Spiders, spiders, everywhere...

The weather warmed up for all of two days, and it's been cloudy and raining just about ever since then. I think that caused all the yucky, creepy-crawly things to think it was time to come out of hiding, only to find that it is once again cold and wet out there. They now seem to be finding shelter inside my house.

I know it's silly, but I have never really gotten over my childhood fear of spiders. It's not like I run away screaming, but I certainly don't want to be near the little buggers, let alone have to grab one in a wad of toilet paper and feel that disgusting little "pop". Ewww, it gives me the shivers just thinking about it. I was lucky in the sense that I grew up with plenty of brothers, all of whom were willing to be spider-killers on my behalf. I distinctly remember waking up my brother, Jared, in the middle of the night when we were teenagers just because I had seen a spider on my ceiling and couldn't go back to sleep.

Anyway, now I'm a mom and I'm supposed to be over this kind of thing. I am supposed to act like spiders are nothing to be scared of, because I certainly don't want my children to get all worked up about them. But as hard as I try, I can't make myself get over it. I have gone as far as trapping a spider under a cup and leaving it there for hours awaiting Dennis' arrival home from work to take care of the problem. I know, ridiculous.

Apparently I haven't hidden my fears from my kids quite as well as I thought I had. Kaiya pointed to a spider crawling up the wall this morning, and I said, "Kaiya, are you going to take care of that?" She gave a long-suffering sigh and said, "I guess so, since we all know you aren't going to get it!" Then she calmly grabbed a paper towel, caught the spider, and went and flushed it, all while shaking her head in exasperation.

I assume that by her saying "we all know you aren't going to get it", she is referring to the only other people in the room at the time, who are ages 1 and 3. Apparently they're all on to me.