arachnophobia

i am currently listening to and completely digging amy winehouse.

crazy eyeliner and messed up grille to boot. her songs are fab!! dayam...

i dedicate the following story to fellow arachnophobe and blogger extraordinaire: holli.

i have always hated had an intense dislike for spiders. all kinds. small ones. big ones. fast ones, big ones, jumping ones, hairy ones, dead ones. yes, i don't even like the dead ones! they could come back to life while i am sleeping and crawl on me.

yes, i believe that could really happen. yes, i know it's irrational.

right now, i am praying i can make it through this post. i have the creeps so bad i can barely stand to type.

anyway, back to me. my father thinks it's hilarious that i don't like spiders. he doesn't care about popularity, and in turn, i think he's a secret spider advocate of sorts. spiders united, decided my dad would stand up for spider's rights and i think the spiders actually PAY him to support their cause. when we were growing up (i have one sister), we'd ask him to kill the spiders in the house. he would always say, "no!!! we can't kill clyde!"

my father named spiders. they were almost always Clyde. to this day, i cannot hear the name clyde without thinking of some creepy ass spider.

he'd either CATCH clyde and take him outside or he'd completely let him get away. now. the escaped spider was now FREE to roam the house. ANYWHERE! completely unacceptable if you ask me. can you think of anything worse than trying to kill a spider and having it get away in your house?? now it can go anywhere it wants. not good, not good at all.

so. there it is. i've never liked spiders. the first "episode" i clearly remember happened when i was probably 14 or 15. my bedroom was in the basement and our house was in podunk, utah, so there were a few creepy crawlies here and there. ok, there was usually one of those haul-ass wolf spiders in my shower EVERY SINGLE DAY. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

i had gotten ready for bed and went to turn off the light switch. it was 4 steps from the bed to the light switch, so i usually just flipped the switch, and then took two gazelle steps right under the covers. as i flipped the switch, i was already turning toward my bed. out of the corner of my eye, i saw something move. it kind of appeared to glow in the dark...so it was whitish. i immediately flipped the light back on...and to my complete HORROR, there was a giant spider carrying an EGG SAC on its back!!! wtf?!?!? i screamed so loud. and i didn't stop until my dad appeared in my room. he of course thought i was a complete donkey. i told him he had to kill that spider and all of its babies b/c if he didn't i would have to move out. i told him i couldn't live in that room knowing it was in there...somewhere...with a bomb waiting to explode full of tiny little spiders. effffffffff that.

much to my surprise, he agrees. now, for some freak ass reason, the spider has frozen at this point. i guess she thought if she didn't move, we couldn't see her. whatever!!! i was ready to commit first degree spider murder, but i didn't want to get that close. so my dad goes to get a weapon...and he returns with a GD mason jar and a piece of cardboard. he then proceeds to catch the spider and release her outside.

i have never forgiven him. ever.

episode 2: my then-husband and i were living in a house built in 1628. ok, not really, but it was damn old. i saw spiders there that for some reason were turned away during auditions for arachnophobia. they were definitely large enough now. at this point, we are both working nights, so we are sleeping during the day.

have you ever felt something crawling on you while you sleep? sure, we all have, right?

well this time was different. i kept feeling it. so i sat up, and peeled back the covers and there it was..ON THE BED, a giant black spider. a slow moving one, but HUGE, ok??? this spider had clearly crossed the line. CLEARLY. i couldn't even kill it. i made my (now ex) husband take care of it.

i didn't sleep for about 3 days. i waged a full-scale war on spiders and i have fought diligently in the trenches ever since then. i still hate to kill spiders, b/c i don't want to get that close. i usually choose to eliminate them with a stream of poison, shot from as far away as possible. other horrible spider things have happened to me, including opening the paper and BOOM..a giant spider leapt out and the time i went to kill a rather large, slow-moving spider in the garage, only to miss and have it explode into one big mama spider and about 43,298 baby spiders. i poured gas on the entire garage and lit a match.

just kidding. but i seriously considered it.

the year i moved into our current house, which was built in 1629, i obsessively sprayed every nook and cranny with ortho home defense. i set spider traps. and i caught some HUGE ones. i removed my bed skirt. i prayed. i sacrificed small animals. i fasted.

since we've added a dog and another cat to our fold, i haven't seen a spider in ages. not sure if my pets are eating them (don't even wanna think about it, really) but i don't care. spiders can live anywhere but in the vicinity of ME. period. it's not negotiable. paul has killed a few here and there, but he usually has the sense to not mention it to me. he knows i really don't want to know.