Itsy-Bitsy Spider

Do you ever get the feeling someone is watching you?

Today in the shower, a bleary-eyed 5:30 a.m. post-holiday Monday, I randomly happened to look up as I was shampooing my hair and noticed a rather large black spot on the ceiling above my head. This black spot had eight legs. And it moved. My least favorite type of black spot ever.

I should pause in my story at this point to let you know that this is not my first experience with spiders above my shower. When we lived in our shack in Midtown, our tiny bathroom was home to entire legion of daddy long leg spiders. They would hang out on the ceiling directly above the shower. Then as the steam would rise, their little legs would give way and down they would come onto the unsuspecting human below. I would spend the first 10 minutes of my day filling a cup with water and hurling it skyward, splashing the ceiling, trying to hit the spiders and knock them into the tub where I would promptly douse them with a glug of water, drowning them as quickly as possible and sending them to their drain pipe graves.

I swear those suckers would dive bomb me on purpose. I had nightmares of them vindictively climbing out of the drain to get me. It was horrible. (We also had a rat, but that's another story.)

So, with that history in mind, you can imagine my thoughts on this Monday morning. I watched that black spot like a hawk, craning my neck and contorting my body to try and get through my shower routine without taking my eyes off the spot. I calculated the odds of it falling into the shower (100 percent) and looked around for anything I could use to defend myself. Let's face it, there's not a lot to arm yourself with when you're naked in the shower.

Slowly it started crawling away from me. I risked closing my eyes to wash my face, and opened them just in time to see the spider cast off from the ceiling, dropping a gasp-inducing two feet on his web, two feet closer to me. (To be fair, we have really high vaulted ceilings in the bathroom, but still.) I tried not to throw up at the daddy long legs flashbacks and only started breathing again when the thing slowly climbed back up to his upside down perch. I turned off the water and grabbed my towel, only to catch him dropping again! Thoroughly fed up with this display of gymnastics, I hightailed it out of the shower and retreated a good ten feet from the drop zone.

I took my eyes of the spider for maybe ten seconds, just enough time to grab my moisturizer, and when I looked back up (ya'll, I'm going to need a neck massage) the thing was gone.

GONE!

On trembling feet, with quaking heart, I tiptoed back to the shower. Taking a deep breath to steel my nerves, I ever so slightly pulled the door open...

There is was! In the shower! Right where I had been standing not a minute before! IT WOULD HAVE LANDED ON ME. You guys. I can't even. I feel like there are tiny legs crawling on me even as I type this. Can you feel them? There on your back? GAH!

So, happy Monday folks. Four more days until spring break.