*Insert piercing scream here*

I am afraid of spiders. Really afraid. I'm not sure when or how that came about, but it seems to have always been the case.

Shortly after moving into my first home in Mesa, I went to bed to discover a spider underneath my pillow. I don't normally check under my pillow before I go to bed, so I'm glad that I happened to catch that little guy before I called it a night, or the event might've been a lot more emotionally scarring than it was. I didn't want to smash it on my bedspread, so I grabbed some toilet paper and smashed it between my fingers. It was so gross. That was the bravest I've ever been when it comes to spiders.

I've noticed lots of spiders at this house... mostly outside. When trying to pull weeds, a bunch scrambled out from the ground where I'd just plucked up a weed, and I decided I'd had enough of pulling weeds for the time being. I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed around the front of the house.

And one day shortly after moving in, I noticed what appeared to be spiders hatching. They were so small it was hard to tell that they were actually spiders. But I figured out that must be what they were, so I quickly got my Knight in Shining Armor to come kill them all. It was quite a gross, messy production, but he did it.

Yesterday morning, I was ready for church early and decided I would wash the dishes. I got pretty far before I noticed in one of the sinks the biggest spider I've ever seen. In fact, I touched it without seeing it and it scrambled in the sink trying to get away from me. I screamed the most bloodcurdling scream and backed away as quickly as possible from the sink. Joe ran downstairs very quickly to see what was going on. I explained to him the situation, and with his knowing how much I can over-react to even small spiders, appeared a bit skeptical. But then he saw the spider and calmly responded, "Yep. That's pretty big, alright."

He was going to vacuum it up and then go outside and let it out, possibly in our garbage can. But before he was able to share his full details, I stopped him and demanded, "No. You have to KILL it. I don't want to think that it might be able to come back again." I felt a little more in control, and so I started toward the faucet to try to drown it, but he stopped me. He eventually was able to take out the rest of the dishes from that side of the sink to start his plan of drowning it. I'm not quite sure how he managed it, but I know he used a plastic cup with at least some hole poked in the top of it. I left the room until it was gone.

He said to me later that he doesn't like spiders at all either, but just didn't dislike them as much as I do. I told him he should teach our future kids not to be afraid of spiders so they can kill the spiders for us. Then he mentioned getting cats to chase the spiders away, and I pictured cats eating spiders and then trying to lick me, and I got creeped out all over again. Yuck!