Hehe...well, NO. This post is NOT about Iraq or any other far off land. Of course not...BrainCheese has and always WILL be solely about moi...the country of CHEESE. Where I am ruler, except for a spider or two!I'm talking about arachnophobia or an unpleasant fear of spiders.
**EXCUSE ME FOR A MOMENT HERE WHILE I INSIST SHAUNA FROM CANADA READ NO MORE AS THE CONTENT OF THIS POST WILL MOST LIKELY BE COUNTER-DISTURBING**(She LOVES those darned bugs)
I mentioned before on CHEESE I have some *peculiar* fears...like clowns and glass eyeballs and...but, I digress. Let's stick to the topic. SPIDERS. I have an "unpleasant" fear/association with spiders...those fury little creatures that hide out in dark places and leave their web calling cards around my house and flower beds. I have no real clue WHY spiders *bug* me so much (LOL)...they just do. And I AM one of those hateful people that WILL squish a spider in my home rather than gently catch it and *rescue* it to back to the outside world. I suppose because of this, I have really bad spider karma.
I have fears that, because I HAVE squished a few spiders in my day, the army of spiders that exist in the world have probably spread the word amongst themselves...and one day I will be snared into a giant spider web and eaten for lunch. (I DID mention I have *peculiar* fears!)
Spiders see me coming and they tend to cop a mean attitude...I guess when it's a life or death situation (which I believe most spider encounters are...for ME anyway), it becomes survival of the fittest and the spiders I've done battle with often put up a good fight. They are, after all, much faster than I am and far more agile. And they DO have that neat little trick of shooting web out their butt and quickly descending from any location. Sometimes, I am jealous of this spider ability...but again, I digress.
When I was a kid growing up and sharing a room with my two sisters, I can recall vividly the chaos that would ensue whenever a spider was located on the ceiling of our bedroom. Often times, this spider radar process would occur when we were laying in bed looking up at the ceiling. Suddenly, there would be a shriek, then a cry out to our mother: "Mom! There's a spider on the ceiling and it's three squares over then straight down!!!" We had a tiled ceiling in our bedroom, so this type of talk was an exact location of the spider before it would be right above our head(s)...sort of like a call out in the game of *Battleship*. We anticipated if mother only KNEW how close we were to spider danger, she might come running. LOL
As an adult, I've had to do my own battle with spiders on my ceilings...there's no one here but me to remove the beasts and the P.O.D. (Princess Of Darkness, aka, the cat) only chases and torments them, eventually letting them go when she grows tired of the play...so they can wind up in my shoes or some other gawd awful place where I can have a full coronary arrest upon DISCOVERING them. AND, I think the spiders are most likely pretty pissed off at that point too, having been relentlessly pounced upon by the P.O.D.
So, WHY am I talking about spiders here? Yeah, I thought you'd be asking that (why do I talk about ANYTHING here?!?). Because last night, as I wearily gimped my way into my bed and prepared my exhausted body for sleep, the radar began beeping, and I spotted an arachnoid on my ceiling in the far corner of my bedroom! SOUND THE ALARMS. If there's anything I fear/hate the most, it is a spider in my sleeping sanctuary.
I have, in the past, tried unsuccessfully to *knock* spiders down from my bedroom ceiling by balancing precariously on my bed with a slipper in one hand and a stick in the other. This trick usually results in me KNOCKING the spider directly onto my bed and once (EEEWWWW!), even onto my own head! So, I've pretty much given this up...it's simply not worth the risk of cracking my own head open on my dresser when I fall OFF my bed doing the "spider dance", trying frantically to knock the buggar off my BODY. Not that I've done THAT before...hypothetical example...maybe. :-)
So, I lay in my bed last night watching my spider intruder on my ceiling...for a very long time...like SO long a time, I think the spider caught on to my stare and tried to play dead for 20 minutes. It never moved. And still, I "watched" it. Eventually becoming so tired, I finally dozed off to sleep...with my bedside light ON of course.
