SHOWER DOOM

[helenic]

I am officially a GIRL.[1] I was in the shower and suddenly there was a spider on the shower head, which is attached to the wall and therefore unmovable. When I first saw it I was terrified it would be somehow washed onto my head even though it was above the stream of water, but after a minute or two it seemed to be fairly stationary. I had to stand with my back to it if I wanted to do my hair but I kept glancing round and then suddenly oh my god it was MOVING. It ran around the showerhead a few times and then came right down so its legs were touching the water. At this point I leapt out of the shower in case it was washed onto me, despite the fact that I was in the middle of shampooing and there were suds everywhere. I half-closed the shower door, and tentatively leaned one arm into the shower and tried flicking water on it to make it move. Didn't work. There was no way I was getting back in there with a spider POISED ABOVE MY HEAD. I got a flannel and kept half-reaching to swat it but I just couldn't bring myself to get close enough to touch it. What if I accidentally flung it towards me or it ran down my ARM or something? Then it ran round to the other side of the shower head and lurked there, but when I got back in the shower and had a look it seemed to be half-hanging on a thread and half its legs were in midair and it did not look particularly stable there. I put my bathrobe on and knocked on my neighbour's door to see if she could help me move it, still covered in shampoo foam. She wasn't in. In the end I made a quick dive into the shower to retrieve my shower things and used the bathroom downstairs. SPIDERS EW. As if exams weren't enough, my god. Not what my nerves need right now.

In other news I actually started revising at 8am this morning, go me. I've had a few breaks inbetween but I'm now out of the shower and all set to go back into the library and do my thing. I can't seem to stop eating, but it's probably just anxiety and distraction-seeking and the fact I've run out of cigarettes. My head keeps offering me suggestive but basically unhelpful words, like satrap and kletic and archon and demythologise and heterogenous. They make me think I know lots of stuff but it's probably a lie and those words are actually all there is, like as soon as they hit my brain filter the sentences dissolve and the words can only go in one at a time in no coherent order. I have no idea how much of my revision is actually working, but I've timed it PERFECTLY to all make sense at 9am next Tuesday and not before, so if it seems like I don't know anything yet perhaps it's just all going to plan.


¹ Yes yes that's so gendered, it's IRONIC okay, whatever.

Comments

[oxfordgirl.livejournal.com]

Meep spiders MEEP.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

meeeeeep indeed.

thankyou for your email. i am too sleepy to reply. I shall wait a week or so before giving up completely, but fear not, if necessary I'm sure I can sell the flights to a friend. And that way I get a birthday party with EVERYONE. So both ways I win. *hug*

[notintheseheels.livejournal.com]

Sounds like perfectly reasonable behaviour to me.

[deborah_c]

*nods* Spiders and revision vie with each other to be the most evil thing in the universe, but are slightly outdone by telemarketers.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

thankyou. yay solidarity in our fear of the spidery things that are all trying to fall in our hair.

incidentally, it has come to my attention that Rainbow Cafe opens until 10.30pm with tea of various kinds and nice cushioned seats. Would you be up for some late-night revision support some time? at the moment I'm caught between the twin perils of Interwebs (in my room) and Lack of Tea (in the library). Both of these problems would be solved!

[fluffymark]

Poor spider. Spiders are nice and cute and strokable. I like spiders. Please tell me you didn't hurt it? Wah! *sob*

[libellum.livejournal.com]

...

that is sick and wrong.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Yay, spiders!

It was probably there to tell you to be persistent with revision. Y'know, Robert-the-Bruce-style. Which you are doing. So it's obviously working. :P

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

Yay, friendliness to spiders! We had a pet spider above the bed once and it had lots of little baby spiders and we watched them grow up. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

A spider with the evil sense of humour of a stalker?
I like it already.

Maybe if you get it a bathing costume, it will go in the water next time?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

YOU MOCK MY PAIN.

[akonken.livejournal.com]

Spiders are skerry, okay?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

yes! skerry and mean.

[dreamfracture.livejournal.com]

I'd probably have stood there staring at it too, but that's mainly because I find spiders so very, very beautiful.

It was probably thinking "Oh my god, I can't possibly shower now, what if I get washed onto her hair? Ick, girlhair. Ick! Maybe if I flick water onto her she'll go away."

[libellum.livejournal.com]

*is amused*

Ick, girlhair. Ick!

I know certain people who'd agree with you there ...

