Mom Talk

If I run short on topics later, I may post installments of my “spider bite” story for your reading pleasure.  For now, suffice it to say that several years ago, I was bitten by brown recluse spider and it resulted in some fairly severe disfigurement on one of my legs.  As you might imagine, I am now pretty much terrified of the things.  I didn’t like spiders before but now they are my mortal enemies.  This will help you understand what happened to me yesterday.

My husband and I were hauling the shop vac up the ladder into the attic over our garage to clean up after some construction work that had been done.  I was planning to vacuum by myself but it required both of us to haul the heavy vacuum up the ladder.  I was already dreading the task because the attic is very “webby” and I hate being even in the proximity of a spider.  This made me jumpy to say the least.  As I climbed the ladder, I saw a live, large brown recluse spider sitting at the top of the ladder (taunting me?).  I took of my shoe and tried to smash it but it was too quick for me and jumped off the ladder onto the garage floor.  At first, I wasn’t sure where it went and was screaming and flailing.  Then my husband spotted it and killed it quickly.  Unfortunately, after that I felt like stuff was crawling all over me and was even more jumpy, but I went on about the task at hand.  Even the tickly sweat dripping down my back was unnerving.  As I backed from the far corner of the attic towards the ladder opening with the vacuum cleaner attachment in hand, I felt something crawl up my neck and onto the top of my head.  I immediately starting screaming and swatting and dancing around and came very close to falling over the edge of the attic opening.  After “it” was off of me, I realized I had been fighting with and almost killed myself over the string used to turn the attic light off and on.  Even I had a good laugh over that one folks.