Meteors Cool, Black Widows Scary

Last night the kids and I stayed up to watch the Perseids meteor shower. Conditions were just about ideal: no moon (it rose around midnight, after we’d gone to bed), a cool, gentle breeze, and a sky so clear that the stars were amazing all by themselves. I put together an iPod playlist of Music To Watch Meteors By, cooked up a hot drink concoction that involved milk, cocoa, coconut and rooibos tea, and the three of us kicked back on patio chairs in the yard and enjoyed the show. I’d never watched a meteor shower on such a dark clear night before; I was surprised by how bright some of the bigger ones were and how long the dust trails remained visible. It was pretty awesome.

Sadly we are all early-to-bed-early-to-rise types and the kids were dozing off by 10:30, so I didn’t stay out as long as I would have liked. I’ve got the Geminids meteor shower marked on my calender for December, but that one peaks at 2am on a Monday morning during the school year. I may end up watching it by myself.

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This morning Luke needed some duct tape for some project he was working on. I said there might be a roll of it out in the workshop, and he asked me to go with him to look for it so the black widow spiders wouldn’t get him. I told him that he was big enough to watch out for spiders on his own and to just, you know, not get bitten.

A little while later he wandered through wearing his fireman jacket and asked if he could borrow my boots. I started to tell him that all I have are girl boots, but then I decided that it probably didn’t matter for a personal game of fireman and found him one of my old pairs.

Turns out he wasn’t playing fireman, he was putting together a spider-proof outfit so he could go look for the duct tape.

Apparently it worked. No spider bites were incurred.