At some point in the night, I awoke from my usual 3-4 hour nap and was startled to discover my bedroom light was on. This was almost as alarming as oversleeping an alarm. It took me several moments to regain my thoughts and travel out of my sleep cloud before I remembered I had obviously fallen asleep without shutting the light off (because my first thought was wondering WHO had sneaked into my bedroom while I was snoring like the roar of Niagara Falls and TURNED my light on!)...and then...THEN, I remembered the spider!
My glasses were still perched on my nose so focusing my eyes was not a difficult task...I fired my radar into the corner where the *beast* had last been spotted, only to discover IT WAS GONE. OMG! I had fallen asleep on my crucial watch and now there was a spider stealthily roaming around my bedroom somewhere. I frantically scanned the four corners of my bedroom and with horror discovered the *beast* was nowhere to be found. I was truly in spider hell.
I eventually DID fall back to sleep last night, but not without frequently feeling like something was crawling across my face or my arms...I think I even DREAMED about a spider attack. It was akin to a nightmare.
Tonight as I lay here typing on the laptop from my bed, I've been keeping one eye on the screen and one eye on the ceiling...just in case...just in case my fury little friend decides to return. I don't know which would be worse at this point...SEEING the spider again and knowing it's location or WONDERING where the little devil might be?!?
I truly AM Little Miss Muffet...but I can honestly say I have never had curds and whey.
Lolol.....thanks for the warning, but the scariest part for me was that tarantula at the top of the post.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time when I was as phobic about spiders as you. And the bigger the spider, the less likely I am to befriend it, if truth be told.
You need a bug net with a long handle so you can get those creatures that are just out of reach. Dollar store!
S.
I had a horrible experience with spiders when I was a kid. I lived in the country, on a farm, and we had a small old shed my sister and I used as a play house in the summer. To get into this small shed, one had to hop over a low board. It was the beginning of spring and I hadn't played in the shed yet that year. I hopped over the board, into the small shed, and into a mass of garden spider webs ... they were all around me, each one as big as your entire palm (their legs are very long) and each spider had that horrible black body with bright yellow markings ... google garden spider, they are scary!!!). I freaked, omg freaked, ran from the shed beating my head and body and screaming. I don't think I ever played in that shed again and the site of a garden spider, even on the internet, sends chills down my spine to this day.
ReplyDeleteHysterical!
ReplyDeleteDon't ever move to florida. There are mosquitos that can kill you and palmetto bugs (cockroaches the size of your fist) and lizards everywhere!
Without spiders we might all be lost to other monsters!
Another quick choice in bug capture - vacuum cleaner with extension pole. Suck em up and toss em out.
ReplyDeleteI have a particular dislike of spiders, but I have a VERY GOOD reason.
Once upon a time there was a young maiden who traveled home to visit the family hacienda. As the young maiden's grandmother was no more, she found boxes upon boxes of grandma's stuffs in her boudoir.
One day the young maiden began not feeling too well and her derriere was warm. In fact, she became so bold as to ask her mother to give an opinion on the condition of the heated backside.
There was redness and some heat. But the next morning, the maiden was ill, not feeling well at all. Her mother inspected the offending hindquarters and was in shock and awe. Awe, not in the beauty of her bodacious butt.... but in the largess of the redness, heat, and black centers of each growing circle.
See there were red rings about the size of hand prints and a tiny, but growing, black spot in the center of each. Of each butt cheek that is. Yes, both sides were affected.
Due to the quickness of the progression, the young maiden accompanied her mother to the local medical authorities. Authorities of medicine, not law. Describing to the nurse, the nature of the affliction was an experience, but the to the physician it became comical.
The attractive doctor needed to see the affected area. So drop those drawers I, I mean the young maiden, was required to do. She laid over the exam table while the doctor admired her hot derriere. He easily identified the troubles.
The culprit of the growing bulls eye was a little ol' spider. A spider which doesn't much like to socialize. More of a reclusive sort. Likely brown in color and carrying a fiddle upon its back.
But what made the doctor laugh was the location of the spider's attack. A chomp on each cheek. "Munch left, turn, munch right."
