Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Spiders Scare Me More Than Earthquakes Do


Waking up at 4 in the morning is rarely a pleasant experience.

When everything's shaking, it's a little jarring.

Earthquakes don't scare me. Not around here. In fact, if not for the sometimes catastrophic damage that results, I'd think they're pretty cool.

But being roused from sleep to the soft sounds of rattling windows and rumbling walls and listening intently for hints of breaking glass and toppling possessions isn't my idea of a nice way to start the day.

And that's exactly how this morning began.

I woke up a few seconds before the shaking started. My eyes wouldn't open, so I wasn't sure what time it was, and then suddenly, there was a sharp jolt.

My eyes snapped open and I moved away from the window while the shaking just went on and on. 

It took awhile to stop, and when it finally did, I sat there and waited for another one, but nothing happened. 

The local news reported it was a 4.4 and not too far from my house. It cracks me up that the thing is still a trending topic on Twitter. Growing up in California, I've gotten to the point where anything below a 5.0 isn't usually noteworthy.

I turned off the TV and went right back to sleep.

When the alarm went off a bit later, I rolled out of bed and headed into the bathroom to take a shower. 

I jumped about a foot. 

Sitting there, staring at me was a creepy, leggy spider.

There are not sufficient words in the English language to convey how much spiders freak me out.

I grabbed the handle and turned the faucet on full blast but that spider just sat there, waiting. 

When the water got close enough, The Thing moved just out of the way. I reached for the closest thing I could find, an empty water bottle, filled it, and tried to wash it down the drain.

IT just curled up, clearly developing a strategy.

I filled the water bottle again.

(Yes. I KNOW squishing it with a paper towel or something would have been faster, but since PHOBIAS are, by definition, IRRATIONAL, you can't really expect me to act RATIONALLY now, can you?)

Finally, the spider floated to the drain.

AND IT STOPPED ITSELF.

I filled the bottle again.

IT STOPPED ITSELF AGAIN.

I have NEVER in all of my life seen a spider fight so hard to not be washed down a drain.

It took TEN MINUTES.

And even after it finally washed down the drain, I kept watching. Waiting. I just knew it was going to climb right back out again.

It didn't.

But it's only a matter of time.

That spider knows where I live. 

It's going to find me again.

I'd much rather sit through another earthquake.



Tomorrow's Confession Wednesday topic: Blogging Pet Peeves!


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Posted by Karen Peterson
This post is: 
at 10:09 AM
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25 comments:

  1. I think my husband would agree with you on this.
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  2. *giggles* -- I am so with you on the earthquake thing. I grew up in CA, so they were "commonplace" and no big deal. When an earthquake occured in WA, you would have thought the world was ending and I was like Um...? So what?

    I absolutely refuse to flush a spider down the toilet. because I am very sure it will crawl back up while I'm sitting on it and bite me. I just know it.
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  3. Ha. That's really funny. Your posts always amuse the heck out of me. Though I'm quite the opposite of you in this case. I grew up in the back woods in MI, running around in bare feet in the swamp, playing with spiders and snakes and any other creepy crawlies I could get my hands on. There is a strict "no killing" rule in my house (though I'm sure MacGyver violates it when I'm not around).

    I haven't ever been through and Earthquake (though they look pretty scary in the movie 2012), but I have been through a couple tornadoes. Those aren't so scary, either.

    But I have a deep seated terror of losing control of, and horrifyingly crashing, a car - or of someone swerving out of oncoming traffic and hitting me/us. Seriously, it is a very extreme and irrational fear that has a number of times caused to to physically shake while driving in the face of a very light rain (snow doesn't bother me).
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  4. I don't like spiders. Just thinking about it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.... ICK!
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  5. Thats pretty funny! I can't believe how hard that spider fought. I hate them too. But I probably would be freaking out if I was in an earthquake even that small. I think I've only felt 2 or 3 in my life. We don't get them very much around here.
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  6. LOL. Oh Karen, you crack me up. I have a major fear of spiders too and I've been there with trying to wash one down a drain...spiders are fighters, that's for sure. I stopped doing that because one time the spider did come crawling back out of the drain about 20 minutes later...no joke. It freaked me out enough that I sort of go into survivor mode now when I see a spider and I'm able to kill it. As soon as I'm done and it's in the garbage, I almost hypervenelate! hahahahaha. I have to talk myself into it every time though and I only do it because it freaks me out worse thinking about it crawling around.....the worst are those awful jumping spiders!
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  7. p.s. I'm a moron. It's "hyperventilate" geesh. :-)
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  8. The earthquake was felt down here as well, and the thing that irritated me was that it woke up my 18 month old. So I had to actually get up at 4am instead of rolling over and enjoying another couple hours of sleep. Hrmph! Curse you, plate tectonics!!

