One day last week I walked out of the gloom inside my head and over to the neighborhood park to enjoy some unexpected sunshine. I took my camera for a perspective shift, and meandered along the usual path, snapping pictures here and there of whatever I came across that seemed interesting.

At first it just seemed like the strangest play of sunlight on the grass, just a very vivid and peculiar reflection.

It’s my understanding that everyone who participates in NaBloPoMo gets at least one day to say, “Yep, this is it. This is my post right here.” I’m sick and feeling crappy, so today is my day. But since you showed up anyway, I can’t help but give you a little something for your trouble.

Dental appointments have been coming up often lately in conversation, so I present my own version of a Trip to the Dentist.

Don’t ever practice personification on a dentist. It never ends well.

Even though my cute, young dentist was running late on this particular day, my wait wasn’t very long since the perky assistant would be giving me the preliminary shot. I pretended not to notice her blood-thirsty enthusiasm as she loomed over me, saying in her most pleasant and soothing voice, “You might feel a little pinch.”

Oh, do you think so? A pinch? Just a little one? Really?

It really isn’t the pain that makes me hate visits to the dentist. I’ve long since come to terms with the pain part of it. But it still strikes me as slightly disingenuous, this “little pinch” scam that the medical profession thinks it’s perpetrating on those of us forced to endure shots. This is like learning that someone is going to Antarctica and suggesting they pack a scarf because it could get “a bit nippy.” But then again, I suppose “a little pinch” is less likely to send patients running, screaming from the office – prematurely – then if she were to say, “You might have the mildly unpleasant sensation of a sharp object going into your upper lip, through your nasal passages, and skewering your left eyeball.”

Which is more like what happened. So now I’m sitting there doing that nervous social laughing thing that one does when the left eye is weeping copiously while the right eye is completely unmoved. Oh this? No, I’m sure it’s no problem. It’s always been the more sensitive of the two. Puppies, Hallmark commercials, it just cries over everything.

The assistant titters. “That’s the trouble with a shot in that spot,” she says effusively. “So many different nerves!”

Isn’t it just?

We laugh together now, over the thought of all of those random nerves. In my face. Punctured and sedated for her enjoyment.

I’m left alone with orders to numb more fully. I’m given a handy Fortune magazine in order to expedite the process. I read about Carlos Slim, the only man in the world both richer and more dead boring than Bill Gates. I wonder briefly if I’m too fascinating and dynamic to ever be rich. When my young, cute dentist finally enters – who I have now decided can’t be more than 12 – he tells me this is his own personal magazine.

Well, of course it is, sweet cheeks. Someday you’ll even have a driver’s license of your own, and you’ll be able to jump right into the Maserati that my dental deficiencies will help you to finance. By the way, is my nose still on? Because I don’t feel it. At all.

Was that really the goal?

He’s alone when he enters, which makes me feel a little panicky. I don’t like it when they don’t bring friends along, because then I feel socially obligated to make conversation. Small talk is already not one of my strongest areas, and this is with people who aren’t squirting water or waving drills. I’m relieved when the sadistic assistant enters, and she and the doctor are soon huddled over my prone form, holding up the dental equivalent of paint chips and discussing what color to use as though they’re redecorating the living room. It was kinda sweet. I think the sadistic assistant has noticed my dentist’s eyes as well.

The work itself didn’t take long, but was still excruciating in it’s own special way. Maybe I have intimacy issues, but I’ve had friends for half my life who don’t get to be that close to my pores. And then there’s just so much to do. Because I want to do my part, see. It’s sort of a Gold Star complex – I want to be the best patient ever. Tilt the head back and slightly to the right, open the mouth enough but not too much. Close your lips over the suction, now open. Don’t swallow. Hold still. Breathe. Don’t cry. It’s a little overwhelming. And I never know who exactly is responsible for the water drooling down my cheek. If I wipe it off then I get in the way, but is it rude to just leave it there, all slobbery? My Mama didn’t raise no droolers.

And by the way – don’t you love the dentists who don’t tell you exactly what they’re doing as they’re doing it? Like somehow they think you’ll have more fun when the drill is a surprise.

When all is done I’m handed a mirror to approve the results. The teeth are fine, but what really draws the eye is that one of my nostrils is drooping. On my way out, my cute young dentist informs me that he’s leaving the practice, so this will be our last rendezvous.

Well, that’s just tragic.

I was already a little extra nervous going in, due to the unfortunate discovery I’d made on my last dental visit, which was that my new dentist had pretty eyes. This is the sort of discovery that leads naturally on to other discoveries, equally alarming, like the realization that he wasn’t all that bad looking as a whole. You might think this is a bonus, having a cute dentist. I might’ve agreed with you, especially back when my dentist was an elderly man with a hand tremor. (You think I’m making that up, don’t you? I assure you, I am not.) But the problem with a cute dentist is that the second you notice that he’s cute, suddenly the fact that his fingers are in your mouth becomes – well – awkward.

Even though my cute, young dentist was running late on this particular day, my wait wasn’t very long since the perky assistant would be giving me the preliminary shot. I pretended not to notice her blood-thirsty enthusiasm as she loomed over me, saying in her most pleasant and soothing voice, “You might feel a little pinch.”

