NEW RELEASES
If you thought my birthday card should arrive today, please resend. Bad things happened.
My worst nightmare happened today.
Honest to Zeus, I don’t how I lived through the experience to tell you about it now.
I have a wee phobia about spiders. Any spider, any size, poisonous or not. The hairier it is, the more terrifying I find it. Although I do find Daddy Longlegs ridiculously frightening. Yes I know that they’re not poisonous. I do understand that spiders keep the insect population under control.
Frankly, I don’t give a shit. They’re horrifying.
I live in the American Southwest – the home of many a poisonous snake and lizard and insect. Think rattlesnakes, gila monsters, and scorpions. None of these really concern me. I don’t plan to seek them out, mind you. I’m not an idiot. But none of the above give me the screaming willies.
However, you let a tarantula wander across my path and I’ll be climbing a light pole, let a wolf spider in the house and I’ll need you to get out the paddles and restart my heart. 
So I’m sure you can imagine my reaction when I reached my hand into the mailbox and belatedly saw a spider in there.
This has long been a nightmare of mine, lasting much longer than the monster under the bed who grabs your leg or hand if you are ever so stupid as to let one dangle over the side.
Of course, I had to set fire to the mailbox. Honestly, there was nothing else to be done.
Just in case you might think that my little “brave” daughter is kidding, have I got a story to tell you. When She was in junior high, I think, I was working swing shift at a local hospital. Her father was not present at the time and one evening, on a very busy shift, Amylynn called me up from home and DEMANDED I come home and kill a spider for her or else she was going to burn the house down to kill it. Well I absolutely was not going to leave my shift at work to kill her spider. Besides, why she thought I could do it is beyond reason. But, I digress. She called back once or twice and was now willing to talk bribery. I told her I would hold on the phone while she went next door and got our very meek, mild neighbor gentleman to help her. So then he comes back with her and I hear this, “OH MY GOD. I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH A HUGE SPIDER IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.” I think he may have used a 357 magnum, but he killed it. She came back on the phone and said, “See I told you it was big.”