Overflowing Toilet

(I do not own this image, I found it here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/166562065/dont-touch-my-balls-white-baby-onesie)

                I am a woman who really enjoys poop jokes; I can’t explain it. Perhaps my taste for graceless jokes comes from my complete lack of it. Shocking as it may seem ESPECIALLY for those of you who know me very well, I have had some embarrassing moments in the restroom. I have been frightened into wetting my pants (and driven home with my coat tied around my waist to change), since having my daughter I often lose a bit of my bladder’s contents when I sneeze (not every time, enough with the suspicious stares), I can’t even count the times I have farted in a store just to have someone walk around the corner into the stink cloud moments later, and I have of course clogged my fair share of toilets. None of these incidents even come close to the horror that befell me in the fall of 2009, a permanent black mark in my past.

                I was spending the weekend at a new girlfriend’s house and was anxious to make a good impression. This chick was the judgmental type and the type to never let you ever live anything even remotely embarrassing down. For example, I was once playing Strip P’Diddle with her and a few other friends two years later. I am known not only for my frequent flatulence but also for my slow reflexes, an unfortunate trait in the game of P’Diddle. For those of you who have never played, it is a simple car game. Every time you see someone with a missing headlight or taillight or those ridiculously bright white headlights, you shout P’DIDDLE and touch the ceiling of the car. The last poor fool to carry this out has to remove an article of clothing. (I have been very exposed while playing P’Diddle.) So there I was, already topless and forced to remove my pants just as we rolled through the McDonald’s drive-thru. Sadly, the embarrassing part was that it was laundry day and I was wearing some monstrous granny panties. I never lived that one down; in fact, one of the girls I was with went out and bought me three thongs as a joke later on. (It was humiliating, but, hey, I will take the free undies!)

                Returning to my first weekend at Judgmental Girl’s house, as you may know, normal people don’t go an entire weekend without pooping and teenagers are really shy about their bowel movements. (Let me save you some trouble, young ones, no one gives a shit. Literally. Everyone drops a deuce now and again. Even if it is smelly, you aren’t really getting judged as much as you think you are. In fact, I judge you more for holding it. Honestly, are you a sadist or just dumb? POOP!) I swear, I held it as long as I could (by which I mean probably 18 hours after arriving. I know, right? JUST GO, FOOL!) We were outside lounging around the backyard and talking smack about everyone we knew when I could hold it no longer. Assuring her I would be right back, I bravely entered the house and headed for the only bathroom. Its location was…less than ideal. It was directly off the kitchen where her mom spent pretty much every waking moment. Lucky for me, she was not around at the time.

                As I flushed the toilet, I prayed, “Please don’t clog, please don’t clog, PLEASE, DON’T CLOG!!!!” Yeah, it clogged. I scoured the room for a plunger to no avail. Who in their right mind doesn’t keep a plunger in their house!? Especially if I am your house guest!? Hopelessly, I tried to flush again which turned out to be a MASSIVE mistake! The toilet began overflowing at top speed! I ripped the door to the bathroom closet open, pulling out every towel I could reach to clean up the toilet water that was cascading out of the toilet at probably a trizillion miles a second. I frantically searched the room for something to unclog the toilet with (other than my arm). As the towels became soaked through, I started throwing the dirty clothes from the hamper down to keep the floor dry. Finally, I grabbed a toilet brush, thrusting it into the toilet as hard as I could. The toilet brush did eventually unclog the toilet, but it was a little worse for wear after all that…and I was traumatized.

                I braced myself as I opened the door. I kept picturing Judgmental Girl and her whole Judgmental Family standing on the other side of the door waiting to greet me with disgusted stares. I stepped boldly out into the kitchen to find it was still empty. LORD, I TRULY AM BLESSED!!! I booked it back outside hoping she hadn’t noticed that I had been gone for a long time. She had. It turned out I had been inside for almost a full half an hour. Not knowing how to explain myself, I told her I had gone into her room and watched TV for a while, winning myself Best Friend of the Year for sure.