Oh, do you think so? A pinch? Just a little one? Really?

It really isn’t the pain that makes me hate visits to the dentist. I’ve long since come to terms with the pain part of it. But it still strikes me as slightly disingenuous, this “little pinch” scam that the medical profession thinks it’s perpetrating on those of us forced to endure shots. This is like learning that someone is going to Antarctica and suggesting they pack a scarf because it could get “a bit nippy.” But then again, I suppose “a little pinch” is less likely to send patients running, screaming from the office – prematurely – then if she were to say, “You might have the mildly unpleasant sensation of a sharp object going into your upper lip, through your nasal passages, and skewering your left eyeball.”

Which is more like what happened. So now I’m sitting there doing that nervous social laughing thing that one does when the left eye is weeping copiously while the right eye is completely unmoved. Oh this? No, I’m sure it’s no problem. It’s always been the more sensitive of the two. Puppies, Hallmark commercials, it just cries over everything.

The assistant titters. “That’s the trouble with a shot in that spot,” she says effusively. “So many different nerves!”

Isn’t it just?

We laugh together now, over the thought of all of those random nerves. In my face. Punctured and sedated for her enjoyment.

I’m left alone with orders to numb more fully. I’m given a handy Fortune magazine in order to expedite the process. I read about Carlos Slim, the only man in the world both richer and more dead boring than Bill Gates. I wonder briefly if I’m too fascinating and dynamic to ever be rich. When my young, cute dentist finally enters – who I have now decided can’t be more than 12 – he tells me this is his own personal magazine.

Well, of course it is, sweet cheeks. Someday you’ll even have a driver’s license of your own, and you’ll be able to jump right into the Maserati that my dental deficiencies will help you to finance. By the way, is my nose still on? Because I don’t feel it. At all.

He’s alone when he enters, which makes me feel a little panicky. I don’t like it when they don’t bring friends along, because then I feel socially obligated to make conversation. Small talk is already not one of my strongest areas, and this is with people who aren’t squirting water or waving drills. I’m relieved when the sadistic assistant enters, and she and the doctor are soon huddled over my prone form, holding up the dental equivalent of paint chips and discussing what color to use as though they’re redecorating the living room. It was kinda sweet.

Is mauve really the new eggplant?

The work itself didn’t take long, but was still excruciating in it’s own special way. Maybe I have intimacy issues, but I’ve had friends for half my life who don’t get to be that close to my pores. And then there’s just so much to do. Because I want to do my part, see. It’s sort of a Gold Star complex – I want to be the best patient ever. Tilt the head back and slightly to the right, open the mouth enough but not too much. Close your lips over the suction, now open. Don’t swallow. Hold still. Breathe. Don’t cry. It’s a little overwhelming. And I never know who exactly is responsible for the water drooling down my cheek. If I wipe it off then I get in the way, but is it rude to just leave it there, all slobbery? My Mama didn’t raise a drooler. And by the way – don’t you love the dentists who don’t tell you exactly what they’re doing as they’re doing it? Like somehow they think you’ll have more fun when the drill is a surprise.

When all is done I’m handed a mirror to approve the results. The teeth are fine, but what really draws the eye is that one of my nostrils is drooping. On my way out, my cute young dentist informs me that he’s leaving the practice, so this will be our last rendezvous.

Well, that’s just tragic.

“”Will you walk into my parlor?” said the Spider to the Fly; “‘Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy”
- Mary Howitt

I usually get a tiny thrill when something on our local Podunk news is considered interesting/gory/shocking enough to be picked up by the national stations. It sort of makes me feel famous by association, or like we might’ve finally earned our place on the map. A sort of take that, Cawker City, Kansas and your World’s Largest Ball of Twine!

And then there came the boy with the spiders in his ear. Two spiders – one dead, and one alive. Which means that it wasn’t just one random spider thinking “this looks like a nice place to live” but that this ear was such a prime piece of real estate that a second spider followed the first spider in and threw down for it.

Oh, that is just… perfect.

And the best part of all -
he kept hearing a faint popping in his ear — “like Rice Krispies”

I will never have Snap, Crackle and Pop at my breakfast table ever again.

This story broke just a week after I had a conversation with my 9-year-old daughter in which I tried to use logic to prove to her that the old schoolyard tale that the average person swallows _____ spiders a year while asleep didn’t seem all that likely. (Seriously, how do these stories stay alive from generation to generation? I was floored when she came home from a slumber party last year telling tales of trying to see Bloody Mary in the mirror of the bathroom. Because I totally saw her when I was in first grade, man!)

I keep telling myself that surely the fact it happened locally is actually a good thing. I mean, statistically speaking, the odds seem to be against the same thing happening to someone else from the same area, right? Like – oh – me, for example? But the little arachnophobe that lives inside my head keeps suggesting, “What if this means the spiders in this part of the country have developed some kind of ear fetish?”

Usually I can ignore them as long as they’re lazy and lack ambition (I prefer slacker spiders) – But I can’t share my bedroom with the ones that are hyper and enthusiastic about their very spidery-ness because I know they’ll be the ones throwing parties in my hair while I sleep.

