Thursday, April 28, 2011

a rude awakening!

so today . . . i had a near death experience. in the shower.

when i get up in the morning, i am not really alert. my eyes are open, but they don't really see anything. my brain struggles to begin conscious thought. really, i am on autopilot until about 10:00. so i am not always aware of the details of my surroundings...

this morning i felt my way along the wall until i reached the shower. i turned the water on, and continued sleeping. i opened my eyes briefly so i could find the shampoo, and then closed them again--because really, i can't see my hair while i'm shampooing it anyway...

near the end of my shower, i finally opened my eyes all the way. and then i saw it--a big, fat, hairy (well, i couldn't actually SEE that it was hairy, because i wasn't wearing my glasses and my eyes were five feet away, but i know it was hairy!!) SPIDER!!! IN THE SHOWER!!! WITH ME!!!!!!!

let me just say, if i was diandra, shrieking, screaming, crying, and panicking would have ensued. we would have all gone running, thinking she was fighting off a knife-wielding psychopath instead of a spider. she would not have been able to get out of that shower fast enough!! i, however, kept my cool. mostly...

i am not so much afraid of spiders, as i am creeped out by them. i am capable of grabbing a tissue and eliminating any feckless spiders that happen across my path, but that doesn't mean i want to be surprised by one. i don't want my bare foot to find one in my shoe. i don't want one to drop on my head and crawl down my arm. and i certainly don't want to take a shower with one!

my poor sleeping brain wasn't quite sure what to do. my first thought was to drown it. i was in the shower, after all--there was plenty of water. but i was kind of afraid that if i moved the stream of water to kill the spider, it might flee from the water--toward me! i couldn't squish it with a tissue, because a) there were no tissues within reach, and b) a tissue would just disintegrate in the shower and then i would be HOLDING a spider! i couldn't yell for help, because i was alone. in the house. with a spider. IN MY SHOWER!!!

i decided that perhaps my best course of action was to get out of the shower. and fast. so i turned off the water, grabbed my towel and started to dry off. in the shower.

yes, i dry off in the shower--i have to. our shower is right inside the bathroom door, so if i step out onto the bathmat without drying off first, then the bathmat is wet! and then every time i go in or out of the bathroom, in my bare or stockinged feet, my feet get wet. and i hate having wet feet! (technically, we probably don't even need a bath mat since we can't step on it with our wet feet, but i just think we should have one. at least it feels nice on my feet before i step into the shower.) so yes, there i was, drying off in the shower, with one eye on that spider.

actually, both eyes were on the spider. i just knew that once the water was off, he was going to start running laps around the shower floor, and then he would eventually get dizzy and stagger into the center of the shower WHERE MY FEET WERE!!! sure enough, he started moving clockwise. he got to the side where the door was (i don't know how he knew that was where the door was... do spiders even know what a door is?!?!?) and started to climb up the side toward freedom. i thought this was an excellent idea! but he couldn't seem to get out!! he would crawl a little way up and then slide down, crawl up a bit and then slide down. clearly he was not getting anywhere...

and then he turned around and headed straight. for. me!

by now i was almost dry--everything except my feet and my dripping hair! i backed into the corner of the shower, drying off one foot. he kept coming. the foot that was still on the shower floor started tingling. i just knew he was going to be on my foot in seconds! i slid my foot as far away as i could get and started angling toward the door...

and then he crawled down the drain.

DOWN THE DRAIN!! OF HIS OWN FREE WILL!!! didn't he know that there was water down there? didn't he know that spiders can't swim? didn't he know that soon rollie would be getting in the shower and he would be toast???

i don't know. maybe the spider was not a morning person either and was running on auto pilot like i had been. (you notice i say "had been," because now i was thoroughly and completely awake!!) or maybe he had just had enough! maybe he was tired of living in fear of diandra's screams and my looming tissues... maybe we had annihilated all the other spiders in our house, and he could see the handwriting on the wall...

either way, apparently i was not in the shower with a knife-wielding psychopath... just with a suicidal spider...

1 comment:

mom said...

It was only a spider!!..I should tell you I got stung by a spider when I put my hand in a glove that I had left in the garden shed. He evidently had crawled in at some point after my last use using it. Now I smash the gloves under my feet before putting them on. So check your shoes and your gloves before putting them on!!! Always surprises!!!!