Spiders

I certainly wouldn't call myself an arachnophobe.  In fact, when spiders are outside... and not really ugly (Sorry spiders, some of you are just ugly.), I really like them.  They are interesting to look at, they make fascinating webs, and they eat bugs.  Who doesn't want fewer bugs in the world?  When spiders are in my house, I don't like them quite so well, but I'm generally still not afraid of them.  Sometimes they startle me... like when I suddenly realize that they are crawling on the wall right next to me, or... across my foot.  When this happens, however, I generally recover from my shock and take control of the situation by squashing the little buggers so that I don't have to worry anymore about whether they are scary or not.  

I am generally very good at squashing spiders.   

In fact, when I was single, I occasionally went to other girls' apartments to squash their spiders because the proximity required to squash a spider was just a little too intimate for them.  However, I have enough squashing experience to qualify me to say that when you miss a spider, it makes things obnoxious because then you have to chase a startled spider, which--you have to hand it to the little critters--is generally a pretty fast-moving object.

Today, while I was fixing my hair, I looked down and was startled to see a spider that was very ugly and longer than the distance between it and my bare foot.  It was large enough that I didn't want to get it with just a tissue because, well, then I would have to feel it squish.  So, I did the only logical thing:  I ran to grab a shoe.  The problem is that this gave my opponent enough time to crawl into a

hard-to-reach corner.  Nevertheless, I proceeded to thrust my weapon at it.  After a few misses, the spider had run into an even-harder-to-reach corner, and I decided that the best course of action would be to leave it alone for a minute or two to see if it would gain a false sense of security and re-expose itself.  I went back to doing my hair, glancing occasionally at the floor to make sure that the enemy wasn't coming back for a surprise attack on my toes.  A few minutes later, there was still no sign of the spider.  I pulled out the garbage can and the plunger to make sure that I could see everywhere and looked around but my would-be opponent was nowhere to be seen.  

So, while I am no arachnophobe, I have to say that it's a little creepy knowing that there's a big, ugly spider somewhere in my bathroom, but I just don't know where.