insomnia has been a dear acquaintance (unwelcomed, mostly) for the last four years. i’ve finally found some medicine which actually helps me sleep…usually.
this morning at about 3:58, i’m awakened by our wonderful, adorable, fuzzy cats playing with one of my (formerly) beaded (now the beads are scattered all over our bathroom) bracelets. i take care of the mess, and try to go back to bed.
current time: 4:00 am.
about half an hour later, after unsuccessfully attempting to find the place where my dreams await, i feel something tickling my shoulder and my neck. at first, it think it’s probably a pulled thread from our comforter.
until it starts crawling.
without thinking, i reach back and crunch whatever it is in my right hand. i turned on my lamp, even though i really don’t want to see what was violating me so early in the morning.
yes. a spider. probably not a brown recluse like the one shown in exhibit a above, but it was the only brown spider google images would provide me.
so here at 5:13 am, i sit awake on my couch. my cats are asleep. but my pulse is averaging about 105 bpm.
maybe this morning i’ll exercise and get into work early.
we just have crickets at work.
no spiders.
no spiders.
no spiders.
(assumes rocking position with her arms wrapped around her legs and eyes wide open)…
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33 responses to “good morning, sunshine”
Yesterday while lying by the pool, I saw and felt something black on my leg…so lucky I had started to brush it off before I really looked down to see it was…yes…a big ol’ gross hairy spider….ewwwww
At the school where my wife was a counselor, they had an outbreak of brown recluse spiders. There were half a dozen spider traps in her office and under her desk!
I am glad I am not the only one experiencing this onset of spider attacks.
As a comforting aside note…
Have you heard the theory that humans eat something like 10 spiders that crawl into their mouths while they sleep over their lifetime?
Maybe you’ve just kept the number at 9.
Bon Appétit!
i went to bed at 3 am and woke up at 5:30 am, thanks to the june bug army who came in when roommate smoked a cigarette.
since the nomenclature pays tribute to my birth-month, i once was a fond collector of the comely creatures. after this morning, i no longer maintain such respect for the sleep-spiters.
let’s alleviate our sleepless anxiety on those crickets.
I have found two of those in my house lately. Luckily, it was after my wife went to sleep, because she is TERRIFIED of spiders.
I think they crawled out of our air-conditioning ducts, which are on the ground…Creepy.
ewwwww…..i hate bugs.
I’ve battled insomnia for fourteen years. I feel your pain. And today I have these terribly itchy spider bites I’m sure that happened nocturnally. Ick. Makes me long for a spiderless, sleep-filled heaven.
I had the same experience a couple weeks ago, except it wasn’t a spider, it was a roach. (we just moved into a new house with a MAJOR bug problem).
be thankful it didn’t lay any eggs… or did it?
*****
[[Anne’s note: I am all for free speech and candid discussion…but with taste…When making comments, please keep in mind I have teenagers who read my site, so some PG13 material may be edited. Thanks for understanding!]]
that is such a creepy feeling. whenever i see a spider in our bedroom, then I can’t sleep because, even though I killed that one, I think there are thousands more out there ready to avenge their lost brother.
i am 100% arachnophobic so when i was encountered by a massive wolf spider in south africa, you can imagine i overreacted quite nicely. we had 3 in our room one evening too. oh and i did get a wicked spider bite when i was there, that could have only happened during my sleep because of the location on my arm. so yeah, spiders + me don’t mix either.
no spiders.
no spiders.
no spiders.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-05-06-spider-earache_N.htm
Thanks, my ears were all clogged up today after I ran…now I know why!
high five to being scared of spiders!!
Ahhh! It freaked me out just to read this! And I can identify with you because…
1. I have insomnia too. I hate it! What’s the medicine that works for you? Lately I’ve been taking Benadryl because I don’t want to get a prescription or anything… but it doesn’t always work.
2. My room is in the basement so there are a few more spiders. When I was unpacking for the summer I found a huge one on my bed, it was HORRIBLE! It’s my worst nightmare to find one in my bed while I’m sleeping!
My deepest condolences… haha…
Anna —
NOTHING worked for me; Ambien, etc…didn’t even make me sleepy. So, I had “borrowed” some of the pills my dad was taking for the same reason (he and I are very much a like when it comes to how we tolerate/react to medicine). Anyway, they worked awesome so my doctor wrote me up the same Rx.
