Day Fifty-Five

In which I have the worst morning ever.

You know that I post the weekend's pictures on Monday, yes? Which means that, while this looks like it's Saturday's post, said picture may not happen on Saturday. This particular picture happened this morning.

I have severe arachnophobia. SEVERE. It's not funny, it's fairly debilitating. I've gotten to the point that I can kill spiders on my own from necessity. But I still want to use something phonebook sized to do so for the smallest spider. What if it got away and crawled on me?! *shudder* So I'm scared of spiders. I crush them on walls and leave their smeared carcasses. I say it's as a warning to all others who would encroach on my domicile, ala heads on pikes, but really it's because EVEN WHEN THEY'RE DEAD, I'm afraid of them. And I can honestly say it's freaking me out to write about this. But that's at least partially because of the story to come.

I go into the bathroom this morning when I wake up. One does. What's the room in your house where you're the most vulnerable? I'd argue the bathroom. You're usually not dressed to some extent while you're in there and you're often doing things that there's no easy way to run away from, right? There I am, thankfully scooping out the litter box before using my own "litter box" when I see legs. And at first, even as my body is leaping backwards, my mind can't compute what I'm seeing. This isn't a house spider. It's not even a wolf spider (oh, I'm going to be sick). This thing looks like someone keeps giant exotic spiders and one got loose. And it's in MY bathroom!!!!!! I start hyperventilating, but the one thing I know is that it has to die. And I can't figure out how to get to it.

I run to find the biggest hardcover possible. I dash back to the doorway and it has moved to a slightly more convenient spot for me to squish it. And I can't make my (bare) feet walk into the bathroom to do it. I can't. I can't! I try. I think, "If I can drop the book from here, spine down, it should crush it." "But what if it doesn't and then I don't have a weapon?!" wails the other part of my mind. "I have to risk it," I think shakily. So I try it. And it misses. And it scuttles on the wall. I think, "Okay, if I just shove the book at it from its fallen position, I can still get it. I try it. It doesn't work. I run for another book (because there's no way I'm ever touching the fail book again. I don't know where the spider is-- it might be lurking underneath it.)

I grab another book and race back to the bathroom. The entire time this is going on, you understand, I'm sort of whisper-screaming, "Ohmygosh,ohmygosh,ohmygosh," with the occasional wailing, "I don't know what to DO!!!" and punctuating it all with, "nonononononononono." Now the thing is trying to escape and starts to move across the floor in front of me, oh horrors and thank heavens. I am uttering these piercing little screams without being able to stop and every time I shriek it jumps like I'm scaring it. Finally I force my hands to drop the book and it lands beautifully on top of the beast and crushes it.

And I'm still scared of it. I went sobbing away from the battle and I've never felt my heart pounding so hard and so fast and I couldn't stop crying and I'm still having a hard time talking myself out of just grabbing the cats and moving out, abandoning everything I own.

The last brave thing I did was to grab my camera to take a sort of picture for you. Because I knew some of you would think I was exaggerating on the size of it. So here a shot of just part of some of its legs with my cell phone for perspective. It's not edited or anything and I don't know if it's blurry because I couldn't bear to look at the picture when I was resizing it.

And I really wanted to read that book, dang it! I don't know how I'm going to clean the thing up. *sob* I'm still REALLY freaked out and inclined to tears. I don't know where it came from and I'm terrified there are more.