Arachnophobia

I hate spiders.

In fact, my extreme revulsion, anger and disgust toward spiders is so strong that I don't believe "hate" is a strong enough word. It's a hate that requires special typographical emphasis and color.

I !!!HATE!!!#^% spiders.

I blame this hatred and fear on my second grade teacher, Mrs. Locke, and the effective — albeit terrifying — lesson on spiders she taught back in 1993. I remember slides of black widows, the beady eyes of a brown recluse staring out a me from my textbook, and the creepy, crawly details of my classmates' presentations. It was the worst.

And while knowledge is supposedly power, for me, knowledge was terror. Learning that brown recluses love small spaces, like inside of shoes, made me seriously consider steering clear of footwear altogether. Basements and garages and their accompanying cobwebs were to be avoided at all costs.

So, when moving into our new house, I found myself face to tiny, creepy face with my biggest fears.

Scott and I have a buffet that stored movies in our old house and is now serving as a makeshift TV stand in the new house. (You can see part of it in my weekly pregnancy pictures.) At the old house, I always avoided its base because there were cobwebs all around it, despite my efforts to Swiffer them away. At one point, there was evidence that something had hatched under there, but we never saw any spider babies, so didn't think too much about it. When the piece was being moved from the old house to the new, I asked Scott to check underneath it to ensure that no spiders were inhabiting it and making the move with us.

The next day, Scott and I were moving it from the dining room into the living room of the new house, and I was putting felt pads on the bottom of the buffet when I decided it was a good time to clean underneath it. I asked Scott if he had checked it like I asked, and he said no. Scott pulled on the back, bearing the weight of the buffet against him at an angle to expose the under belly. There along the side were four spider egg sacks. And I have to say that my reaction is not one of my proudest moments.

I'm not a squealy girl — a fact I pride myself on. But when presented with those little, white, woven carriers of doom, I couldn't help myself. It was too much.

I begged Scott not to make me touch them, even if it was just with a Clorox wipe. I told him I'd hold the buffet up while he did it, but it was too heavy for me to manage. He kept coaching me on: "You can do it! C'mon! Just close your eyes and do it! Do it for your baby!" Meanwhile, the baby in question was cackling his mom's sounds of fright. He finds joy in the weirdest things.

After a great deal of encouragement, I finally plucked up the courage to wipe the sacks away. (Just the word "sacks" makes my skin crawl!) I may or may not have screeched "This is my nightmare!!" Thankfully, they were empty and didn't spring forth thousands of spider babies. I don't think we could've afforded the therapy I would need if that had happened. I still required a laboratory-grade decontamination shower afterward.

Needless to say, Scott owes me big time, and I'm working on a list of silks, cashmere, jewels, and spider sprays for him to repay me with.