How Not to Wake Up Your Husband

Just to warn those who prefer peaceful scenes, this story includes a bloodcurdling shriek followed by a series of ominous footsteps.

I had woken up early and begun work on the porch that I was in the process of painting bright green. I knew Angel would be sleeping a few more hours, and it was my intention to have a completely painted porch to show him when he woke up. I had completed all of the edging the day before, so I was able to begin rolling right away. I set up my computer in the porch so that I could listen to the online radio while I worked. I knew that the sound of the radio wouldn’t travel as far as our bedroom at the back of the house, so I had no worries that the music would disturb Angel’s sleep.

Those who have painted know that rolling is the fast part of the job. I was already halfway done with the room when I turned around to re-coat my roller with paint, and was confronted with a spider hanging by a thread directly in front of my face. Now, this was no ordinary spider, of which I had encountered many during the course of my porch project. This spider was larger than any I’d seen outside of a zoo or movie. Its spindly legs were nearly as long as my pinky finger, and it was dangling mere inches away from my face. I followed the only logical course of action that occurred to me at the moment: I screamed and made a mad dash to the laundry room, where I knew I would be safe.

 I had no sooner made it to the shelter of the laundry room when I heard running footsteps approaching the porch. Oh no! I had woken Angel up. I met him at the door of the porch with heartfelt apologies, nervous that he would be angry when he heard that all the commotion was due to a spider. He told me later that, in the time it took him to jump out of bed and run to the porch, he had already decided that my scream meant that I had fallen (once more) from the chair I had been standing on for my painting project. He had also determined that he would ban me from all future painting projects for the rest of my life, because of my lack of attention to safety. My Angel still barely had his eyes open as he gallantly agreed that the spider was exceptionally large and killed it for me. He then decided that he might as well get in on the painting too, and assisted me in finishing the room. What a good husband I have! Still, I think that in the future I ought to keep my screams to a low volume during the wee hours of the morning.