this week.

So, this is how this week went down. Sunday, one of our sweet college students gave Nate and I a gift card to The Cheesecake Factory. Yum! So Monday night was date night. Nate was finishing up some work in the kitchen from an afternoon project, and I saw something black on the cabinet/under it. It may have been small, but these eyes are trained to notice anything that does not belong in our house. Spider! We don't have spiders inside very often, and Miles and Otis are pretty good about taking care of crickets and flies and other occasional uninvited guests. But spiders are another story.

Of course, I won't get near them, which is one of the reasons I'm so glad to have Nate. :) He hates spiders too, but he loves me more than he hates them, I think. I directed him to the big bottle of bug spray under the sink. He squeezed the trigger and soaked that sucker … and soaked all the front of the cabinet and probably some of the utensils inside the cabinet, so we pulled those out to be cleaned.

It was just a big black scary spider and it made a dramatic drop to the floor in its final moments before turning over on its back and revealing … THE RED HOURGLASS OF DEATH! That there, folks, is a black widow spider. Neither of us had ever seen one in real life, but a quick Google search confirmed our suspicions. And apparently this is a female, because the males have orange markings on their backs and aren't as dangerous as the red-bellied females.

At this time, we were ready to just burn down the house and move to a new one, but we decided we kind of like having a house to live in, so we went on and enjoyed our evening at The Cheesecake Factory.

Tuesday I came home and got into bed with blankets, my coat, the space heater, and Odie. We still haven't fixed our furnace. Mostly because it's so stinkin' expensive. The space heaters keep us warm, and I'm perfectly comfortable at night with an electric blanket, it's the opening the bedroom door and stepping into 55 degrees on my way to the shower that is hard.

We are hoping to be able to make it through this winter so we have several months to build up a furnace fund. It's frustrating too because our neighbor's furnace is real close to ours and it looks like it's 30 years old! Our looks almost brand new, but the furnace guy said it was 11 years old. The home inspector in 2009 said he thought it was from 2005. So whatev. Fact is, there's a hole in the heat exchanger, and the heat is off.

Thursday I took a Family Care Day so I could be with Nate at Vanderbilt. He had another endoscopy scheduled for Thursday morning. For the last few months, he has been on high dose Prilosec for eosinophilic esophagitis. The bad news is that he is still regurgitating when he eats. The good news is that the photos of his esophagus look way better/normal than last time, so the meds have been helping. They did another biopsy and will wait for those results before deciding what to do next. His doctor said we might have to do an allergy test or some other kind of test to check out how his esophagus works when he swallows.  

The procedure went really fast, like 30 minutes or so. Nate was asleep in recovery when I went back, and as he woke up, he was pretty out of it. I think he was more out of it this time than last time. Last time, he woke up almost right away.

Ha! He will hate me for posting this, but this is the blank stare I got when I said, "Nate, look at me." He asked if he had oxygen in his mouth, and I told him no, it's in your nose. Then he proceeded to tell me about his great grandma Elsa who had oxygen that she carried around everywhere. And his great grandpa Jack who would draw letters and numbers with Nate using a yellow pencil. And Nate would sit on his lap.

Nate also told me he was going to audition for the TV show "Duck Dynasty." I said, "What's that?" And he said, "A beard show." OK, so we've never watched that show because we don't have cable but apparently the characters on the show have big beards, and the male nurse who took Nate back from the waiting room was talking to him about it.

The nurse got Nate to sit up and he slowly mumbled, "I need to work out more." The nurse said, "What?" And he said, "I need to work out more."

She was ready to take his IV out and asked what his favorite color was. "Orange," he said. "For the Denver Broncos." She said she didn't have any orange bandages, so he said blue. She also offered red. So he said, "Not blue, red." The nurse used red and blue bandages to wrap his arm, for KU.

My mom sent us an early Christmas gift: a cat condo! It has a platform on top with a ball attached by a spring. Miles plays with the ball and sharpens his claws, and Odie does that and also gets inside of it. (I think Miles would barely fit.) Otis was sleeping on Nate all day yesterday when Nate got home from Vanderbilt, and when I moved him so Nate could get up, he got in his house.

Just a few more days until we're off for Christmas vacation! This weekend I am planning on doing some crazy cleaning around the house. Like pulling everything out of the kitchen and cleaning like we are moving. I don't want to be overwhelmed by a messy house when we get home and start a new year.