[Just ’cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there]

And sometimes, just because you don’t feel it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Case in point:

I was reclining on my bed last night, on the phone with Phil, recounting the day’s events and non-events. Suddenly I catch movement out of the corner of my eye, on my left hand, which was holding the phone up to my ear. I figured it was my hair being blown by the air conditioner or something, but it kept moving and in all the horror of Hell I realized that it was a spider crawling on me. A big one. Bigger than a quarter. Bigger than a half-dollar. So I screamed like I was being murdered and shook my hand violently to get it off. You all know my thing about spiders. Well, it landed, stunned, on the floor, and, after throwing down the phone and going through convulsions and screaming profanities and sobbing, I realized it was a brown recluse, which sent me into even more fits of insanity. A brown recluse had been crawling on me, right next to my face. A poisonous spider whose bite could have rotted my fingers was crawling next to my ear while I was lying in my bed.

Of course, Phil is on the other end thinking I’ve been attacked or that I’ve finally snapped for good, and I’m sobbing and staring at the hideous thing on my floor, wondering how it got on my bed and on my hand and why it didn’t bite me when I screeched at it. So I sqashed it with my flip-flop and proceeded to rip my clothes off (it could have hatched a million babies in my pajamas!), strip my bed linens (a whole colony could be thriving beneath my fitted sheet!), search the underside of the mattress and beneath the bed (those little bastards love dry, warm spaces!), and pour out my chocolate milk (its relatives could be swimming in there and I’d never know until I felt their spindly legs wash down my throat!). I pulled the bed away from the wall and flipped my sheets so my feet would point toward the wall while I slept. Assuming, of course, that I ever decided to sleep again. (It took me until 3:30 to doze off, and only then with the lamp on.)

I kept getting Vietnam-like flashbacks when I tried to settle and put the phone back to my ear. I would feel movement somewhere on me and freak out and drop the phone and claw at my head. It sounds silly but it was totally involuntary. I am deathly afraid of those things, and that’s the second one I’ve found in my room. Luckily the first was just on the wall.

And what’s weird is that just the previous night, I’d dreamt that someone had a huge nasty spider in a cage, and they were taunting me with it, trying to thrust it upon me. When I told Phil that, he said, “Maybe that’s because it was crawling on you.”

+++

My nephew Casey turns 9 today, and I’ve been trying to track him down all evening. I sent him a card, but if I know the post office, it won’t get there until tomorrow, maybe Friday. Apparently his dad is getting remarried and they’re spending lots of time at his fiancee’s house, and I don’t have that phone number. Who knows. But happy birthday, kid. You’re a star.