Ants in my pants.
One of my housemates used to leave cans of Coke in our freezer and forget about them until they exploded, leaving Coke slush all over our frozen foods. This happened often enough that a small mountain of slush accumulated at the bottom of our freezer, which attracted a battalion of ants. We dealt with it by dousing everything with bug spray, which also gave me a good excuse to eat out every day of that week. Just like the Coke slushy mountain attracted the ants, the ants, I think, also attracted my arch-nemeses— spiders.
My mom is afraid of flying, my brother is afraid of becoming a perpetual grad student, my dad is afraid of the church guys who come to our house wanting to convert us, and I am afraid of spiders. I was the only person in my class who was thrilled when Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web died.
I’ve rearranged my life so the chance of bumping into a spider is as low as it can get. If I need to use the public restroom and it’s occupied by a spider, I’ll hold it. I’d rather get a urinary infection than risk being bitten. I limit my outdoor activities because that’s their territory, not mine. My landlord hasn’t installed our fire alarms yet, so there are big, gaping holes in our ceilng. My roommate is concerned that we could possibly burn to death in our sleep, but I’m more concerned about the possibility of spiders making their descent from there.
During every encounter with a spider, I spray so much bug spray that it dies not from the poison, but from drowning. I asked my friends to Google natural spider repellents because I was too afraid that Google would return the image results as the first item. Supposedly, spiders hate lavender and lemon. I spent part of my weekend gathering lemon spray, lavender sachets, lavender oil, lavender hand-soap, lavender shampoo— basically anything that could be scented with lavender, I now own. My head is hurting from the fragrance overload, but I’ll get used to it.
Feel free to share your spider horror/success stories. I want to hear them! But mostly the success ones.
I am no good with segues, so here are some photos from Point Reyes last, last weekend. These were taken by my friend Jason:
That funny. We scared of you too.
wow! cool pictures. good thing no spiders are posing in them.
Whoa! You were in Point Reyes the weekend after me, Lis and Andrew went! We took practically the same pictures! And I took a picture of a sleeping seal on the beach too, maybe it was the same one?