Halpin Family Problem Solving

It's a complicated process...especially when Daddy's not home.

Dilemma:

Owie received this squishy, sticky, gummy tarantula toy as a party favor.

It has become stuck to our living room ceiling. I am placing no blame, but the medium sized member of our fam with a wicked pitching arm is at fault.

Noah (being in a very black and white phase of life right now) has been continually alerting us to the problem. "UH-OH!! UH-OH!!!!" So O and I put our brains together to try to figure out how to retrieve the pesky spider.

We started off by launching every possible ball in the house at it. Surely we can dislodge it with a well-aimed throw! Unfortunately, I soon discovered that every time I managed to actually hit the target, it became even more firmly squashed to the ceiling. Plus, we broke a few things. Bummer.

Next, O and I constructed a super-duper ceiling scraper out of Tinker Toys and a broom handle. Ingenious! Not so much. The scraper was too weak to scrape much of anything. That spider was seemingly glued to the ceiling, probably the result of all my well-aimed ball tosses.

This last (horribly blurry...sorry!) picture is of Owen hysterically laughing at my final effort to dislodge the spider. I turned a swiffer upside down, stood on a chair on my tippiest of tippy toes and attempted swiff away the spider. Alas, it would. not. budge. The only result was a very painful crick in my neck.

And so, for going on 24 hours now (Jeremy was at night school and could not assist us), I have heard "Uh-OH!!!" from Noah, notifying me of our plight, lest I somehow forget there is a bright purple spider decorating my ceiling.

Update: After work tonight, Jeremy, our Hero, casually carried in a ladder, climbed up and retrieved the spider. He shed no sweat or blood. He used nary a brain cell. He is a man of action. He saved the day.