Intruder!

I must literally be eminating "Come to me!" from my very being when it comes to attracting spiders. I do not understand this at all. I am grossed out beyond belief right now and with everything that touches me, I jump and wipe it away quickly for fear that it is an eight-legged freak. Imagine my horror this morning, all sticky-eyed and barely awake at 7 a.m., wearily watching the Today Show as I watch Poops playing on the floor after my husband leaves for work, when I turn my head and get a glimpse of something large and black, moving quickly along the arm of my sofa. I realize quickly this is a huge spider. Almost the size of my palm. I am shuddering as I write this. I want to puke and run at the same time, but alas, I am the adult and protector in this scenario, and cannot call for my husband. The travesty! I am the biggest arachnophobe I know, and last summer we had to spray for what else, but spiders! I must admit we have had quite a long running without a large spider sighting, but still. Why? Why why why??????? I long for answers as I reflect on this terrible irony! So I grab the nearest flip-flop, immediately glad that I am the "leave-my-shoes-around" type. I must strike quickly because the very thought of losing this insect betwixt the very cushions where I nap and sit (quite often) and having to look for it (and even worse, maybe never find it!) is even more terrible than having to actually kill it. So I smash it quickly. Wipe up the legs and the body (gag! puke!) and dispose of them in the garbage can, that I will not touch again because I know what is in it. And what comes afterward, but a tiny tinge of regret for having killed a little living thing, followed by the thought of "I'm sorry, but I do not know your motives!" as if I am speaking to the spider itself, as an intruder. What if it is the biting kind? I cannot take chances here.

But now I have that terrible, skeevy feeling, as if everything around me is moving or crawling. And I dread the thought of having to clean every crumb and move every tiny thing that could possibly be harboring a spider. What's worse than seeing one? Of course, it's the thought that there may be more. I cannot live with this possibility. I must clean and call the bug people and pick everything in sight up off the floor. But alas, I am paralyzed by fear of moving something and having a large, black, leggy body staring up at me from underneath. Oh, if only I were "one" with all of God's creatures.