Enlightenment

*If you happen to have any hint of arachnophobia, skip this post.

The other night I woke up with a spider in my underwear.  Here's the story.

A month or so ago I opened my messy silverware drawer and almost grabbed a spider instead of a spoon.  It was a jumping spider, which is the kind you are not allowed to smush yourself, in case it jumps on your hand and into your hair as you try to kill it.  So I went and got my landlord, who smushed the jumper thoroughly will a paper towel while grumbling under her breath.  Grumble, grumble, but the spider was gone.

A week or so later I noticed a minuscule baby spider, almost transparent, crawling toward me on my white couch.  Small spiders can't jump or eat you, so I let it go on by.  I saw another one the next day, and then another. So, maybe a nest hatched? Whatever. They needed to go out into the world and I wasn't going to stop them. I'm a doula after all.  Besides, I'm pretty sure spiders don't squat where they're born.  I felt enlightened to be able to let these little creepy things crawl right on by me and not freak out.

Two nights ago as I was falling asleep I felt like something was crawling on me.  I was pretty sure I even flipped something off my waist, but when I turned on the light and scanned the premises, I saw nothing.  It's easy to be paranoid about creepy crawlers when you have a constant fan going.  I'd already reconciled this, so I went to sleep.  At precisely 2:36 am, I woke up because I felt an unfamiliar (yes) tickling in an unusual place.  I immediately felt for what it was and realized something was in my underwear that definitely shouldn't have been.  It's amazing the wide-awakeness you reach you when you become aware something is crawling around in your pants.  I should have taken the opportunity to write some new math.  The perpetrator was immediately smushed and I bounded from bed to bathroom in one leap.  I ripped off my clothes and fought off a panic attack as I saw the mound of guts and legs now one with the fabric.

I didn't go back to sleep for a while as I dreamed up all possible places for spiders, how to eradicate the certain infestation, and the details of this blog post  Now that I am really awake and have seen no more, I've decided to go back to being enlightened and leave things as they are.  I don't think there are many spiders around really, and I guess I can't get too upset about this little guy who just wanted to curly up with in bed.

It just better not happen again.