Itsy Bitsy Spider

I find myself most days doing things out of the norm.

Some days it seems decades ago my old life. Wake up about 7 am. Dash into the shower. Grab a cup of green tea to drink on the way to work. Walk into work about 5 minutes late, but stay 5 minutes late to make up for it. All I ever had to focus on was myself, my job, my family, my friends.

Now my days are filled with hurrying up to take a shower before my husband dashes off to work, and not really knowing how my son will be with his nap, how he'll behave, etc.

I find myself exploring new things, doing new things. All of a sudden I am supposed to cook dinner, clean, take care of another human being beyond myself, take care of the house. Well, with that come days when I just don't know what to expect.

Let's take for example a recent encounter with a gigantic black spider. Have I blogged about how I hate spiders? Like they freak me out for some unknown reason. Perhaps there is a childhood trauma that my brain is blocking from my memory. A couple of weeks ago, my son was taking a nap in the afternoon and my husband was off with his study group. I thought I would be proactive and try to clean one thing-I would be so pleased with myself if I could clean one thing. I picked up a baby carrier off the floor and unbeknowst to me (is that a correct word?), a very large spider came crawling out. I almost peed my pants and screamed simultaneously. I tried to step on him, but I just couldn't do it. So instead, I crept downstairs, found our Dyson vacuum cleaner and tried to figure out how the dumb components all fit together in order to get the suction tube thing to work. I think I did it backwards, but oh well. I ran upstairs with Dyson in hand and managed to suck up the spider. I turned off the vacuum and then decided that a few seconds wasn't enough and the spider may somehow manage to crawl out.

And when my hubby called to say he was on his way home, he asked me why I was so breathless. I whispered while breathing heavily from being out of shape and somewhat excited and could still feel the adrenaline going at defeating the spider, "I just sucked up the biggest spider!"

So, anyways, a few days after this event I was picking up again in our bedroom when the biggest spider crawled out from underneath one of my son's outfits. I yelled a profanity having seen the spider (I really do try to refrain from swearing, especially in front of my son), and had to go figure out the Dyson again. The spider ran away and ran underneath one of my slippers. Well, my son, with his ever-expanding vocabulary starting say "Bug, bug" and proceeded to go get my slipper and handed it to me. I about peed and screamed again simultaneously. I had to figure out again the Dyson sucky uppy thingy but quickly because I was afraid that my son would actually want to grab his new friend "Bug bug" and touch him and that thought scared me more than the spider. I repeated the sequence from a few days before.

Anyways, there is no way to describe how difficult spiders are to me. Spiders are such an unknown territory for me. Vacuum cleaners even more so. And even more daunting is the fact that I have a child who looks to me for love, support, and comfort and protection from those evil things. So far the score is mommy-2, spider-0.