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...
Showing posts with label spiders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spiders. Show all posts
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Friday, November 6, 2009
the nerve of some bugs!
so today . . . a spider crawled on me. don't worry. i survived. i didn't even scream. at least, not out loud.
i was sitting on the couch, watching a little tv and playing on my computer. rollie had already gone to bed, and diandra was out at a high school football game (ah, the life of a youth pastor . . . ) and i was just sitting there, trying not to cough. i felt a tickle on my arm, glanced down, and there it was. a spider. on my arm. my BARE arm.
you know how moms and teachers always say, "oh don't worry. they are more afraid of you than you are of them . . . " it isn't true. trust me. i am absolutely certain that the spider on my arm was not even a tiny bit afraid of me--if he was, he would not have been strolling down my arm! and while i'm not sure i would say i was exactly afraid of it, i wasted not even one second trying to GET IT OFF OF ME!!!!!
diandra would have never survived the experience. for some reason, she has a seemingly irrational fear of any kind of spider. she will yell to me, "mom! there's a HUGE spider in my room!!" she says this with every expectation that i will come and kill it. and i usually do. but when i get there, and she shows me the spider, i realize that her definition of huge is not quite the same as mine. she seems to think that any spider visible to the naked eye is huge. to me, it isn't classified as huge unless it looks as though it is going to be yukky if i squish it.
i don't enjoy killing spiders. i know they are an important part of the bug food chain, and there is a part of me that wonders what evil creepy crawly things will overtake me if the spiders aren't there to eat them. so as long as they are not bothering anyone, i tend to leave them alone. but since diandra is so freaked out by them, i have learned to do my job as the mom and get rid of them.
my method isn't unique. i grab a big handful of toilet paper, hover over the offending arachnid, then quickly grab and squish. and then i flush it--just to be sure. i didn't know there was any other way to eliminate a spider. then one day i was out on the playground with my class, and one of the children found a spider. of course, everyone went to look, and i was all ready to give my speech about how the outdoors is where spiders live, and we should leave it alone so it could eat other bugs, and how it is important to respect all living things, blah, blah, blah. and then i saw the spider. it was a big black widow. i decided the speech could wait for another day, and sent someone inside to get the director. this looked like something that was in her job description, not mine.
a few minutes later, she came out with an aerosol can and sprayed that spider to death.
i had never thought of that. i didn't know you could kill a spider with a chemical weapon. i thought it had to be hand to hand combat.
i know i sound brave, but spiders are the only bugs i can work up my courage to kill. we also occasionally see crickets or cock roaches here in the lovely southwest--this is one of the downsides of our mild climate. i try to deal with the crickets myself by shooing them outside. i grab a magazine and sort of herd them toward the doggie door flap (which is probably how they get in.) this is not all that easy, as they seem incapable of jumping in a straight line. getting a cricket from point a (anyplace in the family room) to point b (outside) can be a nearly impossible task--especially since i am not willing to touch it. or have it touch me.
and then there are the cock roaches. thankfully i don't see too many of them, because that is the bug that freaks me out. talk about HUGE!! i'm not even sure how you can call a cock roach an insect. insects are tiny and cock roaches are not. i am sure they are really some sort of small animal disguised as an insect. i cannot even imagine stepping on one--i might never recover from that! so my method of dealing with cock roaches is to trap them and wait for rollie to come home and dispose of them. but they are hard to trap, because they are so FAST. and they seem to have special mind reading powers, so they know exactly when i am about to drop the big glass measuring cup over them, and they move. once i do trap them, they run around and around and around in circles at the edge of the cup. i can't stand it--i have to leave the room.
one time rollie came home and found one half in and half out of the cup. he asked me if i had dropped the measuring cup ON the cock roach. i said no. the only explanation i can come up with is that it managed to lift that big heavy glass cup just enough to start to get out. thankfully the escape attempt was not successful. and yet, just knowing it tried creeps me out. so now, i put something big and heavy on top of the glass cup--just to be sure.
once i found a cock roach on the dining room drapes. this was the first time i had seen one not scurrying around on the ground. i yelled for rollie (in much the same way that diandra yells for me when she sees a spider,) and he came to the rescue. that is the day i learned that COCK ROACHES CAN FLY!!! you do not want to hear the story behind that revelation. trust me. it involved much running about, hand flapping, screaming, and fear of death by gigantic flying bug.
