Memories (installment 17)

We came home to our cute little duplex with our 2 children. I loved the little duplex...until the landlord decided that he had to do some upgrades before he could sell the place.

The main thing that the landlord decided to do was to spray they duplexes for bugs. Now I had already had trouble with bug sprays, giving me migraines, achy joints and "brain fog", so I was NOT happy about this. He did not, however, have them spray INSIDE the houses. Rather, they sprayed UNDERNEATH all of the duplexes. Of course, bugs and spiders will run away from things that threaten them....so where were they to go? UP INTO OUR SPACE.

Yup, all of those lovely buggies and spiders decided they would rather share the space with us than to die down in the crawlspace under the house. So we had brown recluse spiders move in with us. Oh, we didn't know it....until Jason got bitten....on the chest....right over his heart. Then, he got bitten again.

And then we moved.

But some of the spiders went with us....so I got bitten, and Frances, who would have been about 2 years old at this point, also was bitten, and developed a terrible case of boils...and I had boils. And let me tell you, boils are M.I.S.E.R.A.B.L.E. They HURT. But then so do the brown recluse bites.

So, in the midst of the spiders, we moved to a trailer park outside of town where several friends were living. We were in a two-bedroom trailer...it was another BUG place. It was I.N.F.E.S.T.E.D. with cockroaches...the little German cockroaches....the ones that multiple at the rate of 12,000 per week. Yeah. It was GROSS. And the septic tank's drainage field? It didn't DRAIN. It sat in a puddle in our yard.

During that time, I was working for an industrial construction company. It was a DREAM job...I was an executive secretary to the regional manager. Of course, there were only two of us who were ever in the office. I LOVED that job.

One day, however, I ended up going home early because I had a migraine. Jason was off for the day, and had taken the kids and the laundry to his mom's to wash laundry. I went home and went to bed. Before lunch. I had been asleep for about an hour when the phone rang and woke me up.

It was some guy I didn't know...saying he was a nurse from the hospital. Ummm...okay...what's going on? "Your husband asked me to call. He's okay, but he can't come to the phone because he's with the children." I was INSTANTLY awake.

I headed over to the hospital to find out what was going on, and to get my family. It seems that it had been raining, and Jason was driving our 1988 Ford Bronco home from his mom's place. Frances was asleep in the back seat, and Jon was in his carseat. The Bronco hydroplaned and hit the center barrier, and FLIPPED over, landing on its top in the pouring rain in the middle of the interstate. Jason was able to crawl out, and got Frances out, and went back to get Jon....and found him sitting in his carseat on the side of the road. My laundray was spread all over the road. Jason's bad knee had popped out of joint from the impact, and he was hobbling around picking up laundry. The kids were fine...Frances had a little scrape on her forehead, but other than that, they were uninjured. Jason didn't say anything at the hospital about his knee. He was used to it causing problems, and just wanted to go home.

About a month later I found out I was pregnant again.