Spider Apocalypse: It's Here.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in a castle with her amazing son and their small dog. The castle was filled with light and love and happiness, and everyone who entered immediately felt like they too were at home.

Except the castle is an apartment, and by "filled with light and love and happiness", I mean: SPIDERS. And unfortunately, no words were twisted when I wrote that they too felt at home!

(Holy shit! I just opened another tab so I could find a picture of the spider on Google Images, and literally a page full of spiders just popped up. Lesson learned. Someone needs to come close that page for me, since it sends me into a panic attack just by looking at it!)

(Ok, I just downed a half a glass of wine. I think we're good. Anyhoo...)

It all started about a week ago with one singular spider. He looked like this: short, meaty, tan, agile, and terrorific. At any rate, he was living in the corner of the ceiling and the wall above my stair case...which meant I couldn't get him to kill him. One fateful night, Spider of Terror and I made a treaty: I'd allow him to live if he stayed the eff away from me or my living space. This might have been vocalized out loud. Don't judge me.

And for a minute, Mr. Arachnid did...well, ok. He existed, stayed in the crevices where I couldn't reach him (basically, anything that touches the ceiling) and made himself a web hammock. Since I am trying to be nicer to all living things, I'd reward myself with pats on the back and spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream for my ability to co-exist with the eight legged monster in my hallway.

You know. Because I'm an *adult*.

Well, this weekend, Herschel the Spider started getting...

adventurous.

It started off innocently enough. I'd be in the bathroom getting ready for work and he'd leave his crevice and walked the terrain of my popcorned ceiling to see what I was up to. I think he felt uneasy about my commitment to our treaty, but who am I to accuse? Friday night, he ventured about half way across and hung out by the light, casting a spider shadow that looked like a tarantula was the culprit. Freaky, but not death-worthy. Remember: I still can't reach him.

Saturday night, he started venturing down the walls. Of course, he would climb back up to the ceiling as soon as I'd walk out of the bathroom. Trixie, Spider.

And Sunday night, it all came to a head. Whilst blow drying my wavy locks into submission, I noticed that El Spider-O was making a bee-line for my bedroom.

Living on the edge there, killer, I thought. But I was running late and had no time for spider business (haha! Get it?!?!)

Until I went into my bedroom to put on my five bras for the evening. Where was the spider?!?!

ON THE WALL BY MY BED! DIRECTLY OVER WHERE MY HEAD WOULD BE SLEEPING!!!!

AW HELLL NAWWWWW!!!!

Shit was serious. We had a Def con level spider threat now. I raised the household terror warning to a "RED". Fuming about how he had clearly no intentions of treating my home with respect and how he had blatantly disregarded the Spider Treaty of 2013, marched into the bathroom to collect what could only be described as half a roll of toilet tissue in my hand. For I was entering into battle, and the stakes were high.

Because people eat spiders in their sleep. And I am NOT gonna be one of them!

With a scream that could be heard throughout the state of New York, I lowered my papered hand onto the hairy beastie of a spider and squished as hard as I could! I then held the tissue as far as I could from my body and cried profusely (that's an insane amount of adrenaline!) whilst running (the fastest I'd ever run) to the toilet to flush my nemesis. No funeral was held. There was NO time for mourning. I Osama'ed his ass into the toilet sea, and triumphantly danced a victory dance! I had done it! I was capable of taking care of myself! I SQUISHED A SPIDER!!!

And then turned off all the lights and went to work.

Only to return home and notice that the spider was back in his hiding spot over the stairs.

Which meant either we had spider resurrection (read: I'm fucked now!) or...

It was the wrong spider.

As in-there's more than one. Living. In. My. Home.

Gentle reader, now might be a good time to start praying for me. Evidently, someone in the universe feels that with all of the other milestones I've been reaching lately, this is also going to be the year that I conquer the fear of killing spiders.

Oh boy...