They want me to tap dance!

... I don't want to tap dance..." HP 3 movie

So, I'm kind of tough, right? I mean, I'll spit while riding a bike, I have the "don't mess with me or I'll kill you" walk down pretty well when I go to my car in the parking lot late at night, & my major & instrument are predominately male. When I was in first grade I gave an uppercut to this huge second grade bully. I love James Bond films. I'm not big on the touching. So-- not a 'dainty fairy' or anything like that. Hmmm....

My largest irrational fear is the sound of airplanes flying overhead. I react to sound; I jump at almost everything, my scariest nightmare as a kid was a sequence of sounds/sensations that grew continuously & exponentially louder/stronger, & music is a big part of my life. Anyway, aside from loud sudden explosive noises, I'm really freaked out by spiders. Ugh. So creepy, leg-y, & just gross. Plus they bite you. & watching the movie Arachnophobia as a kid didn't help things either... Yet, they're not always so freaky to me. My room at my mum's house in Claremont is what used to be a third car garage, so all throughout high school I would find little 'friends' trying to become my roommate. Spiders, crickets, ... well, that's pretty much it, actually. So, naturally, I kept a wooden sword (that I got in 7th grade from Medieval Times) next to my bed & used it to squish & beat the little suckers to death. very effective because it had power & distance. I could never kill a bug with like, a tissue or napkin & my hand. I mean, then you'd feel their body crunching beneath the thin papery substance - sick!

Well, it turns out that without my wooden sword thingy to keep the creepy crawlies at bay, I am really just a pansy. An example: last semester, I saw a spider walking across the floor towards my roommate's bed, & she told me that since I spotted it, I'd have to kill it (even though it was clearly heading towards her stuff...). I kind of... wasn't able to kill it. I got an old shoe from my closet, & got close to it, but didn't want to make myself more vulnerable to its disgusting-ness, so I have crouched & kind of threw the shoe hard at it and scampered immediately back to my bed. The spider just moved closer to my roommate's backpack. ::Sigh::

Anyway, last night kind of brought a re-visitation of the spider troubles... I can kill a little guy if it gets too close to me (ie, in my house as long as it's small enough & there aren't any men around to kill it for me...). I've slayed a few of them this summer. But when I got back home at around 1am ish last night (I rode a bike to the dollar theatre, or I would have been back sooner) I promptly made the change to the pjs, which also meant liberating myself from the shoes.... Ah, freedom. Headed to the bathroom to brush the teeth, but there was a big old spider on the bathroom floor. Ugh. I turned around to get a hard shoe from my closet, but on the way back to my room I saw an even bigger spider (according to my roommate Nic, it could have borne her children...) that was lurking on the wall in a corner by another roomy's closet. That one was HUGE. It made me make one of those disgusted/frightened sounds. Shudder. So I get back to my room where there's plenty of open space that isn't full of spiders. & as I look out at the hallway, I see another really big spider on the linoleum beneath the last step of the staircase... It was just a bit smaller that the big papa daddy by the closet, but it was definitely brown. & while I stayed as far away from him as possible, I did notice that it had a couple light brown/almost tan markings on its gross little hairy body. The one in the bathroom was fairly light, almost white, and the fatty one by the closet was probably black. But the brown one... I'm thinking it was probably a brown recluse, which is definitely not a pleasant thought. It looked like some of the pictures that pop up when you google-image search for them. So, the story... I freak out, all the lights are on downstairs, & I'm sitting on my bed looking out into the hallway at this brown recluse (maybe). So I text my friend that I borrowed the use of bike from. Then my home teacher. That was a bit harder to do, as I felt a bit like a little girl or the woman that jumps up on a chair if someone mentions a mouse, but I was rather scared. I almost called him, but then I realized that a) it was a silly urge, b) it was about 2am by this point, & c) even if he did come over, I'd have to get past the spiders to unlock the door-- which was not something I could do... So I tried to sleep. & when morning rolled around-- when I could hear my roommates walking around above me, I gave Nic a call & asked for her help to kill the spiders. She came down & saved the day... sort of. She took care of a tiny little black guy that was by my door (he wasn't even there last night), and the huge black one by the closet. Oh, & the white one in the bathroom. But we couldn't find the brown one. He wasn't there by the stairs when I woke up this morning. If it were a smaller guy, & if he were any color but brown, I'd just shake it off. But now I'm just a bit more freaked out. If it really is what I think it is, then there's a huge, highly poisonous spider somewhere still in my house. & I have no idea where. Hopefully somewhere in a dark corner of the laundry room, or else outside. Or maybe it died because it sensed that it was the decent thing to do... I don't know. All I know is that I'm a little girl who's too afraid of spiders to get close enough to kill them, & that I'll be wearing shoes in this house at least until after we get the foundation sprayed or something... That would be one spider bite whose magical powers would definitely not be the stuff of movies. At least, not one that you'd want to show your children...

PS, if anyone wants to kill the spiders for me, you're more than welcome... I'll make you cookies! but not out of the spiders, eeew....