August 27, 2022 - News Post

I have very shiny fingernails today.

For the past 4 years, I've lived in Hawaii. Anyone who's lived here can tell you: There's the dream of vacationing here, and the waking reality of living here. My fingernails were caused by the latter.

…

Like most people living the dream here in Hawaii, I spent last night indoors watching TV and playing with Legos. We don’t get to do this all that often. It was nice. My wife sat next to me, occasionally texting comments on the show we've already seen. This was supposed to be a dinnertime activity, but it dragged on well into the night. It was awesome.

After taking our traditional 11pm break to do dishes and bring in laundry from outside, we settled back in for round two in front of the TV. As soon as the show started, however, my wife rudely interrupted things.

She did this by letting out a blood curdling scream.

Now, Shannon has a strong disposition. She's often braver than myself. It's unusual for her to start screaming like this, at least at 11pm. After more than a few seconds, she kept screaming. I set my Legos down and walked over to find out what the deal was.

“What's going on?” I asked.

Screams.

“What's happening?” I prodded gently.

“It's on me it was crawling on me. It was crawling on me. I threw it.”

I sighed. “What? A spider? A lizard?”

“A centipede.” She said, pale and shaking.

Now, scolopendra centipedes are a terrifying threat here in Hawaii. They are venomous, aggressive, and unfortunately, common all throughout the islands. Living near the jungle, we've found more than a few in the house and several outside. EVERYONE here has a centipede story.

“Bullshit.” I said, reading the room. “Are you sure it wasn't your own hair?”

By that time, Shannon was already in the shower. First, she interrupted the TV. Then she ignored me. Quite rude.

Although I had nothing to go on except her word that something crawled on her, we started a search. We tore the house apart. We found lizards, bugs, and a whole lot of mess left by one of us when he cleaned out his desk. We overturned furniture and emptied shelves.

Without finding that centipede, Shannon assured me, we would not be sleeping. We looked for two hours. Not once did I get to sit back down and play with my Legos. It was very selfish of her.

Finally, we decided to lie in wait. This strategy, unfortunately, did not end well for the centipede (it turned out to be real, after all). Seeing some of the lights dimmed and hearing the commotion die down, the biggest freaking centipede I’ve ever seen darted up the wall in the corner and tried to slip into the cracks between cupboards. It was about 8” long and at least 2” wide.

Before my wife could interrupt me like she did the TV show, I grabbed the vacuum and sucked our little friend up. With several large “thunk” sounds, it made its way down the tube.

I don’t enjoy what I did. Truly. It’s not the centipede's fault it’s creepy, but these things are aggressive, and I didn't see a safe way to get it back outside. The vacuum bag is now inside another bag inside our freezer. I’ll probably keep it there until we have house guests.

To top things off, Shannon refused to go back to calmly watching TV in the dark. One giant centipede crawling down her shirt and she stops our whole night. So inconsiderate.

After a somewhat restless night, she held the evening over my head all day until I promised to do something fun with her today. Something new. Something different. Something relaxing.

So we both got manicures and pedicures.

…

And this brings me back to my shiny nails. I’m quite pretty from the wrist down.

This was a first for me. It was a weird feeling, having someone pamper me like that. My nails are neater than I've ever seen them, and my feet are smooth, clean, and soft. Shannon must've been impressed with my beauty because she stopped shaking and seemed to calm down for the first time since last night.

The manicure/pedicure has “cure” in the name for a reason. Things seem nice now. I admit, begrudgingly, it was a relaxing time. Even for me.

It's nice to pamper yourself, I suppose, once in a while. Especially after the night I had.

It was so scary. What if I never get to watch TV again?

-Jeff