    One time I rinsed a spider down the drain, and it climbed back out a few minutes later. I am not generally afraid of spiders, as long as they're not the poisonous kind. In fact, we generally trap spiders and take them outside to safety rather than kill them. But...dude. If I rinse you down the drain, it's supposed to be the end of it. I do not appreciate arachnid tenacity.
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  9. I am petrified of earthquakes, probably because, knock on wood, I've never experienced one. Spiders...eh. Glad neither the earthquake or the spider hurt you!
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  10. Ok so this made me laugh out loud:

    "IT just curled up, clearly developing a strategy."

    HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!
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  11. Oh and remind me to tell you something about Ghost Hunters. (don't you like that show???)
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  12. You may have an irrational fear of spiders, but at least you fight back. Once, I saw a GIANT spider in our house. Hubster wasn't home to dispose of it for me, so I took the boys outside and waited for Hubster to come home. I'm such a wimp, I couldn't kill it myself.
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  13. While spiders don't usually freak me out - it's a whole different story when your are naked and wet - I don't know why, it just is. I'm not sure that I think they are worse than earthquakes - but perhaps that is why I live in tornado alley and not in the shakey-quakey state!
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  14. I've never been through an earthquake, but just reading about that spider gives me the heebie-jeebies. I do NOT like spiders. Yick. I'm gonna have the creepy crawlies all night now.
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  15. I'm with you on the spiders. I don't like finding any sort of creepy crawly thing in the house. I firmly believe that insects and spiders are one very good reason to keep a big strong man around!
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  16. I SO TOTALLY RELATE.

    That irrational thing? Yeah. About that. Wanna know why I can't stomp a spider? Because if I stomp it, a signal goes out to all the other spiders and they will come and GET ME. So no squishing!

    I used to kill them with hairspray.
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  17. that's funny. yah, i read about the quake this am, and i used to live in LA, and i thought'4.4?...that's nuttin!'
    and i don't know how spiders have such a creepy hold on us!
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  18. Ah, I remember the days of being the only one in the 36th street house willing to kill a spider. :)
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  19. LOL. We had little earthquakes like that in Oklahoma, but anything over a 5 and I'd freak out!
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  20. Maybe you should look into some spider killing spray. I'd do that for my 5-year-old if she was really afraid of something. ;)

    I've mentioned you in my Beautiful Bloggers post today!
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  21. I'm not sure I'd like to experience an earthquake. As for the spider, it's something we deal with yearly here. We get a break during the cold months, but once summer hits forget about it. Arg.
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  22. Oh yuck!! I hate spiders too! We always get the ones who don't want to die too (maybe it's a CA thing?)

    One time I had Tim remove a spider from the bathtub and he said he crushed it and threw it down the toilet. That thing apparently did NOT go down...when I walked back into the bathroom, it was beginning to crawl up the sides of the inside of the toilet. Talk about a rebellious spider!
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  23. Lucky girl! I am about a mile from the center & I couldnt go back to sleep!! I was the one hashtagging earthquake!! ahahahaha. I was born and raised here too and I still cant get used to it! Something about not knowing scares me =(
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  24. I'm pretty sure an earthquake would scare me a whole lot more than a spider.
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  25. I'm right there with you. Spiders scare the bejeezus out of me. Cockroaches are the worst though!
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"You know what they say. If you don't have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me."

~Clairee Belcher, Steel Magnolias

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