Be Sensible

I hate for spiders to touch things that I might touch or use in the future. That's why I use my husband's shoes when I kill them. Or half a roll of toilet paper and run screaming to the bathroom to flush them. In fact, when I was pregnant with SP, I ended up with crutches and a knee brace for about a week after killing a spider.

See, for me, one of the gifts of pregnancy is advanced clumsiness. There was a spider in my bedroom and it wasn't very big. In fact, if I'm honest about it, it was teeny-tiny. I make it a practice to test my bravery in tough situations like those and force myself to deal with the situation on my own. So I calculated the distance from the spider to the bathroom, mapped out my course, eliminated any potential obstacles that might slow down my mad dash to the toilet, and then gathered up the tools of destruction - toilet paper. Once all the necessary arrangements had been made, I climbed onto the chair and, stifling my fear, squished the spider in the toilet paper. This is the point where my courage generally fails me and this time was no exception. I know that with the amount of toilet paper I use, there is a good chance that instead of actually squishing the spider, I have only provided a downy, cushioned resting place from which evil will strike when the time is right. That is why I have to run screaming to the toilet to flush it down immediately.

However, in all my careful planning, I had neglected to account for my graceless condition. In the process of jumping from the chair and sprinting for the bathroom, I twisted my knee and couldn't walk for a week. Because spiders are evil.

But, despite all the extreme measures I take to avoid contact with those dreaded creatures, I have never set my house on fire, like this man. Surely he could have used the neighbor's broom.