If I die before I wake...

My house has had a spider problem lately. If Redras is around, I make her kill the spiders I find. Or if I man is around, I make him do his manly duty. But honestly, this is getting out of control.

Yesterday, without necessarily setting out on a "spider hunt," I managed to kill six spiders. And it was the sixth spider that concerns me the most. You see, I found spider number five as I was going to bed. It was a small black spider on the wall at the head of my bed---approximately one inch away from where my head would be if I had lain down. But I didn't. I immediately went and got tissue paper, smashed it, and flushed it. And I shudder still just to think about it.

Many of you may know that it's been hot here in Provo lately. I put a box fan in my window and during the night I turn it on and it blows the cool night air into my room. Since the cool night air hasn't been as cool lately, I've been forced to sleep upsidedown in my bed, which allows my body to benefit more greatly from the blowing of the fan (which according to some cultures is not a good thing). I did actually wonder about spiders when I was going to sleep. Killing five spiders in one's house during a day tends to do that to one. So every little tickle I felt I swore was a spider and sortof freaked out. Until I eventually calmed myself and allowed myself to go to sleep.

Only I woke up at one point and my finger was itching. And I scratched it and thought, "That's funny... it feels like a mosquito bite but I didn't hear any mosquitos... the fun must have drowned out the..." ---and I didn't finish that thought because I fell back asleep. Until I woke up what I imagine was about thirty seconds later and felt my other hand itching. At that point, I thought, "It's a spider! I know I'm being eaten by a spider! If it was a mosquito I would have heard it the second time because my brain would have been prepared to hear it!" And really, in the back of my mind, I was thinking that I was overreacting and it was not really a spider. But I flipped on the lamp beside my bed and witnessed a spider running across my pillow case---where my hands had been. I ran to the bathroom and got tissue paper and killed it and flushed it down the drain.

And then I was awake for the next hour or so, researching Utah spiders on the Internet. Ugh. At least Nemesis was there (God bless time zones!) and able to provide me comfort.

I have drawn a picture in Paint of how I was sleeping so that you can appreciate how close the spider was to my head. For your benefit, I have pretended that I was wearing pajamas at the time, which, of course, I was not. What bothers me the most is why the thing bit me! I can understand why mosquitos would bite, but what did a spider have to benefit by biting me while I was sleeping? Do they suck blood? I don't think so? Do they feast on rotting corpses? Maybe, but I certainly wasn't there yet. Do they avenge the deaths of their spider brothers? Probably. Probably, my friends.