Get Your Hands Out of My Baby Garden

                “Well, we don’t like to cut during delivery if we can help it. We prefer you to tear naturally because it heals better,” Dr. Reason said to me as she squirted cold goo onto my massive stomach. I was four days past my due date. The last thing I wanted to review was the possibility of an episiotomy.

                “I’m about to give birth! Don’t tell me that!” I thought to myself. Outwardly, I nodded along grimly. Everyone had been so sure I was going to have this baby early yet here we were. When Dr. Reason offered to schedule an induction for Friday, I was all for it. I had had enough of being pregnant. It had been a considerably smooth ride, but in the last five or six weeks I blew up to a ridiculously uncomfortable size (I was sure I was going to pop), my hips were so loose that every time I walked, my whole pelvic area would be in an agonizing free-swing, and it took hours for me to fall asleep between my continuous full-body aches and my constant need to pee. I made my peace with the idea of being induced quickly; I didn’t care how it happened anymore, I just wanted this kid to get out of my body. I had spent the past several weeks shoveling spicy foods into my mouth, driving down the bumpiest back roads I could find for hours, and screaming, “THIS IS YOUR EVICTION NOTICE! GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OOOOUUUUTTTT!!!!” at my stomach before collapsing back into my bed to weep over Disney movies.

                Thursday morning, I woke up around 4 a.m. feeling a little strange. I had only just fallen asleep two hours before so I decided I didn’t care what the-fuck-ever I was feeling and went back to sleep. I woke up again at noon and hopped into the shower. Lucy was a very active fetus from about fourteen weeks on, especially when I played music, she heard her Daddy’s voice, or I got into water, so I was really concerned when she didn’t move at all during my shower. I was already so late (okay, six days late) and now she wasn’t moving? I called the hospital who told me to drink a small coke, have a little healthy snack, and lie on my right side. If she didn’t move at least seven times within the hour, they wanted me to come in. She had moved eight times when they called back to check on me.

                “Okay, well, you’re probably starting to go into labor then,” the perky nurse told me.

                “Okay, when should I come in?” I asked.

                “Not for a while,” she said. “If you come too soon, we’ll just have to send you home.”

                “Great,” I thought, aggressively flipping through the TV channels. If I had to get my hopes up that I was about to go into labor just to be disappointed one more time, I thought I might lose it. Since February, people had been saying things like, “Oh!! You’re nesting! Any day now!” or, “Look how much you’ve dropped! She’ll be here any day now!” or worse, “She’ll come when she’s ready.” Every time someone said that to me, I felt like screaming, “BITCH, WHAT ABOUT WHEN I’M READY?”

                At three p.m., my parents were getting ready to go pick my sister up from the Norfolk airport. She was coming home from spending a week in France with her high school class. She was probably the only person who was happy I hadn’t had the baby ye, because she really wanted to be home for that (obviously). My mom wasn’t so sure she should go because she was worried I was in labor and would need her.

                “Just go, Mom,” I said. “It’s not like the airport is that far away. If I do, you’ll have plenty of time to get back here before I give birth. If I do go into labor, I can call Nan, Auntie, Dana, Sarah…There are tons of people who can come help me until you get back.”

                My mom was just about to step out the door at three thirty when she decided to stay. By four thirty, I was definitely in labor, and it was starting to hurt. Mom put dinner in the oven because she wanted me to eat before I left for the hospital. I called Jude, who was four hours away at college to tell him he should prepare to leave. At five thirty, I was pacing the house in agony during each contraction and shoveling shepherd’s pie down my throat between them. By six o’clock, I was really hurting.

                “Mom,” I said, “When do you plan on taking me to the hospital?”

                “I’m not sure, Sarah,” she replied, “but you can let me know if you want to go.”

