Arachnophobia

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I'm not typically afraid of spiders, bugs or snakes. I don't particularly love them in my house, but they do not generally evoke any fear or anxiety. In fact, I once had a little bee friend when I was in school at CSU. He would come and hang out with me on the quad when I would study/nap between classes (and let's be honest, there was definitely more napping than studying). But me and the bee - no fear, just friends.

I was taking a sleepy shower this morning (my term for trying to get a few extra minutes of shut-eye by taking a shower with my eyes closed) when, through a tiny open slit, I saw this:

Yes, this GIGANTIC spider was perched on the wall just above the shower head. This not so little guy tore me from my sleepy state and had me at full attention for the rest of my shower. He was HUGE and brought flashbacks of that scene in Arachnophobia where the spider lands on the showering girl's face and she dies (she died, right? It's been a while.). At any rate, standing naked and wet in an enclosed space with a possibly deadly spider left me feeling a little vulnerable. But, I was only on step one of my 5 step showering process (you can ask me later) and all 5 steps were necessary on this particular day. I spent the entire shower in a state of near panic and even bruised my heels when spidey momentarily lost his grip on the increasingly misty wall and almost plummeted into the bathtub with me. Luckily he caught himself, but it didn't stop him from trudging on in his pursuit of the ceiling. When it came time to rinse out my conditioner, I positioned the shower head nearly horizontal to the ground and had to back bend into the stream of water so I could keep one eye on him at all times. I didn't need him slipping down (or intentionally jumping) onto my face and killing me with his poison bite.

After the traumatic showering I was trying to figure out how to dispose of spidey so I didn't find him waiting for me in my bed when I came home tonight. Luckily, as I was devising my plan, I heard a big thud and realized he'd fallen from the ceiling and was awaiting his death-by-drowning on the bottom of the tub. With a quick flick of the nozzle, I was able to whisk him away in a perfectly safe (for me) and humane (I'm assuming) death down the bathtub drain. Phew! I'm so glad that's over. Now I can return to my 20 minutes of snoozing-while-pretending-to-get-clean in the mornings.