranged the house around the spider.

After marriage and our own home, one evening, I took a bath. I pulled the face-washer from the edge of the bath, dunked it in the water and ran it up my leg. A spider crawled out.

I squealed and flung the face-washer to one end of the bath while I cowered at the other. Now, I’m not completely useless with spiders. When I know they’re there I can handle them, I just struggle when they surprise me. So as a moment passed, I wondered how I would deal with the spider that now emerged leg by leg onto the floating face-washer. I could hear my mother’s wisdom, ‘It’s as scared as you are.’

I relaxed a little.

My husband appeared, ‘Are you alright?’

‘Yeah, there’s a spinskee.’ I paused, ‘Did you hear me squeal?’

He nodded.

‘Did you wait for a commercial before you came?’

His eyes went wide and panicked, ‘Mayyyybe.’