midwife's muse

Arachnids

Still no cover note, still no road tax. I'm stranded, Hubby has gone away on another golf weekend and I'm housebound.

Spiders, little and medium sized ones don't cause me a problem, catch them under a glass, slide a postcard underneath and deposit them outside, easy. Its the big, thick legged variety that cause my adrenaline to start flowing, you can't kill them you see. When I was little my Mother told me that if you killed a spider, even those that were nesting at the bottom of your bed clothes because you hadn't made the bed properly, their relatives would come back and get you. I did catch a big spider, once, but my throwing outside action was not good and it ended up on my arm, when I tried to brush it off it bit me, well not bit exactly but pricked me. Now I'm nervous.

This year seems to be a good year for big spiders. It started 2 weeks ago when I was sorting out my parentcraft bag. Parentcraft? Antenatal classes, those meetings where midwives try and put the fear of God into couples, who are already starting to realise that having a baby is likely to cause pain and confusion, and then offer little gems of comfort about pain relief whilst tempering it with 'but, there are side-effects'. During these sessions we also flash around a model of the pelvis, demonstrating the journey baby has to make through this obstacle riddled structure and how tight the fit is. Well, the coccyx on my model had become too floppy, it lessened the difficulty with which baby ground through the outlet, so I had brought the bony structure home to tightened things up. Unfortunately I had knocked the pelvis onto the floor and the whole thing had flown apart, really impressive as the symphysis pubis had separted and the replica cartilidge buffer had catapulted across the room. Anyway, got home, fished pelvis out of bag and then put hand in bag to fish out the buffer, as I did this I felt something tickle across my hand, looking down I saw a multi-legged form scuttle into the dark recesses. Hubby dealt with it and had to check that it hadn't left a family there. 2 days ago, sitting on the sofa and I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. mega-spider, sitting in the middle of a cream cushion, Hubby to the rescue again. Then last night, just walked into the shower room and virtually bumped into an arachnid, there was hardly any room for both of us in the room it was so large. I called Hubby, warning him that this was scary stuff, even he commented about the size.

With Hubby away what do I do? If they are on the floor fine, put a glass over them and await his return, if they are on the wall though I will just have to close the door, but then they could go anywhere. Can't even summon son, he's away on a stag weekend, one son-in-law is at the golf weekend and the other is still in hospital, we are a male-free family this weekend. Sorry, there is Jack, mmmmm, no, his hands are too small.  

1.9.06 13:04