my spidey sense

Confession. I hate spiders.

Now, I know most people dislike them, and do the occasional squirmy spider dance when they see one crawling across their ceiling.

But I'm pretty much terrified of the little hairy guys. To the point where I used to believe the movie "Arachniphobia" was based on my own life.

Which means that I'll spend all summer freaking out because it's hot outside and cold inside, and spiders somehow feel entitled to mooch off of our air-conditioning. But I have yet to receive any rent checks, or help with utilities. So when I see them, I squash them. Or in reality, when I see them, I scream and call Marty and say "bring a tissue" and he doesn't so he uses his shoe to kill it and flushes it down the toilet after shaking it off of his shoe but he leaves the spider guts remnants on the wall for me to see every time I walk by. Shudder.

In fact, yesterday I was grabbing a shirt out of the baby's "clean shirts pile" when I saw the biggest spider ever. It was seriously the size of my hand. Okay, my son's hand. But it was really big! I almost started crying, which started the baby crying, and our little spider dance ensued. My face probably looked like this:

I eventually recovered after Marty reassured me that the monster was long gone, flushed to oblivion. But the worst part of my spider fear is the thought that they could be anywhere. After the king-size spider debaucle, I'm imagining spiders everywhere. I picture one in the bag of animal crackers as I reach in to grab a handful for my son. I picture one in the finger of my dish-washing gloves, just waiting for my hand to discover it as I put them on. And I constantly feel like they're crawling all over me.

When I was little, I used to imagine that if I got one wish, if I could rid the world of any one thing, I'd choose stray hairs. Maybe it's time to grow up and choose something far more emotionally and mentally damaging--spiders. That or grow up and realize no one really grants wishes like that these days. But a girl can hope, right?