the spider

I've been instructed to tell you about the spider. Relax. It's neither as scary nor as interesting as it sounds.

There was, when we moved into the casita, something called a junction box lurking up above the living room wall. This junction box had several spiderlike legs extending from it in all directions and also lacked several important safety features such as a cover, wire nuts, and electrical tape, so that, if a real spider or, say, a person, were to crawl into it, they would instantly be crispified.

So, kind of, this junction box was for two years like a giant, villainous arachnid crouched up in the darkness above the living room stroking its venom-filled mandibular appendages while calculating in its infinitely patient way the right time to strike.

But we've nipped that whole fiendishly evil plot in the bud, thank goodness. I know about spiders. I saw Arachnophobia - hands-down the best deadly tropical spider movie starring John Goodman ever made.

Oh...but wait. I am being instructed by the Guatemalan to tell you that the spider I speak of was actually the "heart of the house". As such, the metaphor abruptly becomes even scarier, the spider now more akin to the giant sewer-dwelling spider from Stephen King's made-for-television "It" -

remember that one? Oh, John Goodman, where were you when we really needed you?

Anyway, so the end of the story is, Raphael killed our giant spider. Killed it with one fell swoop and burst triumphantly into the kitchen with its carcass dangling from his hands. And now, as an indirect result, we have light in the living room. You rock on, my handsome Guatemalan. Rock the hell on with your bad junction-box-removing, spider-killing, living room-wiring self.