Bidding for the movie rights is now open.

Something terrifying and awful happened today, but I had my support team of shoe-wielding sissies with me, so everything worked out. Let's turn back the clock to noonish today...

The kids were done with lunch and I had just put Zoe down for her nap. Betsy was packing some scrap-booking supplies to go spend the rest of the day with a friend. And then she left.

Maybe we turned back further than we needed to. Or farther. Or neither. Doesn't matter. No one knows and no one cares and I'm already pretty sure I've forgotten where I was going with this.

My friend, Eric, came over to hang out for a while since my wife was away and they totally can't stand each other. That's not true. It's a purely one-sided loathing. Well, after the kids had eaten dinner and played around for a while and then were strapped into their beds, Eric and I went out into my garage to watch the very excellent Shaun of the Dead. The evening being very temperate, we decided to leave the garage door open. Then it started raining and the whole thing would have been very romantic except for the very bloody and very funny zombie movie playing on the very large television away from which we were not sitting nearly far enough. Grammar!

At some point a large spider decided that the inside of my garage was more welcoming than the potentially fatal downpour happening outside. So intense was the on-screen action that neither Eric or I noticed Shelob as she dragged her corpulent abdomen across the concrete floor.

The movie ended and Eric and I went back inside. A few minutes later, Betsy returned home, opened the garage door and saw, on the screen door separating the garage from our kitchen, The Beast. She managed to summon the courage to open the door (so brave) and called out in a panicky tremble, "Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi (that's her bedroom name for me)! You're my only hope!" Needless to say, I sprang immediately into action. I grabbed the hilt of the hunting knife I wear hidden on my person at all times and I threw myself onto The Beast, plunging my blade deep into her bile-filled heart. The hot, searing liquid splashed over my arm, blistering my skin instantly, but still I held fast. My quarry, sensing a foe whose strength and determination she had heretofore never encountered, released a shriek which could only have come from a hell filled with long fingernails and blackboards. I wrenched free my knife and savagely hacked off two legs with one, masterful stroke. The Beast stumbled and fell, causing me to tumble off of her back. Using the last of her prodigious strength, she raised herself and fell upon me, baring fangs glistening with an acidic poison which would have no doubt ended my life had I not been so staggeringly muscled and fabulous. I caught The Beast's head between my iron-like hands and rent her skull asunder.

Except that before any of that could happen, Eric grabbed a shoe and smashed the spider on the floor.

Yuck.

But to give you an idea of what we were up against...

That picture is pretty much to scale.

And while you're at it, give Shaun of the Dead a view.

Thank you,
      Matt Beers