                I tried to hold on as long as I could. I didn’t want to get down there just to be sent away, but I was feeling the pain big time. At six thirty, I very politely said, “Mom, if you don’t take me to the hospital now, I don’t know if I am going to be able to get in the car.” I called Jude to tell him to get his ass in the car and step on it because if he wasn’t there for me when I gave birth to HIS child, I would cut his face off. We set off on the longest forty minute car ride of my life. (I have never known there to be so many bumps in a highway before.)

                When we arrived at the hospital, a couple of nurses practically threw me into a wheel chair and literally ran me to the elevator. On the ride up, one of them (all too calmly) said, “Sorry for the rush. We had a woman give birth in the elevator two days ago.”

                “WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT TO ME RIGHT NOW,” I thought, my eyes widening to the size of the fucking moon before squinting back up in pain.

                The nurses forced me to hold still mid-contraction to take my weight and height. I shot daggers at them with my mind. I had a lovely nurse named Nancy who very patiently hooked me up to a million stupid medical devices to monitor our vitals throughout labor. Honestly, I’m glad the hospital was looking out for us, but in that moment I was so angry that I wouldn’t be allowed to walk around anymore that I think my hair was standing on end.

                During your pregnancy, you are told to prepare a “birth plan” and to share it with your doctor in the weeks leading up to your due date. Your birth plan should include anything you strongly do or do not want going on in your delivery room. For example, most hospitals have a limit to how many people may be in the room during your delivery. I invited Jude (duh), my mother, and Jude’s mom, Dana. (Dana is such a loving person and is so invested in all of her children, I just felt like she would want to be there. Later she shared with me that she was really touched that I had invited her. I was happy to hear that. I was also happy because she spent about a year telling anyone who would listen what an amazing job I had done. Praise? Why, yes, I will take it!) We were living in our hometown, an area with only one hospital readily available with very limited options. Things like tub births were pretty much out the window for us, but I did really want to have a natural birth with no drugs. Well, I wanted that until I hit hard labor. When Nancy came in to check on me not long after I had nearly ripped her head off for confining me to the bed, I screamed, “GIVE ME THE DRUGS, NANCY! I CAN’T DO THIS!” Bless Nancy’s dear heart for I was the most hellish patient and she treated me with nothing but kindness and understanding. She quickly pumped some kind of sweet, sweet drug into my IV; it worked like a charm! For an hour, I was super high. I whistled and sang along to the songs on my labor playlist and chattered dreamily with my mom and future mother-in-law. Nancy came back in to check on me with Dr. Reason and I gasped.

                “Oh, Nancy,” I crooned. “I am soooo sorry I was being such a turd to you when I got here. Like, WOW! I am in soooo much pain!”

                “It’s okay,” Nancy said, smiling brightly. “I understand!”

                Honestly, you will never have so many hands in your vagina as you do when you are pregnant. So many times Dr. Reason came in to see how I was “coming along”. I was very glad she was on call that night because she was my favorite doctor and if someone had to continuously investigate my vagina’s progress, I was glad it was her (and not the doctor known for his MASSIVE hands). The pain medicine lasted for a solid hour before it started to ware off. Fast. It wasn’t long until I was screaming through my contractions again, and they were coming back with a vengeance. Nancy gave me more, but the second time it wasn’t working. When Jude arrived, I was howling through a big contraction. It probably wasn’t a super great feeling for him to have to witness that right off the bat, but hey, that’s childbirth.

