PHOBIA

When it comes to spiders, I have a real - honest to goodness - phobia.  I'm scared to death of them.  When Ty and I were first married and living in an apartment, I found a spider on the wall and stared at it and cried for an hour before I got up the nerve to put a glass over it.  After the glass was over it I put a plate under it, a plastic Ziploc around the whole thing, and then I placed it in the fridge with a note for Tyler to dispose of it.  Why the fridge?  I'm still not sure...maybe I thought the coldness would kill the thing mercifully?  I dunno.

Anyway...on to the point of all this.  In Utah they have a spider called an "Aggressive Jumping Spider."  The thing is huge, with lots of eyes and hair.  I'm terrified.  I've had a run in with this kind of spider before, and let me tell you, they are indeed AGGRESSIVE.  There was one in a state car I was driving for work.  I was so freaked out that I had to drive my coworker's van home while she drove the spider car.  I waited a whole week, asked everyone at work who had driven the car, and no one had seen it.  I got in the car, drove to a residential treatment facility for a meeting, and there it was, staring at me from the corner.  It must have recognized my voice or smelled my fear or something.  I tried to smash it with an ice scraper, but the thing LUNGED at the scraper and I freaked out.  I had mace in my bag and was going to use it in the car to kill the spider, but I called my mom and she convinced me that a car full of mace wouldn't be easy to drive home.  I wound up having to have an elderly woman spray it with bug spray for me, and after I dutifully got the car back to the office I never drove that car again.

The other day I was feeding my son in his highchair, when along the side of the chair came, you guessed it, this:

 

You'll be pleased to know that apparently I'm a good mother.  I grabbed my child out of the chair and set him down.  Then I jumped up and down for a few minutes, and called my husband to convince him to come home from work and kill the spider.  He wouldn't.  Then I called my wonderful friend/visiting teacher/shopping buddy, and she came over bearing a fly-swatter.  We looked everywhere and couldn't find the thing, but then after she left, I saw it peering at me from one of my kitchen chairs.  I called her again, and she was back over in less than two minutes.  She smacked the thing with the flyswatter so hard that it wound up in pieces all over the place - that was fine by me! 

Two of my favorite people

Thanks Cami, for saving us from certain death!