This one tried to fool me by remaining stationary all day long, but as soon as it got dark he was running circuits around my bedroom ceiling. I thought about squeezing in with one of the kids that night, but my daughter has a twin bed, and my eldest son was sharing the bottom double bunk with my youngest, which left only the top bunk free.

Besides, cowering in my children’s rooms would mean I was truly a pansy. I had to be a strong, temporarily single parent. I had to make my unintentionally absentee husband proud while he was off partying in Vegas. I turned off my light and laid in bed for exactly 30 seconds before deciding I had to be a man and the spider was going to have to die.

Clever spider, sticking close to the spot where wall and ceiling meet. Not a great target for shoes. Or frying pans. Or pianos. It’s like they know what we’re planning. My husband generally uses a hammer for tricky spots like that.

Apparently, it takes a steady hand and uh – a certain amount of restraint. A gentle touch. He noticed the dent in the ceiling the second he returned home.

But the spider was dead.

So, you know that spider thing I was talking about, right? This is the rest of the story.

It started with a dream. I was getting ready to go to the dentist, and when I came out of the bathroom the middle of the bedroom was filled with spiders, stringing webs. But that’s okay, I told myself, I can handle it. I went and got a baseball bat (well, they were hanging in the middle of the room, see, so it isn’t like a shoe or a rolled up newspaper was going to do it) and I readied myself to swing. And then the spider I was aiming for started to grow. I woke myself and my husband up with one of those stifled nightmare noises and a strong case of the heebie-jeebies.

Already I’m thinking, what did I do to piss off karma? Dreaming about dentists and spiders? But it doesn’t end there.

I set about my day. At one point I sat down at the bedroom computer, and suddenly I feel something crawling across my bare legs. So I stand up quick-like, and I catch a glimpse of a few hair-like legs sticking out from under the hem of my shorts and so, naturally, I’m doing the spider dance. You know the dance I’m talking about. The one where your 9-year-old daughter is looking on, and so you’re asking her in this trembling, high-pitched, barely controlled yet casual voice, “Do you see a spider on me?” while you’re turning in circles violently brushing and slapping at yourself and already halfway out of your clothes. Yeah, that’s the one. We never did find that damn spider, either. I’d like to think that’s because its mangled body blended with the brown of my bedroom carpet when it fell in defeat, but probably it’s making a web in my hair as we speak.

But I got control of myself and went about my day. Recovered, but definitely a few steps back on my phobia scale. And later in the afternoon, I’m sitting on my bed with my laptop, browsing the internet, and suddenly this HUGE house spider comes strolling across the bed, right for me. Like he saw the laptop and was going to come and look up who that guy is in that one movie, or something. I jump up, shuddering and making primal noises that sound something like “iiieeeuuuuhhhh” and grab one of my husband’s shoes. I kill the spider three times, dispose of the body, exit my bedroom and refuse to go back.

That is, until my brave husband did a thorough shakedown of our bedroom after he got home from work. Finding no evidence of the obvious spider conspiracy that’s been launched against me, of course. Those little suckers are good.

I have a mild phobia, of the arachna- variety. This fear has waxed and waned over the course of my life, for reasons that I can’t always predict or explain. Sometimes even the tiniest baby spiders wig me out, while sometimes I can confront an average-sized household spider with only the tiniest of shudders. (And a shoe.) It varies. During a brief time period when I was on Zoloft for post-partum depression (fuck off, Tom) I was completely unafraid of spiders for the first time in my life. I could hold them in my hand. It was strange and wondrous. But that magical moment has passed.

Another thing that seems to make dealing with spiders easier for me is long term exposure, where I’m having to deal with them on a regular basis, (Mommy! A spider!) but nothing tremendously bad has happened along the way. Like, they haven’t crawled on my person, or dropped down in front of me and made a face and said “booga booga booga!” in a while. But then, one bad experience will cause me a major relapse in my spider-dealing abilities. Like this one time with my husband. (Poor guy will never live this down.) Shane doesn’t care for spiders, which is a manly way of saying that they wig him out, too. But his is a rational fear, the fear of being bitten or crawled on in a particularly malicious manner. Which means that when he has an extremely large and nasty-looking spider that he found out in our garage and has captured in a jar, he can look at it studiously, safe in the knowledge that it can’t hurt him. But a little thing like a solid glass divider gives me no comfort at all. Sometimes pictures of spiders can give me the shakes if I’m in a vulnerable frame of mind. Which is why I screamed when he held that jar in front of my face, wanting to share his interesting treasure. I screamed a lot. That one set me back, big time. But at least my husband now understands the difference between “distaste” and “phobia.”

Recently, I’ve been on an unexpected upswing, however. Which is why two days ago on a cleaning jag I tackled all of the webs that had accumulated on our front and back porches. Knocked the damn things down with glee, spiders raining down upon my head, I didn’t care, I was invincible. For the moment. But ever since, I keep running into these massive spiders outside my house. Silver dollar-sized spiders. Looking at me accusingly.

I think I pissed them off. I think I made them so mad that they grew.