                While I was pregnant, I had watched several videos of people getting epidurals and I really did NOT want to do that! They snake some little wire up your spine? No thanks. Then I actually went into labor, my second round of pain meds failed me, and my entire world view of epidurals changed. Suddenly, getting an epidural sounded better than the second coming. I had already told Nancy that I did NOT want an epidural in no uncertain terms and I was embarrassed to admit my mistake. Luckily, Nancy was a genius, and not long after Jude arrived she asked if I had changed my mind. My response was something along the line of, “OBVIOUSLY!” If I have another baby, I am jumping straight into the epidural party because it takes forever to get it done. First they have to draw blood, test the blood to make sure you’re safe to have one, then the doctor has to check to make sure you aren’t too dilated, and then you have to wait for the stupid anesthesiologist to get there! It took well over an hour for everything to be in order. Honestly, it felt like maybe twenty minutes to me because time was one big blur of agony at that point. Dr. Reason gave me to okay at only 4 ½ centimeters, and thus began the terrible process of getting an epidural. I was in so much pain between the contractions and the invasion of my spinal area that I was trembling through the whole procedure. Jude was allowed to stay in the room; I glanced up at him once and his face was long with horror and disgust and had turned a faded shade of green. I decided maybe I shouldn’t look at him again until the process was over. Halfway through, the anesthesiologist made a wrong move and hit a nerve, sending my right leg into uncontrollable spasms. I remember thinking maybe the whole idea of having babies was just plain stupid, but not too much longer after, the drugs started kicking in and I chilled out.

                When they finished inserting the epidural, Dr. Reason checked on my baby garden’s progress. “Eight centimeters,” she announced.

                I shouted, “WHAT? What happened to five, six, and seven? I’m not ready for this!”

                Dr. Reason kind of laughed me off like the fact I was about to have a baby was no big deal. I did realize it was ironic that I was telling her to make it stop after all of the weeks I had spent telling her to make it happen faster, but I really wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the humor of it. After about an hour of being able to relax a little, I had Nancy turn the medicine from the epidural off at 9 ½ centimeters so I would be able to feel what I was doing. At that point, my water had never broken, so Nancy had me hang my butt off the bed, stuck what looked like a long crocheting needle into my vagina, and popped my water. (Whoooooosh!) Then in preparation for pushing, Nancy gave me a catheter. Even being super numb from the epidural, it was not a pleasant sensation. For a week after having my daughter, I had a UTI so bad from the catheter that I cried every time I knew I had to go to the bathroom. No joke.

                When it was time to push, Dr. Reason reached her hands into my vagina and kind of massaged the baby’s head into a better position to exit my body (at last!). I am proud to say that after only thirty minutes of pushing, no bowl movements, and no episiotomy, my daughter with her head full of hair landed in my beloved Dr. Reason’s arms without crying. For a few moments, I was freaking out because I was convinced she must be dead since she wasn’t crying. When they put her onto my chest, I was so relieved. At least, I was relieved until she started crying.

(Welcome to the world, Lucy Byrd!)

(I am always seeing new mom’s posting beautiful photos of themselves with their freshly popped newborn. In their photos, they usually have on some make-up, their hair is often in a cute braid or little pony tails, and they over all don’t look like they’ve just run a death-marathon the way I do in the first photo my mom snapped of me with Lucy. I would like to know the secrets of these glamorous beautiful mothers. Please share your strength with me if I ever am crazy enough to grow another child!)

                Tomorrow is Lucy’s third birthday and I couldn’t be more proud of her. She’s really awesome, so beautiful, so strong and resilient, so smart, and SUPER funny! I would definitely do it all again for her even though sometimes she wipes boogers on my clothes. I can’t wait to embarrass you with that gem!

How Do These Kids Keep Getting Inside of my Mom??

(Myself, Christopher, and Susannah, Winter of 2012. Beauts.)

         I was six when my mom and dad asked me to come into the kitchen for a quick talk. I couldn't figure out what I was about to get in trouble for this time. Racking my brains to remember what I thought I had gotten away with but was surely about to be busted for, I dragged my feet slowly to the kitchen table. My parents were both sitting with their traditional stone faces of secrecy, refusing to give me any kind of hint to what terrible punishment was in store for me. If only I could read their minds. (I probably don't ever want to read their minds actually.) I stood before them on guard, ready to flee at any moment (as if I could escape being grounded). I was not expecting what came next.

         If there was any kind of preamble to this, I don't remember it. (I don’t think I was really listening.) All I recall is my mother saying, "Sarah, we're having another baby."

