A Series of Unfortunate Events

It seems like the greater forces of the country of Cambodia read my last blog post. They sensed that I was growing overly satisfied with my grasp of the country and its unique flaws. These forces conspired to rip me out of my peaceful, storybook existence and plunge me into the depths of the worst it has to offer. Okay, perhaps I am being overly dramatic, but I shall allow you to decide that for yourself.

On Friday, as usual, Jeff and I headed out to Sharpey Shack, our local floating shack at the end of our road. It belongs to Dom, but has been adopted by all of us. Since the second year, our staff has gone there just about every Friday afternoon for a few beers, to take in the sunset and exchange stories about the week. We decompress and come together for a couple hours, because during most of the week, we move in parallel lines, barely getting the time to talk. Sharpey's has become a very special place for us -- in fact, at our wedding, we had four specially themed tables, representing four of the most important and formative places in our life: Sharpey Shack was one of them. My friend Caitlin handmade gorgeous needlepoint images of each place; below is the one for the Shack. You can ask anyone who has been there, it's spot on.

Okay, we had a few cocktails at the wedding.

Needless to say, Sharpey Shack has never let me down. Sure, it's old and rusty and creaky. The bridge is often perilous to walk across. Depending on the level of the river and how far away it is from the shore, we might have to walk through some garbage to get there...but really, it's a special place. (Aren't I selling it well?) Anyway, it's one of my happy places. However, on this particular Friday, as I sat on a chair overlooking the river, chatting casually with two of our new staff members, Jan and Karen, I noticed a quick movement out of the corner of my left eye. Upon further inspection, I saw that there was a palm-sized, brown spider on one of the metal roof supports. It was just inches from Richard, another new staff member. Richard happens to have quite the large beard, and I could immediately sense that our spidey friend (enemy) was itching to bury its disgusting, octo-legged body into that thick mass of hair. So, I screeched, and pointed it out to Karen, who used to be an Alaskan park ranger, and she offered to switch chairs with me. She's a keeper. Richard did not seem particularly alarmed; he actually stayed in exactly the same place. Neither did Karen, who met her husband while he was being chased by a three-legged bear -- Jan was running, she was laughing. So I don't think this spider business was the worst she's seen. Karen promised to keep an eye on it for me, because obviously the spider you see and then lose track of is ten times worse than the spider you can watch from a distance.

My pulse had quickened, and my heart had picked up (are those two things the same...? I never know..), but I was okay. Although Karen had promised to babysit Spidey, I wasn't taking any chances. I stared at that thing as the sun went down and it got a little darker. I tried to keep up a conversation, but I am pretty sure I wasn't making any sense. I was distracted. A few minutes later, a bat flew through the Shack, whipping past my head. No problem. I actually like bats -- they eat mosquitos and never stick around for long. I was hoping he had come along to eat Spidey, but alas, the thing was still perched in the same position. I heard Jan say "Damn, did you see that bat," and I agreed that I had. But wait...did he say bat? I eyed Jan, who is incredibly laid back and an eternal optimist, just to confirm that he had, indeed, meant to say bat. Because it sounded suspiciously like he had said rat. He smiled and said...wait for it..."yeah, rat." That couldn't be right. Matt assured me he was joking. I drew my knees up onto my chair, just in case, and pacified myself with the thought that there couldn't be a rat on Sharpey's because rats can't swim and we were floating, so it would have had to use the bridge, but rats aren't smart enough for that, and why would it want to be around people in such a small space, etc.

Right around this time, Spidey flexed a leg at me, and gave me an evil smile that it was too dark to see. So yeah, it was really dark at this point. My heart was picking up a pretty good pace and I was remembering that Jeff never did that whole "carry his bride across the threshold" thing and that perhaps this would be the time to invoke that right. He could just pick me up and carry me right off the Shack, not letting me touch the ground until we were back home. Good plan.

Just as I started to explain said plan to my husband, a huge, brown, skinny-tailed rat ran between my chair and Karen's and I absolutely lost my shit. I think I temporarily blacked out, because all I can remember thinking is: "is it dark enough that people aren't going to see that I just burst into tears over a rat?" and "why isn't everyone else screaming and jumping onto a chair?"

This is not a drill, people. This is my real life.

The rat ran around everyone on the Shack, probably bearing its fangs and sharpening its claws as it went, before disappearing into the edges of darkness near the bar. I found that I had pretty much jumped into Matt's lap and was choking down panic. Now, let me interrupt myself here for a quick second to explain that I am currently about 700 pages into Shantaram, a 900-page novel about India that has absorbed me so completely that it takes all of my willpower to not think and talk about it exclusively. It has, without a doubt, taken first place as the best book I have ever read. In the book, the main character is living in an Indian slum that houses over 25,000 people, and is coming home late one night with his girlfriend, by means of a pitch black alleyway. Big mistake. They hear something, and before they can react, they are pushed flat against the wall, unable to move or make a sound, as a cascade of thousands of cat-sized rats roll through on their nightly excursion from one sewer exit to another sewer's entrance. Apparently everyone in the slum knows about this and knows to stay inside their houses when it happens. Now, to be clear, this book is insane. It details everything from war to torture, imprisonment to dog fights. There is a scene with a bear. Lots of awful enslavement of people in brothels, poverty, prisons and other atrocious circumstances. I don't know what this says about me, but I want to be honest here: the scene with the rats was almost more than I could bear. It was the worst thing I read in that entire 700 pages. I was almost nauseated, imagining myself pressed up against a slum wall as swarms of chittering, slithering rats ran over my feet. If it were me, I would not have been able to stay still. I would have run and screamed and been eaten to death by rats -- the end.

That night, when we got home from the Shack, I was sitting on the couch next to Jeff, looking at wedding pictures, still feeling pretty jumpy. I reached for my water bottle when a dust clod fell from the ceiling and got picked up by the fans in the room. I screamed. I was ashamed, and Jeff immediately told me it was dust and to get over it, but let's just say I took half a sleeping pill that night.

Saturday occurred without incident.

Sunday morning, with 24 rodent-free hours on the books, I started to feel like maybe this was just a one time thing. I had paid my rat dues. I mean, I am no idiot, I know there are rats everywhere. I get that. I live in a huge city full of trash piles, and when it gets dark, the rats come out. Okay. I just don't want to see them or feel them or have to look at their ugly little faces and tiny, hideous paws, or know they exist. Too much to ask?

Anyway, it was about 7am, and I didn't have my contacts in, so I could only see about two feet in front of me, and I wandered into the bathroom. Without oversharing too much, I grabbed the toilet paper and out from the center of the roll jumped A MASSIVE SPIDER. Let me repeat that: I am at my most vulnerable, pretty much unable to see, and still in what I like to call "my sleep zone," and a freaking spider launched itself from inside of something that was IN MY HAND.

I then leapt out of the bathroom and screamed for Jeff. I will end the scene there, but let me assure you, justice was eventually achieved. And Jeff made me consolation French toast.

I remember being in high school English class and learning about "coming of age" and a "loss of innocence" and all that. I never knew what it meant until this weekend. That is all.

Now, to wash the taste of rats out of your mouth, here are some pictures of me and Jeff looking slamtastic at our wedding.

Paul, Josh, Liam, Michael, David -- Kate, Claire, Lindsay, Bridget and Cara

Griff, Tom, Mom, Granny, Dad, Liz, Ben, Tyler, Kate -- Barbara, Ashley, Ben Fox, Michael, David and Bob