April 09, 2008 I was told I talk about spiders a lot...

I mentioned spiders twice today and a co-worker pointed it out. She suggested that maybe I might have a problem with spiders. Ummm...DUH!! Yeah, it’s true, I don’t like ’em. I tolerate the daddy long variety because I know they eat the other ones.

So, here’s one of my spider stories.

I used to live in an old farm house on a 10 acre lot. It was surrounded by fields and fir trees. Gorgeous! Except we had all sorts of 8-legged uninvited house guests. Back in those days I had a large can of extra-super hold hairspray. It wasn’t for my lovely locks, but rather to stiffen up the spiders so they couldn’t scamper off into little hidey-holes. That way if no one else was home to get the creepy little invader then I could stomp it before it got away. *note to spider lovers and people against violence - spiders should be outside, in the bushes and away from my house. Would you allow a stranger to invade your home? If so, would you not try to remove that stranger, by force and with violence, if necessary? Ok, leave me alone then.* Anyway, I would spray the intruder and then as my kids what they thought of the spiders "Fabulous new hair-do". They laughed at me.
One summer evening I was in the office, paying bills or surfing Internet porn, can’t really remember, anyway the top of my foot started burning and itching like mad-crazy! I was wearing socks and whipped the sock off the affected foot to discover, quite to my shock and horror, that the entire top of my foot was swelled up and purple! Me, being the huge wimpy weenie that I am, made a mad dash across the hall to my bedroom, where I collapsed on my bed and put my foot up on the wall, far above my head. I screamed for my daughter, "BRIANNNA!!!!" She was watching TV downstairs and yelled back "WHAT??!!" I said "COME HERE!" She said "WHY!?!" I said "JUST COME HERE AND SEE!!" She again asked why, because she is lazy and doesn’t want to move an inch unless she the move will directly benefit her in some way. After yelling back and forth a few times she finally came upstairs. She came into my room and asked why I bellowed for her. I was just barely conscious at that point. I gasped out "Look!" while pointing at my huge ugly foot. She’s not normally squimish, but when she saw what my foot was doing she said "EWWW! What happened?" I told her I didn’t know and to call gramma.

My parents came up to my house. They only lived about 2 minutes away. My dad, who used to be a heavy equipment operator, just sort of snorted at me. He loved me, but he also was well aware of how dramatic I could be at times. My mom, a former x-ray tech, said "Well what do you want us to do?" My response was "I don’t know, what’s wrong? Why is my foot like this? Do I need to go to the hospital?"

It was decided that I’d go to the hospital, for safe measure. The nurse said it was a bee sting. Ummm....no! There were no bees in my house and especially no bee in the room with me. The doctor said it was a spider bite, as near as he could tell. The evil little bastard (spider, not doctor) bit me right on the vein on top of my foot. That’s why it swelled up and was purple. GROSS! I missed the next day at work because I didn’t get home from the hospital until the wee hours of the morning. And during the night my girls saw an itty, bitty, teeny-weeny spider and freaked out. They spent the night at a girlfriend’s house.

I didn’t die, obviously. Otherwise I’d be typing this from the "other side" and I’m sure it would be A LOT more interesting. But, that happened about 4 years ago and I still have a purple spot on top of my foot. My little badge of wimpyness, I guess you could say.