Tuesday, April 24, 2007

little miss manda sat on her veranda, eating her curds and whey. a little old spider sat down beside her, so miss manda nailed it with raid

If any of you in the Pittsburgh area (and also those of you in Texas, New York, and Taiwan) hear screaming, sorry about that, but there are spiders in my bed.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it the first time. In my bed, where I sleep, often unconscious when I do so, there are spiders. Last night as I was lying here trying to convince myself to go to England for one of my grad-school residencies (which I'll have to do if I want to MFA it up in a year and a half) I felt something brushing my hand. My brain instantly yelped "SPIDER!" and I had a hand seizure and the sensation stopped. I figured it was just my imagination -- I sometimes get little feathers popping out of my pillows that tickle me. Then a little while later, still trying to imagine myself getting on a plane, I got the same feeling and did the same hand flick...but this time when I let my hand rest on the mattress, I felt something I can only describe as "sickening" because if I use any further adjectives in an attempt to fully describe what I felt, I may have a stroke and vomit at the same time.

I flicked on the light and saw the now-smashed spider (just one of those "little old house spiders," as my mother calls them, as in the sentence "Amanda, come down off the top of the refrigerator; that is just a little old house spider.") I sat shaking in my bed for a good couple of minutes. Madison, my guard dog, didn't even wake up. Although he is 15, so technically, he's retired.

And just now when I came downstairs to get in bed and do a little blogging and some actual writing and possibly wind up awake till dawn again, I moved one of my pillows and found another little old house spider swiveling its 10,000 eyes at me from atop my lovely peach-colored sheets. So I whacked it with a Kleenex box till it was a disgusting little ball of -- you know what, I'm stopping there, because I don't want to start shaking again. And I also need to change the sheets.

4 comments:

honeykbee said...

England? Really? Hmm. Jolly good.

Have you looked into the spider population there?

Scottie said...

any thoughts to calling the orkin man? seriously.

last night one of those million-leggers running across the living room caused j to squeal like a 13 y.o. girl at a justin timberlake concert. i'm just hoping when we get our new floors on fri-sat that we don't unearth a den of those little monsters.

Scottie said...

oh and if you see that many while awake, imagine how many you swallow in your sleep... nope, that's not a peppercorn in your teeth ::giggle::

Anonymous said...

What a wuss!

You and Don are just a scream. Small spiders weigh about as much as two hairs on your head. One swat and they're playing little webby harps forever. Good Lord.

your Texas grandma, going in for the kill...