Coffee Table Declarations
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Do you ever, just for fun, imagine what your own personal episode of Fear Factor would be like? Mine looks like this - eating sheep's eyeballs, riding a broken down elevator, being chased by faceless ghosts, and... oh yes, spiders in my bedroom. So now my cozy, comfortable new bedroom, with it's peach painted walls, flannel sheets, and cable television, has gone from a safe haven to my own personal fear factor. No, there are no ghosts or sheep's eyeballs. Guess again.
Saturday morning at 7:30 something outside woke me from a sound sleep. I lazily rolled over and glimpsed something on the ceiling right above my head. It was a spider. Keep in mind that my ceiling (at least where my bed is) is one of those slanty ceilings. It meets the wall about 6 inches from the head of my bed. So when I say there was a spider on the ceiling right above my head, what I really mean is that there was a furry, brown spider about a foot above my face first thing in the morning.
I leapt out of bed and introduced the spider to a wad of tissues. Normally I am far too squeamish to squish them myself, but no one else was awake, so this was one of those survival instinct, adrenaline kicking in kind of situations. It was creepy, but hey, it happens. Not in my old apartment where I never once saw a spider, but it does happen.
The next afternoon I was talking to my roommate in the upstairs hall and caught site of a spider on the bathroom door. I have radar for spiders. She got him but seeing two spiders in two days did not bode well. That night, I fell asleep reading with the light on at about 10:30. I woke up around midnight, got up to go to the bathroom, noticed my roommate's light was still on, and went back to my room. I was just about to crawl back into bed when what did I see? Yep, a spider. Right where the sloped ceiling meets the wall, a mere inches from where my head had been seconds before. I knocked on my roommate's door and she got him for me, noting he was the same type from the bathroom door.
After a sleepless night of tossing, turning, and periodically bolting out of a sound sleep to turn the light on and do a spider check, I did some research online. It seems that getting rid of spiders requires vacuuming and using household cleanser which, because they have tastebuds on the bottoms of their feet, they will avoid walking on because they don't like the taste. I have learned more about spiders in the last couple of days than I could ever hope to know. And I'm no more fond of them than I was before. My roommate suspects there are eggs hatching somewhere, a thought that sends chills up and down my spine.
When I got home yesterday I was talking to my dad on the phone and he happened to mention that he had noticed a rather large crack above the window near my bed when he was hanging curtains. He said it was not huge, but large enough for spiders to come out of. That information was very useful in planning my attack (spraying Raid into the crack, vacuuming, using the cleanser, and plugging in a thing I got that sends a high pitched noise that repels spiders among other things).
I realize that like all fears, the problem lies in feeling powerless. I know the fear is a learned response because as a kid I can remember closely examining spiders building webs and feeling no disgust whatsoever. I'm not sure what happened but now spiders are to me, the equivalent of evil incarnate. I keep reminding myself there are worse things to invade my bedroom. Cockroaches for example. Bats. Sharks. But if I told you I slept calmly without being on spider watch or having spider nightmares, I'd be lying. The spiders I saw were just a little too close to my head than I'm comfortable with. What are you afraid of and how do you face your fears?
Saturday morning at 7:30 something outside woke me from a sound sleep. I lazily rolled over and glimpsed something on the ceiling right above my head. It was a spider. Keep in mind that my ceiling (at least where my bed is) is one of those slanty ceilings. It meets the wall about 6 inches from the head of my bed. So when I say there was a spider on the ceiling right above my head, what I really mean is that there was a furry, brown spider about a foot above my face first thing in the morning.
I leapt out of bed and introduced the spider to a wad of tissues. Normally I am far too squeamish to squish them myself, but no one else was awake, so this was one of those survival instinct, adrenaline kicking in kind of situations. It was creepy, but hey, it happens. Not in my old apartment where I never once saw a spider, but it does happen.
The next afternoon I was talking to my roommate in the upstairs hall and caught site of a spider on the bathroom door. I have radar for spiders. She got him but seeing two spiders in two days did not bode well. That night, I fell asleep reading with the light on at about 10:30. I woke up around midnight, got up to go to the bathroom, noticed my roommate's light was still on, and went back to my room. I was just about to crawl back into bed when what did I see? Yep, a spider. Right where the sloped ceiling meets the wall, a mere inches from where my head had been seconds before. I knocked on my roommate's door and she got him for me, noting he was the same type from the bathroom door.
After a sleepless night of tossing, turning, and periodically bolting out of a sound sleep to turn the light on and do a spider check, I did some research online. It seems that getting rid of spiders requires vacuuming and using household cleanser which, because they have tastebuds on the bottoms of their feet, they will avoid walking on because they don't like the taste. I have learned more about spiders in the last couple of days than I could ever hope to know. And I'm no more fond of them than I was before. My roommate suspects there are eggs hatching somewhere, a thought that sends chills up and down my spine.
When I got home yesterday I was talking to my dad on the phone and he happened to mention that he had noticed a rather large crack above the window near my bed when he was hanging curtains. He said it was not huge, but large enough for spiders to come out of. That information was very useful in planning my attack (spraying Raid into the crack, vacuuming, using the cleanser, and plugging in a thing I got that sends a high pitched noise that repels spiders among other things).
I realize that like all fears, the problem lies in feeling powerless. I know the fear is a learned response because as a kid I can remember closely examining spiders building webs and feeling no disgust whatsoever. I'm not sure what happened but now spiders are to me, the equivalent of evil incarnate. I keep reminding myself there are worse things to invade my bedroom. Cockroaches for example. Bats. Sharks. But if I told you I slept calmly without being on spider watch or having spider nightmares, I'd be lying. The spiders I saw were just a little too close to my head than I'm comfortable with. What are you afraid of and how do you face your fears?
