The itsy-bitsy freak out

The other day, I had just finished my morning ablutions and had stepped in front of the mirror to comb my hair when I suddenly felt the sensation of a spider crawling across my foot.  You know how you get that sensation sometimes?  Like a bug or something small crawling across your skin?  Well, I looked down, as you would in such a case, fully expecting to either see (a) nothing or (b) an abandoned hair - either from my own head or perhaps the cat - that had fallen onto my foot and was giving me that ticklish sensation.

Horrifyingly, what I saw was in fact option (c) - an actual spider running across my bare foot.  Well, running is too speedy a term.  What he was doing was more of a mosey or an amble as he certainly was feeling no urgency in crossing the terrain.  I promptly did what any human being in her right mind would do.  I freaked the heck out.  I began vigorously shaking my foot while hopping up and down on my other leg in an attempt to fling the spider off of me, all the while shrieking like an extra in a B horror movie.  The spider, far from being dissuaded in his attempt to stay on my skin, decided that rather than hopping off the crazy, damp, shrieking, jiggling, madly leaping about the (very small) master bathroom chick, he'd head due north right up my leg.  All my evasive actions succeeded in doing was getting him to pick up his pace from a mosey to a sprint.

Fortunately for me, I did not drop into a dead faint at the sight of this ferocious beast coming straight for my throat as fast as his eight hairy legs could carry him.  I somehow managed to keep presence of mind enough to grab a wad of toilet paper (while still screaming a bit and jumping around, I confess) and execute a combination swipe-squish maneuver that removed him both from my thigh and this world.

Now, I have a strict No Squishing policy when it comes to creepy-crawlies.  Not to say I'm one of those insane do-gooders who gently scoop any and all such home invaders into a cup and set them free back in the great outdoors, because if it isn't a ladybug, butterfly or cricket, that's pretty much not happening.  Nope, if I see a spider, beetle or any other EW EW ICK LOOK AT THAT HORRIBLE THING type creature inside my house, I'm all for killing it.  I just can't kill it in a way that will leave a smear or worse behind.  Just the thought of that makes me a little queasy.  This must be related to my innate dread and hatred for pumpkin guts, but I have never wanted to dwell on the topic long enough to work it out.

Anyhow, my preferred method of killing things that go BOO! in my bathroom is to render them immobile by whatever means are handy and then picking up the paralyzed and/or dead creepy-crawlie and disposing of it in either the garbage can or toilet.  (This is my preferred method for the rest of the house, too, actually.)  If I'm in the bathroom, hairspray usually is the weapon of choice, and if I'm not near a can of something or if I'm in a room with carpeting, I'll opt to Dustbuster the critter into the next world.  (Okay, my most preferred method is to call Hubby and get him to eradicate the creepy-crawlie, but Hubby is gone for pretty much the whole day so I have to have a back-up method handy for those times when it's just me and the bugs.)

The other morning, though, with Certain Death lunging ever closer to my jugular (he had FANGS, I'm telling you.  FANGS and an evil and bloodthirsty gleam in his beady eyes), I didn't have time to run into Kiddo's bathroom and retrieve my hairspray, so I had to squish the horrible creature with my bare hands.  Well, my bare hands and a wad of toilet paper about three inches thick.  Terror overrode my gag reflex as I crumpled the TP for all I was worth, suddenly finding Hulk-like strength in my hand, and then I promptly dropped the corpse in his Charmin shroud into the bowl and sent him to his watery grave.  And then I waited for the tank to refill and flushed again.  And again.  Just to be sure, you know.

*shudder*

Sorry Charlotte, but unless you can write out George Clooney's cell phone number in a web on my bathroom mirror, you and all your brethren are destined to meet the same fate should you dare enter this coward's domain.  So do me a favor and spread the word to all your creepy-crawlie pals, okay?

