Eight

So tonight while I was happily walking on my treadmill reading my newest Jodi Piccoult adventure, Vanishing Acts, Kyla came rushing into my room screeching. Apparently M had tried to kill a spider in his room, and somehow it escaped and found its way into her room... under her bed. She was beside herself.... howling about how freaked out she was and how no one would help her.....how she could not sleep in her room, etc. I told her to ask Dad for help, but she already had (I must add here that I know from experience Dad will not take you seriously when you are crazy freaked out and being unreasonable). My next advice was to take all the bedding off her bed then check under the bed by moving it away from the wall. She left now whining instead of howling.

A few minutes later Mark (Dad) came in and said Kyla was freaking out... They had removed the bedding and looked under the bed and the spider still missing. He said she was afraid the spider would crawl into her mouth while she was asleep. I recommended she sleep on her brother's top bunk.

After I was finished with my workout and sitting here checking my email, she came in and we were talking and she said, "You know, spiders can do horrible things to you."

I said, "What do you think it is going to do?"

"Well," she says, "Once this boy had 2 spiders crawl into his ear and they mated and all the baby spiders came crawling out"

"That couldn't really happen," I said.

"Yes it did," she insists.... "I read about it in a book." Then she adds, "And once, a spider laid an egg sack in a girl's cheek."

Trying to be the voice of reason here, I say, "If someone had an egg sack on their cheek, you would just pull it off and flush it down the toilet or throw it away. It couldn't hurt you."

"But all the spiders came crawling out!" she says.

"Do you know how long it takes for spider's eggs to hatch?" I ask. "It doesn't just happen overnight. You would see the egg sack and get rid of it."

"But it was in her skin," she says

"How could a spider put the sack under the skin?" I question her.

"I don't know, but I read about it in a book," is the answer she gives.

"What book"

She grins and me and looks sheepish. "A book of horror stories."

This is further proof to me that my 13 year old daughter has MY overly active imagination and will not be allowed to watch horror movies until she moves out of the house. Seriously, if a book of kid's horror stories has her this freaked out, what would happen if she saw "The Hills Have Eyes"?

And just so no one out there worries that my daughter is actually infested with sacks of spider eggs ready to hatch, the spider ventured out of it's safe hiding place and was sufficiently squished.

Bye for now! Love, Nancy