[strongtrousers.livejournal.com]

As your soon-to-be-resident Big Butch Man, I am pleased to inform you that I am actually quite competent at removing spiders and quite expect to be screamed at for help in this regard. Although, anything involving more interaction than the glass-and-pamphlet method will probably give me the willies too.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I don't scream. I back away slowly and whisper in case any sudden movement or sound makes them move. They're scary quick and they can come towards you and argh.

Sometimes I'm okay with them. I've never managed the glass-and-pamphlet myself but I can do washing-them-down-plugholes. Unfortunately that was impossible in this instance. Meep.

But yay, big butch man!

[verte.livejournal.com]

Ah, I went out for the day with dirty hair because I couldn't face sharing a shower with a spider. There is still a box in the middle of my floor I cannot move because I know there's a HUGE dead spider underneath. It's been there about a month.

Well done with revision though. I say spider freak-outs are particularly acceptable during exam time.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

get a Manly Male (or female) to move the box! Otherwise what if you get back drunk and trip out of it and release spider everywhere?!

But your shower has an attachment, you can wash it down the plughole!

I'm wavering between freak-outs about EVERYTHING (spiders, sleep, relationships, tidying, food, what do to next, what to do this afternoon, paris, moving, the summer, EXAMS) and being in a zen calm. Which is probably just laziness. But still. The calm is good. Not very condusive to work though....

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I can't help feeling that when God created 'every creeping thing that creeps along the earth' he was making a mistake. The world would be so much lovelier without spiders and cockroaches and moths and cranefly and the like.

[emperor]

I don't know. Many insects are really pretty close up.

[the-waves.livejournal.com]

just to say--I got the shirt! thanks ever so.
i have a little something to send you, and will post it on Monday. xo.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

huzzah! thankyou :) It turns out the postage costs were minimal, so you don't need to worry about it unless you want to.

Flanders and Swann

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

All together now:

I have fought a grizzly bear,

Tracked a cobra to its lair,

Killed a crocodile who dared to cross my path;
But the thing I really dread

When I've just got out of bed

Is to find that there's a spider in the bath.
I've no fear of wasps or bees,
Mosquitoes only tease,
I rather like a cricket on the hearth;

But my blood runs cold to meet
In pyjamas and bare feet
With a great big hairy spider in the bath.

What a frightful-looking beast -

Half an inch across at least -

It would frighten even Superman or Garth.
There's contempt it can't disguise
In the little beady eyes
Of the spider glowering in the bath.

Now it's time for me to shave

Though my nerves will not behave,

And there's bound to be a fearful aftermath;
So before I cut my throat
I shall leave this final note:

DRIVEN TO IT - BY THE SPIDER IN THE BATH!

Re: Flanders and Swann

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

*applause*

[karajanks.livejournal.com]

I had the same fear of spiders. Then I (unwittingly) moved into an apartment that had an infestation of THESE (http://www.meccapixel.com/images/0404/040428_1.jpg)
THINGS (http://www.richard-seaman.com/Wallpaper/Nature/Horrors/HouseCentipede.jpg). (Two pictures, cut for the squeamish.)


They are HUGE and have 30 legs. They run really fast. They frequently take showers with you, and are too big to flush down the drain. And on one memorable morning, I awoke to find one on my pillow, approximately an inch from my face.

After that, spiders seemed just fine...

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I am not looking at the pictures. I am not looking at the pictures. Eweweweweewewwwwwww.

The thing is that after staring at this spider for ages I went downstairs and in the other shower I kept hallucinating that the air around me was full of spiders. Worse than that bit in The Craft. Not nice.

[mostlyacat.livejournal.com]

We used to have spiders all the time at East Cottage (http://www.fluffhouse.org.uk/evil_nick/art/slides/02_East_Cottage.html) (where we lived before Newbury). It was a 17th century farm cottage so it was partly held together by the spiders that lived there (or perhaps built by the spiders originally as a perfect home for themselves). There would be very large spiders in the bathroom most of the time. Tegenaria gigantea (http://www.nicksspiders.com/nicksspiders/tegenariagigantia.htm) [1] was the usual species (we learnt their latin names y'see) - they don't make webs because they don't need to - they just eat anything smaller than them aargh!

One of the best ways I found to get rid of a spider without hurting them is to use two video boxes (the cardboard type that blank videos live in). They make perfect hiding places for spiders. You put one video box next to the spider, and then use the other video box to scare the spider just enough so that it runs into the first box to hide. Then you pick the box up and turn it vertically so the sides are too steep for the spider to climb out. You can even put the second video box on top to close it in fully. Then you can throw the spider outside easily.

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[1] Warning - scary photos