        I stood still for a second waiting for a, “GOTCHA!” Alas, it never came, so I laughed and said, "Good one, Mom! Okay, see ya." I quickly began a retreat, but was called back by my father.

         "Sarah Catherine, we're serious. Mom is pregnant. You're going to have another sister or a brother," he said in a serious voice (unusual for him at the time).

         I was three when my sister, Susannah, was born. I don't remember being told Mom was pregnant (probably because I was two), but I sure remember the day Susannah was born. Mom decided we would go down to North Carolina to stay with my Aunt Melissa, Uncle Chris, and cousins, Alex and Dylan, for New Years. My grandmother also came down with us, but Dad had to stay home for work. Mom wasn't due to have Susannah for two more weeks, so she was probably hoping to squeeze one more little trip in before she potentially had two of me, her dramatic, needy, attention-hungry first born. How she and Dad decided having more kids after me was a good idea, I will never understand.

         On New Year’s Eve, Mom and I were sharing a bed. I was feeling pretty clingy as we prepared for the new baby. Something I saw on TV had totally freaked me out before bed and I had a vivid nightmare that my mother and beloved unborn baby sister were abducted by aliens. I woke early in the morning to find that I was alone in the bed; MOM WAS ACTUALLY GONE. Panic ensued. I searched the house for her in the dark, quietly weeping. Eventually, my Uncle Chris found me. When I wailed out to him that my mom had been abducted by aliens, he gave me one of those pity laughs adults give kids when they're distressed over ridiculous things and told me no, Mom had just gone into labor, and was at the hospital.

         I was overcome with joy! At last my baby sister, future best friend, and playmate of my dreams was coming out of Mommy's tummy! I had been waiting for this day for what felt like my entire life (and honestly it was a good chunk of it at that young age). I was loaded into the car with my family and whisked to the hospital to meet my angelic sister.

         Rewind to my Mom's experience during this time. Mom went into labor right around the time we went to bed. While I drifted off to sleep, Mom was trying to convince herself there was no way these were contractions she was feeling. After I fell soundly asleep, she got up and paced around the house for a while until, five hours after labor started, she could ignore it no longer. She woke my grandmother up and said, "Mama, I'm in labor!"

         Mom boarded an ambulance in the wee hours of the morning in Duck, North Carolina. It was a dark and foggy morning and somehow the ambulance got lost in the fog. My mother ended up at a hospital in Chesapeake, Virginia an hour and a half away from her starting point. She swears that by the time they got there, she was holding the baby in trying not to give birth in the ambulance. Mom got off the ambulance at 8:32 and four minutes later, Susannah was born.

         ENTER SARAH! The party got started when I walked in of course. How little I knew of siblings then, so fresh faced and young, so excited. I was thrilled to see my mother safe and not in the clammy hands of aliens, and even better, holding my precious new partner in crime. I was desperate to hold her and also to get attention from mom. (I needed to establish my dominance with that kid ASAP.) Hesitantly, Mom allowed me to get on the bed and placed Susannah tenderly in my arms. Some of you may not believe what happened next, but I swear it is true. Peaceful, newborn Susannah opened her eyes to me and I beamed down at her. She took me in for a moment, then, just for a second, flashed me the snarkiest smirk I have ever seen, opened her trap, and started screaming bloody murder.

        That pretty much sums up the first several years of our lives together. If I had something she wanted, she would scream at me until I gave it to her. If I was getting too much attention for her liking, she would scream it all away from me. She did not turn out to be the obedient, Sarah-worshiping angel I had anticipated, and it would be many years before we became close. (We actually are best friends now.)

        Given my prior experience with babies being born, I was naturally skeptical of another coming into my life. I fought back tears of horror as my parents insisted it was true that Mom was pregnant and stared at me completely dumbfounded at my insistence they must be joking. After a few days, the idea of it was starting to settle down into my mind garden. I began praying for a baby brother thinking maybe a boy would be the obedient servant I had hoped for. I also started to wonder how the heck these kids kept getting into my mom's stomach and encroaching on my turf. I started asking a lot of questions, very specific questions, questions my mother could not just ignore.

