I know you want to learn who won yesterday’s prize, but you’ll have to read to the bottom to find out!

The red-headed hellion called to tell me that the five-year-old is safely at school. There were tears in her voice. It’s the little one’s first day of kindergarden. She’d gotten up at the crack of dawn, had her clothes on and her backpack slung over her shoulder. Kel had to disappoint her by telling her she needed a bath first.

After the call, I walked outside with the Sheltie. He’d spent the night cowering next to my bed because of last night’s thunderstorm. As I was coming back into the house I saw a cluster of daddly-long-legs spiders above my doorway. Okay, so I know most people would grab a broom or the hose and brush them away, but I stood beneath to watch them. Most of them were clustered very tightly and looked like a big hairy armpit that was vibrating. You’ve seen the way they dance, right? Bouncing together. The ones not clumped together were lined up with one leg touching the next one. It kind of looked like group foreplay.

I know that was wierd, but I love to watch things. Don’t much like bugs, but I will pick up crickets trapped in my pool and set them on the ground. One day, the five-year-old was outside with me and got down on her hands and knees to get eye-level with a caterpillar. Her lips were moving, so I walked closer. She turned, scowling at me. “Why won’t it talk back?”

It took me a minute to answer. I was fighting laughter because we’d recently watched The Bee Movie. Once I had control, I told her she couldn’t hear it because its mouth was too small. I know, bad Nina.

My daughter still gripes about the little lies I told her when she was young. To get her to brush her teeth I told her there were little bugs in her mouth that would eat her teeth if she didn’t brush them away. When she was eleven and sitting in Health class at school, her teacher asked the class if anyone knew what caused tooth decay. Yeah, you can guess what happened. It was like a scene from The Water Boy. “My mamma said…”

Yesterday’s winner of a free download of Love Bites is (by random number generator)…Sonya!