Arachnaphobia

As you can see, I switched over to the new Blogger and had to start over with a different template, etc., etc., and pretty much lost my will to live in the process . . .

It's been weird around here the last few weeks. Much sadness (we said goodbye to a number of people we cared deeply for), a little turmoil. I guess you could say life was happening all around us and we couldn't quite rein it in.

And then the other night a bee the size of a small bird flew in through the front door and I swear to you I thought I was going to need an ambulance. I'm not a fan of stinging insects. (Actually I'm not a fan of insects at all.) Stinging insects make my brain shut down. If a bee ever got into the car while I was driving, I think I'd veer right off a bridge in panic. I could handle a hitchhiking snake easier than I could handle a tiny little bee. Or, God forbid a million times, a spider.

I'm not a fan of spiders. (See a pattern here?) Spiders are sneaky. They drop down in front of you when you're not expecting them and send terror shooting through my body. You'd laugh if you saw how many glass jars and lids we have stored in our laundry room to facilitate the capture of rogue spiders.

When we first moved into this house in 1986, my husband went down to the basement to poke around. He came back upstairs pretty quickly with an odd look on his face.

"What's wrong?" I asked, ever the concerned wife.

And he, the man who's not afraid of anything, looked at me and said: "I just saw a spider who cast a shadow."

I've been sleeping with one eye open ever since.