Arachnophobia?

I opened my front door this morning, which I do about once a day, if that, to see if the mailman left any packages out front for me.

And there was a super-giant spider building a web right there, at eye-level!

It's more than an hour later and I still feel light-headed and sick to my stomach.

I'm not afraid of much. In fact, I'm pretty much afraid of two things:

Heights. (Well, falling from heights.)

And spiders.

And by afraid, I mean genuinely, irrationally terrified.

And this was a big, shiny, icky, nasty spider. Right where I could see it up close and personal.

My hands are shaking.

And the worst part is, I thought I'd gotten rid of it. See, when I opened the door last night, the spider was building a web down from the eave of the house.

I can't even bring myself to touch them.

I don't like bugs in general, but I can kill most. Not with my hands. I hate how they go crunch. But shoes... And I have a little Dustbuster I use just for vacuuming up bugs. And most of the work my broom gets is wiping out spider webs and things like that.

But this spider was too big. Too freakin' huge. I'm talking penny-sized.

So I did what any insane person (and scared munkee!) would do. I got a pot full of water and let fly.

Sploosh. No more web. Problem solved.

Only I guess I missed the spider.

So today, once I'd sat down and caught my breath, I went and got another potful of water.

And when, after literally pausing to screw up my courage, I opened the door... the spider was gone.

Well, I let the web have it anyway.

But now I'm scared when I get home tonight, the spider will be back. Ick.

Time to get the broom, I guess. If I can work up the nerve to open the door.

And for God's sake, what if, somehow, the spider got inside?

No wonder I feel sick. Chills. Shaky hands. Queasy.

A freakin' 200-pound tough guy, afraid of something smaller than a quarter.

I want to go home. And not long ago, I was happy to get into the car and go to work. To get away from home.

Eww.

Ick.

Bleech.

Barf.

Yuck.

Squick.

Totally, totally gross.

I hate spiders. Snakes on a plane, I could deal with. Spiders on a plane, I'd be dead meat.