On Spiders And Sleeping In

"Bee-EEEP, Bee-EEEP, Bee-EEEP..." the alarm clock sang it's happy song at five this morning.

I shuffled out of bed and groped my way across the dark room in the direction of the annoying sound. In my sleep fogged mind, I wondered why I was the one getting alarm this morning since Toby always gets it. This was a first in a long time for me.

Then it dawned on me that I just simply got out of bed to shut it off before he did. Nothing complex about that. It's strange how sleep can make even the simplest scenario seem like a complicated set-up.

I managed to shut the thing off and then made my way back to the warm blankets. It finally hit me that Toby had to get up now and be off to work in 15 minutes. I adequately reminded him of such but he of course already knew and had been prepared for such an early morning intrusion to a good night's sleep.

While he sat up, I laid down. Sleepily, I consoled myself with the fact that after I made his lunch and he left, I could go back to sleep. I mentally decided to sleep a little longer after I got his lunch packed when suddenly, I felt a little flutter on my shoulder.

Assuming it was just another long hair that had fallen out of my head again, I reached back to retrieve the annoying strand. Instead, I grasped a dime-size moving thing in my own bare hands.

I instinctively threw the thing across the bed and of course it landed on or by Toby. I don't enjoy merely looking at small moving things that flutter when they're on my shoulder so to have to touch one with my own bare hand, is a much worse experience.

There was a gasp, a shudder, a quick cry for light (all by me) and immediately Toby had the light on, his hand in the air and the spider killed before I even knew what was going on.

GASP.

"There was a spider in our bed?" I squeaked.

"He's dead now," was the brave man's response.

"Thank you for killing that spider," I said.

"Yep, but he's dead now," he said, detecting the lingering fear I had for that leggy, crawly creature.

I kept remembering the additional sounds happening in our dark room when I had first expressed my disdain before the light was even on. While I was gasping, shrieking (in a whisper decibel, mind you) and calling for light, there was another response coming from that brave man.

His sound carried more of a desperate, here-we-go-again tone to it. But still, he killed my avenger and didn't even expect a thanks.

As I headed downstairs, I asked Toby where the spider came from.

"A mommy and daddy spider, " he replied wisely with a smirk. "But he's dead now," he reminded me again.

While preparing Toby's lunch downstairs in the kitchen, I thanked him yet again and somehow managed to yet again mourn the fact that a spider was in our bed.

"But he's dead now," was his steady response.

As Toby kissed me good bye before leaving for work, I wondered out loud if the spider was in our bed or if it jumped on me when I shut the alarm off.

"It was probably in the bed," he said confidently.

But, then with a tone of a warrior in a shining armor who had just rescued a damsel in distress, he assured me with, "He's dead now."

And off to work Toby went.

I went upstairs after he left just to make sure that there had indeed been a spider earlier. I thought maybe with our sleep clouded minds, perhaps we both had experienced the same illusion at the same time.

I walked in the room and towards the bed. The bed looked so inviting, I'm sure, but I didn't even look at it. I don't trust the comforts of infested beds.

Poking around behind the dust ruffle I found to my dismay, a deceased spider; evidence to the fact that I had indeed experienced the earlier intrusion.

"Yep, he is dead," I echoed Toby's quote for the day and headed back downstairs. For some reason, the spider's death still doesn't assure me enough to enjoy the comforts of my own bedroom.

And going back to bed is the last thing I'm going to do this morning, in case you were wondering.