         Unable to escape my curiosity, my mom went to my elementary school guidance counselor to borrow some illustrated books to aid her presentation on how babies were made. One Saturday afternoon, she called me back into the kitchen. She bravely read through a book that explained sex on a child's level complete with pictures of blank faced women on their backs as blank faced men lay on top of them under pea green blankets, detailed diagrams of uteri, sperm and eggs, fetuses growing through different stages of a pregnancy, and a very unrealistic illustration of a woman giving birth (no one is that calm looking at such an event). At the end of the book I stood in utter disgust, wearing my parent’s traditional stone face until my mother could take the suspense no longer.

         "Well?"

          I looked her dead in the eye and harrumphed, saying, "I must have been asleep when y'all were doing THAT."

         I left my baffled mother to make a phone call to my friend Naia so that I could tell them the scandalous details of how our moms and dads were putting their "peepee places together”. I distinctly recall taking a vow: "I am never doing THAT!" Dream on, little Sarah.

         In spite of the disgusting way he was conceived, I was ecstatic when my Mom went into labor. I remember seeing her and Dad off at the front door that December all full of pep and excitement (much more than my Mom which I didn't understand at the time. I figured it out after I had given birth to my own kid, let me tell you. Talk about a double edged sword.) My poor grandmother and Auntie were left with the unpleasant job of watching my sister and me. I can't really remember what Susannah was up to, but knowing what a good kid she was, she was probably just quietly playing with her dollies. I was absolutely bouncing off the walls.

         By 9 o'clock that night, Christopher had been born. My exhausted sounding mother's voice came over the phone to me to deliver the words I was dying to hear: "Sarah, you have a baby brother." I hurled the phone into my grandmother's stomach (Sorry, Nan), let out a victory cry, and ran through the house screaming in triumph for several minutes. It must have been hell trying to put me to bed that night.

         The next morning, Susannah and I were taken to see Christopher and Mom at the hospital before school. Christopher was seriously the most beautiful newborn baby I have ever seen. His chubby white face was home to the biggest, rosiest cheeks, the shiniest pink lips, and the roundest, bluest eyes and was topped off with a thick tuft of pure white hair. He was basically the Snow White of boys with inverted hair color. I was allowed to pass out blue "It's a Boy!" lollipops to my classmates and FYI they were super delicious. It was pretty much an awesome day.

         There you have the stories of my siblings (at least my side of it). They both grew into two really kick ass individuals. I have watched my sister grow from a little girl throwing her arms into the air and screaming, "SUPER ZANNAH!" as she tackled my gigantic father to the ground, to a graceful young woman flawlessly dancing as the Sugar Plum Fairy in her final Nutcracker before graduating high school, to a plucky dame of a woman who won't let anyone hold her back as she pursues a life that's good. I have watched as my brother has gone from a beautiful little boy saying "frucks" instead of "trucks", to a lady slaying middle schooler with girls falling all over him, to a surprisingly mature young man working hard at his first job and desperately trying to score his own car. (He ended up inheriting my old Subaru recently. I am thrilled that it went to him.) We have fought, we have cried, we have screamed, we have invaded each other's privacy, and we have taught each other forgiveness. That's the beauty of having a sibling; to have one is to have a lifelong friend that you can always count on even after you tell their really embarrassing penis stories.

(Myself, Christopher, and Susannah. Summer of 2000.)

