The Twin Evils

Himself has had a rough week.

He has a raging, nearly psychotic, hormonal wife who goes from blissfully happy and calm to agonizingly difficult and weepy in 6.5 seconds flat. Add to that that she is up multiple times at night to traipse through the house in search of the little girls' room, her turning over in bed requires either a crane or a lot of rummaging, huffing, puffing and general sleep disturbance and the fact that she is in pain, which means being touched anywhere is liable to start the 6.5-second transition from stable wife to homonal maniac instantly.

He's getting no peace or sleep.

On top of that, there are the reappearance of the Twin Evils. There are two things Himself dislikes more than anything else: Heat and Spiders.

Problem #1: The upstairs neighbors (where the thermostat is located) are on vacation. Their adult children (who practically live there), dutifully watching over the fort while they are gone, saw no need to keep the A/C on while their parents are away. This was last week, during the hot, humid portion of The Frontier summer. On Thursday evening, the temperatures reached 92 degrees INSIDE the Hobbit Hole after 4 days of no air conditioning.

Himself was miserable. (Heck, me, the queen of "I grew up in a desert, heat doesn't bother me" was miserable - for some reason, my body fails to cool itself down since when pregnant - if I get hot, I stay hot for a good, long time).

The landlord rescued us and we enjoyed two days of blissfully cool air inside the Hobbit Hole. Saturday night, the watchdogs, er, children, came back. Off went the A/C again (still trying to figure out if they thought it just turned itself on without help?!). The weather IS cooler this week - by 10 degrees or so - but last night, after 2 days of no A/C and Himself finding the need to bake his potatoes at 425 degrees, we were miserable again. (Cooking in the oven is hereby banned until the solution is resolved - we don't need to CREATE any more heat!)

Himself tossed and turned all night. I frantically thought, "Oh no - my water broke!" every single time I woke up - a result of the volumes of sweat Himself and I were producing in our sleep. It was not a good night.

The neighbors have been gone for 10 days. No one knows when they are returning.

Problem #2: The Hobbit Hole had a visit from the exterminator, who sprayed the entire perimeter for spiders. Unfortunately, while the long-term solution means fewer spiders, the short-term solution means an influx in the 8-legged monsters, who then have the gall to up and die in inconvenient places. (Due to Himself's irrational near-phobia of spiders, I am the only spider-killer in residence - try not to laugh as you picture places where spiders dwell and a 9-months-pregnant lady trying to contort her body in such a way she can reach and smoosh said intruders).

Last night, for the first time in weeks, I found two spiders. Himself, already driven to near insanity by his wife and the stifling heat, nearly threw up his hands and retracted an earlier statement in which he said, "I'm really happy here. I like The Frontier." Instead he calmly retreated to the den and shut himself in, telling me he'd come out when I had disposed of the spdiers.

Yes indeed, Himself has had a very rough week. Bad enough, I've almost stopped wishing that men knew what it was like to be pregnant. He has enough on his plate at the moment. Poor guy.