Little reclusive spiders are not known to bite twice, but apparently this little guy decided that one butt cheek tasted so fine that he had to taste the other. So to keep from losing any cherished flesh of the gluteus maximus, the young maiden received a special concoction from the local apothecary.
With a little TLC and medicinal herbs, the young maiden kept her cheeks healthy and thereby protected her precious derriere from rot and destruction. To this day, the young maiden has a distrust of all creatures small, and multi-legged, and predisposed to the melancholy darkness with only a fiddle on their back to keep them company.
So spiders, not trusted, and literally a "pain in the butt."
Brain Cheese--
ReplyDeleteIt's pleasant to see that you've updated with a recent photograph of yourself in bloggers "comments" sections.
Jen
Little Miss Muffet, I am your twin...just call me Little Miss Tuffet.
ReplyDeleteI too have a spidey phobia. With good reason too!
I can relate to sleeping with one eye open when I have spotted a bug. When I was in Hawaii there were lizards on the net above our hut. I watched them a lot, waiting for them to move...
ReplyDeleteFear of clowns is peculiar? How else would one react to a clown?
ReplyDeleteI am also afraid of snakes and spiders and scorpions and escalators and bridges and any water with marine life and any water with electrical lights or jets and unrestrained heights and caves and cholla cactus and big cities and anything that leans hard like a motorcycle and roaches of course and swamps cuz there might be a snake in the tree and bears and big dogs and merging in heavy traffic and those mean girls from junior high and using a deep fryer and jump starting a car and corn.
But I'm only afraid of corn fields, not corn on the cob - - - that would be weird!
PennyAnn
Oh My Gosh!!!! There is someone else in the world like me! I could have written this post myself! I am EXACTLY like you when it comes to spiders. Wait till you read what I found at my house last night.....I'm posting today.
ReplyDeleteWell...this site should give you some comfort that you probably won't eat a spider in your sleep as often reported by urban legend folk.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.brownreclusespider.org/eating-spider-while-asleep.htm
I had a snake in my house today. I guess I could exaggerate about his size but quite honestly he looked like worm.
Me thinks your title is going to net you many more Braincheese Drive By's -- your perverted mind expressing a bit of twisted humor to torment the masses? (LOL)
ReplyDeleteNity Nite
Get ready for d Bed Bugs to Bite!
OK, call me STUPID (DUH)but to what photo in what blog is Jen referring to???
ReplyDeletebut curds & whey isn't even that bad!
ReplyDeleteI got the heebie jeebies reading that post! A long time ago when we were still married, my ex was into exotic pets. He bought a tarantula (knowing I was terrified of spiders).
ReplyDeleteHe would get it out and let it crawl all over him, "playing" with it.
One day, when I came in through the kitchen door from grocery shopping, he came in the room with his spider on his shoulder. I backed away telling him to get it away from me.
He transferred it to his hand and stretched his arm out saying "Look at him, he's harmless and won't hurt you." At which point, as if on cue, it jumped across the three feet of air between us and landed squarely on my face.
I screamed, the spider was flung and that was the only reinforcement I've ever needed in my life to stay terrified of spiders.
Except those cute little tiny jumping spiders. I don't mind them.
Aww...spiders are cute!
ReplyDeleteLMAO! BTW, I love that pic of the POD.....what a great name for a cat.... :)
ReplyDeleteDid Shauna tell you about the jumping spider she fed a couple of unsuspecting aphids to? :) Poor little thing was hungry....'course, it was outdoors, not in the bedroom.
-Wookie
I don't mind spiders, but I have a deep fear/hate for caterpillars that I really can't explain. Those sticky feet, that "fur," those nasty faces... YUCK! Just talking about it is making the hair on my arms stand up. I have had 2 spider bites, one on my eyelid and the other on my LIP! How gross is that? And he never even called the next day.
ReplyDeleteI can't handle spiders or ladybugs in my house. The great part about this phobia is that we live in an old farm house that happens to be a favorite hangout for both.
ReplyDeleteI also happen to be terrified of balloons. This works out well for me since my daughters birthday party is tomorrow.