Along came a spider...and sat down beside her!

I have always hated spiders. All growing up, I always made my mom or sister kill any spider I happened upon. When I moved out, that obviously changed. I'll never forget the time Sarah and I tracked a spider across her living room while watching a movie. Neither of us would kill it. When we decided one of us should probably kill it, we lost it and we were left in a terrified state the remainder of the evening.

One thing I hate about Seattle is the amazing increase in the quantity of spiders compared to Utah. I've had a few recent encounters that have made me remember why I hate moist, woodsy places (aka...Seattle).

For those of you who don't know the parking lot of my apartment building is basically surrounded by evergreens, blackberry bushes, and other trees and shrubbery. I am convinced that the all the birds do all day is contemplate when to do their next dive bomb on my newly washed car. My car is never clean...

Back to the spiders...ok, so the spiders also love the shady tree environment and make many a web in their branches. On evening after work, I went out to my car to run some errands. I was inches from walking straight into a massive spider web between my driver's side door and the truck parked next to me. Obviously, neither my car nor the truck next to me had moved for a few days (this was clearly before I was driving to work every day during busy season). Instead of being a grown-up about it and getting a stick or something to destroy the web, I decided crawling through the passenger-side door to the driver's seat would be the logical solution. Then as I put my car in reverse and backed out, I found devilish pleasure in destroying the spider's carefully crafted web. I then proceeded to take my car to a car wash.

Thursday, I decided to drive to work. Janelle, my roommate, works in the building next to me, so she hitched a ride. As she got into the car, she noticed a web between the passenger side-view mirror and the car door. We were entertained all the way to work as the spider clutched to it's web and the mirror for dear life. As we neared downtown, the spider suddenly disappeared and we decided he just got too weak to hold on any longer.

Friday, I woke up at 7:17. Normally I catch the 7:30 bus...that clearly wasn't happening. So, I drove again. Janelle was running late as well, so she tagged along. I happened to remember that Stephanie, a friend who works across the street from me, waits for her bus around 7:50, so I swung by her stop and picked her up too. As we were driving towards the city, Janelle yelled something to the effect of "oh, my gosh...there is a spider!" A spider was hanging from the car's roof right next to Janelle's head. I proceeded to let out a deafening scream. Then we had a pretty good laugh.

Who knows...maybe it was the same spider from Thursday which mysteriously "disappeared" on the way to work. Perhaps he found a way to get back at us for trauma I caused him during the prior morning.

So, if you've made it to the end of this post, the point to this story is I am highly considering paying the $50 per month for a covered parking space in our garage.