Arachnophobia: Shower Edition

                I am seriously terrified of spiders; scream and flee the premise, jump off your lawnmower, run shrieking in the other direction, terrified! My first scary spider memory is from the day I learned about black widows; it still sends chills down my spine! I am not sure how young I was, but I was with my mom in my god-mother, D.W.’s kitchen. She has this amazing tall, old barber’s chair that I have always loved to sit in. D.W. held an old jar up to me to show me the small, brown spider, curling up in death, within and told me about its’ poisonous mate. I still feel the same terror coursing through my body from that sunny afternoon every time I see a spider. I have had nightmares, jumped off of moving vehicles, cried, thrown up, almost crashed my car more times that I will willingly admit to, you name it! Those little monsters scare the shit out of me!

                In the fall of 2016, my daughter and I lived with my grandmother while we waited for our Canadian visas to be processed. Nanny is a wonderful woman with the spirit of a selfless child, the wit of a confident woman’s mid-twenties, and the wisdom of Albus Dumbledore. Accepting of all, indubiously hilarious, undeniably kind (and have I mentioned she’s a boss-ass-liberal?), she began asking me not to use the word “hate”. She always says, “There’s enough of that out in the universe already, and we shouldn’t be adding anymore.” She makes a solid point. This extended to my treatment of spiders. “Next time don’t kill it,” I was scolded as I wrung my hands in terror after smushing a spider with a napkin, “come and get me. I will put it out!” Nanny, if you’re reading this, I tried to let them live, really I did! They just won’t stay away.

                A couple of weeks ago, I was sweeping out the bathroom and saw a tiny, nearly translucent spider crawling away from the pile. Trying to take my wise grandmother’s advice, I waited until it was clear of the sweeping area before I continued. When my husband came home that night, I proudly told him of my feat (because he is always making fun of me for being scared about little things). Jude laughed at me, saying, “Sarah, it was probably poisonous! The smaller ones are the most poisonous!”

                “No way,” I retorted. “What about tarantulas? Or those giant camel spiders? Or the female black widows?”

                Jude laughed coolly and walked away, calling back, “Whatever you say, Sarah.” That bastard always knows how to get me real good.

I tried to tell myself he was just kidding, but the thought haunted me for days! As I played happily with my daughter, I felt the sudden clasp of panic around my neck, imagining the spider quietly biting my child in the night; getting dressed in the mornings, I suddenly worried the spider would be on my hairbrush giving it a thorough search; when a loose hair fell on my chest, I clawed frantically at my skin for a moment. All in all, I was really freaking out about this dumb conversation. A few nights later, I was getting ready to step into the shower when I saw, crawling along the baseboard of the tub, that spider. I totally freaked out! I wanted to go get Jude to crush it for me, but suspected he would tell me to get over it. (Marriage means nothing, girls!) As I tried to determine what to do, I thought back to the spring of 2016 and the great Jumper Spider Panic. As I had tried to identify that spider (it was found twice in my laundry room), some research suggested I could test if a spider was possibly venomous by poking at it with something; if it attacked it, I should run for the hills. I poked at the spider with the pen from my bathroom guest book, shaking with fear, and wouldn’t you know it? That freak of nature attacked my pen (sort of). J’accuse! I crushed it with some toilet paper.

                Tonight, as I showered, I was busting a sweet move and flipped my hair too excitedly leaving a long line of water dripping from the ceiling. (Oops.) I have done this enough before that I know it needs to be cleaned up quickly. As I finished up drying the ceiling with a hand towel, I saw it: ANOTHER OF THOSE SPIDERS!!! I knew there was only one reason it would be there: IT’S COME TO HAVE IT’S REVENGE FOR IT’S FALLEN COMRADE!!! I jumped out of the shower in a panic, balled up some toilet paper, and hesitantly went back for the beast. I have a bad habit of missing things and them falling down (often onto me), but I did my best. After pressing firmly for several seconds, I pulled back the tissue to reveal…nothing? OH SHIT! CODE DANGER! I shot out of the shower again, grabbing my glasses to see where the little devil was hiding. Turns out his little body just fell down onto the side of the tub, but damn, it scared me. Now I am living in fear, certain at any moment, more of them will come for me. If I die of poison, Jude really is innocent…maybe.