Broken down
to its various bits, a spider is simply a round, hairy blob. Big, scary
mouth, more eyes than any one thing should ever have and legs all over the
show. Why they scare me so much, I really don’t know. But they do.
Some days I
think it must be the way they move. The bloody things were just designed
to be freaking creepy, yet I seldom see them creep. Mostly I see them either
sitting very still, just looking at me with that look in their eyes –
all of them. "Hey, look at me, I can sit upside down on the ceiling and
jump on your head at any time! Whoo-hoo! " If not doing
that, they run around in weird patterns, very seldom straight lines, obviously
trying to make the blonde dizzy so she won't be able to call out for
help.*
I have been
suffering from a disgustingly weird, thus far unexplained parasitic infection
since my return to Jordan, eventually spending a morning and afternoon in the
hospital emergency room on Monday. I feel like... crap. I am tired, in
pain, uncomfortable, I don't know when/where/how I got this bug and am looking
at all the food in the house with great distrust. But most of all... most
of all... Sob! Nothing tastes or smells quite right. Since Sunday,
I have not been able to eat anything but one little piece of plain toast at a
time, so why bother?
As you
know, I have a deep love for all things food. I love to think about food.
I love cookbooks, I thoroughly enjoy cooking and I am pretty sure I could eat
for the Olympics, should the need ever arise. (please, please, please)
Not only do I not want to cook right now, since I feel really ill, I also don't
want to eat. Anything. That one piece of toast is so I can drink my
medicine without it destroying the lining of my stomach.
So, on top
of not feeling good at all, I feel emotionally hungry for food. That
little hungry spot somewhere in the food-section of my brain says "Feed
me! Feed me, Seymour! " and oh how I wish I could comply. But
not yet... hopefully the meds will all kick in very soon and return me to
the foodie I love to be.
What does
this all have to do with arachnophobia, you ask. Well, let me tell
you. As we were sitting in the bedroom last night, I saw the familiarly
frightening scuttling of a gazillion little legs, zigzagging in their creepy
fashion like they do simply to freak me out, across the floor at the bedroom
door. Now normally I would yell for the Voice of Reason to Hunt!
Kill! Destroy! as he so valiantly does for the love of his life, but not this
time. No sir. Well, truth be told, I did yell " Spider! ",
which set him off on a tangent about a song by The Who, called "Boris
the Spider". I suspect that after all this time, the man has
learnt that the pitch of my voice is relative to the size of the spider.
Listened, processed and deemed it to be a small enough creature which did not
require immediate action and proceeded singing the song to his now very irate
wife.
By now, I
have had just about enough of foreign goggas** running around where they are
not supposed to be and causing all sorts of scary unpleasantness. No
more! With hubby still singing about Boris, I jumped into
my red-and-orange flip-flops, gave a very impressive leap for someone in as
much discomfort as I was and squashed that little bugger like I do this for a
living! Ah... the things one will do when feeling ill, pissed off and
hungry!
Uhm... I
just hope that teeny-weeny itsy bitsy spider did not have a big brother
currently climbing up the water spout...
* (Wonder
if they watched that old Oprah Winfrey show as well, where a policeman guest of
hers advised audience members never to run in a straight line if/when running
away from someone shooting at you?)
** Bugs
(Yes, yes, yes, I know, they are not technically called bugs. I don't
care)
Click on the link below to listen to the song.
Click on the link below to listen to the song.