thankfully, i survived. unlike the spider that chose my arm as his route from point a to point b.
i was sitting on the couch, watching a little tv and playing on my computer. rollie had already gone to bed, and diandra was out at a high school football game (ah, the life of a youth pastor . . . ) and i was just sitting there, trying not to cough. i felt a tickle on my arm, glanced down, and there it was. a spider. on my arm. my BARE arm.
you know how moms and teachers always say, "oh don't worry. they are more afraid of you than you are of them . . . " it isn't true. trust me. i am absolutely certain that the spider on my arm was not even a tiny bit afraid of me--if he was, he would not have been strolling down my arm! and while i'm not sure i would say i was exactly afraid of it, i wasted not even one second trying to GET IT OFF OF ME!!!!!
diandra would have never survived the experience. for some reason, she has a seemingly irrational fear of any kind of spider. she will yell to me, "mom! there's a HUGE spider in my room!!" she says this with every expectation that i will come and kill it. and i usually do. but when i get there, and she shows me the spider, i realize that her definition of huge is not quite the same as mine. she seems to think that any spider visible to the naked eye is huge. to me, it isn't classified as huge unless it looks as though it is going to be yukky if i squish it.
i don't enjoy killing spiders. i know they are an important part of the bug food chain, and there is a part of me that wonders what evil creepy crawly things will overtake me if the spiders aren't there to eat them. so as long as they are not bothering anyone, i tend to leave them alone. but since diandra is so freaked out by them, i have learned to do my job as the mom and get rid of them.
my method isn't unique. i grab a big handful of toilet paper, hover over the offending arachnid, then quickly grab and squish. and then i flush it--just to be sure. i didn't know there was any other way to eliminate a spider. then one day i was out on the playground with my class, and one of the children found a spider. of course, everyone went to look, and i was all ready to give my speech about how the outdoors is where spiders live, and we should leave it alone so it could eat other bugs, and how it is important to respect all living things, blah, blah, blah. and then i saw the spider. it was a big black widow. i decided the speech could wait for another day, and sent someone inside to get the director. this looked like something that was in her job description, not mine.
a few minutes later, she came out with an aerosol can and sprayed that spider to death.
i had never thought of that. i didn't know you could kill a spider with a chemical weapon. i thought it had to be hand to hand combat.
i know i sound brave, but spiders are the only bugs i can work up my courage to kill. we also occasionally see crickets or cock roaches here in the lovely southwest--this is one of the downsides of our mild climate. i try to deal with the crickets myself by shooing them outside. i grab a magazine and sort of herd them toward the doggie door flap (which is probably how they get in.) this is not all that easy, as they seem incapable of jumping in a straight line. getting a cricket from point a (anyplace in the family room) to point b (outside) can be a nearly impossible task--especially since i am not willing to touch it. or have it touch me.
and then there are the cock roaches. thankfully i don't see too many of them, because that is the bug that freaks me out. talk about HUGE!! i'm not even sure how you can call a cock roach an insect. insects are tiny and cock roaches are not. i am sure they are really some sort of small animal disguised as an insect. i cannot even imagine stepping on one--i might never recover from that! so my method of dealing with cock roaches is to trap them and wait for rollie to come home and dispose of them. but they are hard to trap, because they are so FAST. and they seem to have special mind reading powers, so they know exactly when i am about to drop the big glass measuring cup over them, and they move. once i do trap them, they run around and around and around in circles at the edge of the cup. i can't stand it--i have to leave the room.
one time rollie came home and found one half in and half out of the cup. he asked me if i had dropped the measuring cup ON the cock roach. i said no. the only explanation i can come up with is that it managed to lift that big heavy glass cup just enough to start to get out. thankfully the escape attempt was not successful. and yet, just knowing it tried creeps me out. so now, i put something big and heavy on top of the glass cup--just to be sure.
once i found a cock roach on the dining room drapes. this was the first time i had seen one not scurrying around on the ground. i yelled for rollie (in much the same way that diandra yells for me when she sees a spider,) and he came to the rescue. that is the day i learned that COCK ROACHES CAN FLY!!! you do not want to hear the story behind that revelation. trust me. it involved much running about, hand flapping, screaming, and fear of death by gigantic flying bug.
thankfully, i survived. unlike the spider that chose my arm as his route from point a to point b.
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