It’s Clonazepam. It’s actually an anti-seizure medicine (at high doses like 20 mg), an anti-anxiety med (at about 4 mg) and gives you just enough juice to shut your mind off for sleep at 1-1.5 mg. The only bad thing is you have to slowly get off it; you can’t just stop. I skipped a day and had the worst headache/chills ever. But…it’s cheap (generic is about $6/month)…and works like a charm.
Understood. But of course, you can’t deny that perhaps I’m correct in what I said?
Jon,
Your advice makes complete sense…
I appreciate the thought…I think… :)
hmmm… sounds interesting… thanks!! :)
i really only have one fear…(mainly because i’m such a courageous guy)…but it’s spiders…
but it’s not because i run when i see them…cause i usually man up and get rid of them…
it’s the idea that they are there but i can’t see them…much like your experience…finding them on accident does not settle well with me…
did it bite me and i didn’t know it?
did one go down my throat?
is it still hiding in my hair (what’s left of my hair)?
did it lay eggs in my bed only for one to be awoke by thousands of spiders crawling up my leg?
(sometimes my imagination gets the best of me)
ohhh no no no that’s not good at all. I am right there with you, and by that I mean my heart is racing and I have goosebumps (NOT THE GOOD KIND). Sorry you had to go through that!
Let’s not talk about anything alive being near when I sleep! I saw a mouse in my room a couple of months ago and refused to sleep there until it was gone. And no, there is no way it left my room and went to the room I was sleeping in…mice only stay in one place…they would find me in another room…never…never…sorry, have to keep convincing myself ;)
If I thought about what might be crawling…I would be done!
So chris went back to bed after this incident? Please pass on to him for future reference that what is done in a situation like this by the loving husband is that he gets up, searches the room and to cleanse of any additional imposters, and then he makes his wife her favorite comfort beverage. And THEN he can go back to bed, but all the lights have to stay on.
Because the really big ones don’t come out when the lights are on.
:)
I loved this post! I still have a scar from when a brown recluse bit me. You must be one of the lucky ones :)
Craziest thing that ever happened to me was when I was visiting my aunt and uncle I slept in their reading room. And when I was turning the hideabed back into a sofa I noticed a lovely black scorpion on the cushion. Scared the crap out of me.
Dad came and ushered it outside, then took a sprinkler head and chopped its tail off.
Next morning, repeat process, find a gecko. I was cool with him, tail stayed intact.
Next morning getting ready to go for a walk, got 10feet down the path only to see a rattlesnake sunbathing on the rock I was gonna chill out at about 30 feet ahead.
I don’t like that place much.
I hate spiders. Sometimes I have dreams of spiders. They’re not doing anything but whatever spiders do, but I can tell that it’s really scary. I wake up, my heart is racing, I’m shaking..fun stuff.
Oh, did I mention that I hate spiders?
I feel your pain…
Oh, and this has nothing to do with spiders, but I’m doing housekeeping at a hotel. The girl I was cleaning rooms with today found a scorpion while she was cleaning, then she killed it. She told me she didn’t want to scare me, so she didn’t say anything about it. Seriously, who does that?!
When I was about 12 years old on a family vacation my brothers and I were sleeping on the floor in our parents suite and I had a horrible dream that a spider was sitting on my pillow right in front of my face. Being terribly affraid of spiders I jumped up and wouldn’t you know it……I really did have a spider on my pillow sitting in that exact spot! WEIRD! I always knew I was a “psychic” ;) lol
I don’t have a fear of spiders, but last week I awoke to find that I had eight spider bites on my stomach. They were killing me!!! I actually slept most of the day due to a reaction. I must admit it grossed me out to think that while I was sleeping the spiders were partying…on me.
true story.
same day as this post i was at dillons getting something at the deli when one of their workers behind the counter says, “miss, you have a spider hanging from your glasses”. i almost peed my pants right there.
true story.
Anne, are these comments helpful at all or have you just run down the interstate screaming and pulling your hair? Did you really want to hear all these?
Oh, wanna hear my earwig in the mouth story? True.
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Luna, Leo
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