Stick a fork in me

'cause I am done. As I mentioned in my previous post, Kiddo appeared to be starting with a head cold yesterday morning.   Well, yesterday afternoon she returned home from school white as a sheet with a low grade fever (99.2) and generally looked pitiful, so we skipped her swimming lesson and I put her to bed early with a dose of Children's Mucinex Cold for good measure.

Now, since it isn't possible for my kid to ever catch anything besides strep throat (to which I seem *knock wood* to be mostly immune) without me catching it too, of course I started with the cold symptoms myself.  I can actually tell you the exact moment they began.  I was pushing my shopping cart out of Walmart to my car through the chilly, damp air yesterday afternoon (temperatures were back down into the 30s and I was forced to reluctantly pull my winter coat back out of the closet where I'd optimistically stashed it the previous week) and I breathed in.  With that inhalation (around 2:20pm), my throat began to hurt.  At first I chalked it up to the air, to being thirsty, to *anything* other than germs.  I hopped in the car and chugged a bottle of water.  Throat still hurt.  Dang.  I chose to ignore it and went on with my day, because really, it's not like I actually had a choice.  The world does not stop because Mommy is suddenly feeling unwell, after all. I drove myself home, unpacked the groceries, herded Kiddo into the house when the school bus arrived, tended to her, etc.

By the time she was tucked into bed - 6:50pm despite DST, so I knew she wasn't feeling well - I was listless and sneezy.  I still tried to convince myself that it was nothing more than PMS.  Because PMS gives you a runny nose and sore throat, right?  Hubby got home around 8:30 and we had cold cereal and toast for dinner, then went to bed at 10, and as soon as I rolled onto my side and shut my eyes, I felt it.  That inside-the-skull sloshing of all the snot that seemingly spontaneously generated and ran down into my left side sinuses and nostril as they snuggled into the pillow.  Ugh.  I rolled to the other side and felt the sensation repeat as the tide shifted to my right.  Not.  Good.

As the night progressed, I tossed and turned and woke up to alternatively jam Puffs Pluses into my nostrils or to remove and replace them.  (What?  You've never done that?  I do it all. the. time. when I have a head cold.  I'm doing it right now, as a matter of fact.)  Around 2am, Hubby abandoned ship and moved himself into the guest room to try to get some sleep that wasn't interrupted by my congested breathing, snorting or snoring.  I took advantage of his defection by rolling onto my back so that at least the congestion could reach a state of equilibrium between my sinuses.  As generally happens when I'm not feeling well, my subconscious went all Twilight Zone on me and kept parading odd and unsettling dreams through my increasingly congested noggin for the periods I was actually asleep.

This morning, Kiddo didn't wake up until 8:35.  I would gladly have slept in even longer if I could've, myself.  Instead, I got up, swapped my normal morning attire of ratty sweatshirt-over-jammies for my ratty-fleece-with-pockets-over-jammies so that I can carry a stash of tissues and hand sanitizer with me wherever I go and shuffled downstairs.  Kiddo is home from school today (obviously) and we're both pretty pathetic.  My sinus headache is throbbing to the beat of the opening chords of Eye of the Tiger thanks to her iPod.  I'm presently debating whether to turn on the Wii for her and let her play Littlest Pet Shop so I can go back to bed.  (We have a rule: Kiddo is only allowed to play Wii on the weekends.)  Oh, who am I kidding?  I'm totally turning it on for her as soon as she finishes her breakfast and comes back downstairs. 

The end-of-winter cold is unfortunately a bit of a tradition around our house, and one I would gladly skip.  It's supposed to be gorgeous out today, Hubby told me this morning as he was getting ready for work.  Sunshine and temps in the 50s.  I'd planned to do some yardwork (there are enough sticks in our yard for me to build a bonfire) and I was supposed to be volunteering at school this afternoon on a big art project the first graders are finishing up, but instead I'm going to pull down the shades and retreat to my Mentholated Rainforest Cave. And did I mention on top of this cold, I also have *every* possible PMS symptom right now, too? 

Pathetic.  Totally pathetic.