Phobias

In my household growing up, fear was a common thing. We lived for fear. We love to scare each other, we love to be scared, and we will go to any means to create such a thrill for each other. I love watching scary movies, and as much as it keeps me up at night and sometimes makes me cry, when things go bump? LOVE IT. I’m not scared of ghosts or whatever. I’m scared of getting eaten by monsters, but not ghosts. Ghosts are chill, as long as they don’t want to eat me or my children or steal our souls. They can have Chris’. His probably tastes better anyway, it’s all pure and Godly and shit. (Yep, I think that seals my “going to hell” deal.) Even when I’m scared of the ghosts and soul-eating demons, I usually don’t hyperventilate or cry. I just, kind of lay there in bed, waking Chris up every second asking “DID YOU HEAR THAT? THERE IS SOMEONE IN OUR FUCKING ATTIC CHRIS!” But eventually, that too passes, and I fall asleep. Of course, I fear normal things, like losing my children. That’s a fear any normal human being has…but since it’s something that commonly doesn’t happen, and I try to make sure the invasive thoughts don’t occur, I’m okay.

Do you want to see me hyperventilate or cry? Pretty simple, there are three ways. 1) Take a crap in a toilet right before I use it, and don’t flush. This is a bad one because of public bathrooms. Sometimes, it’s so debilitating that I won’t go pee until either I get home or someone I’m with (IE, my mom or sister) goes in and pees before me, ensuring that any remaining poo is gone. If Chris goes before me, I won’t go in that bathroom until after he has peed in that one. I will hold it if I have to. That’s how bad that can get. Chris thinks this fear is absolutely hilarious and often teases me that he is going to do it, but I know (pray is actually more like it) he wouldn’t do that to me.

2) Spiders. Oh my god, spiders. Once, when I was 18 or 19, I worked at Movie Gallery, I was talking on the phone with a customer while dusting the movies and I saw a wolf spider hiding in the corner. I literally froze, right then and there, and stared at it for several minutes. When it moved a quarter of an inch, I passed out. I was working alone that night, and the customer, after realizing that I had disconnected without disconnecting, came and woke me up. Thank god it was a nice customer and was only about 5-10 minutes, that store is not exactly in the best neighborhood and homeless people who lived behind the store would often come in the store during the cold winter nights or hot summer days. That could have ended badly for everyone involved. Of course, this is another hilarious one for Chris, and he often times WILL find a picture of a big nasty spider and secretly put it as my background for me to open and then have a panic attack and nearly faint. It’s not always nice.

3) This is one, however, Chris does not fuck with. Because, while I don’t exactly feel one fear is bigger than the other, if I had to rate them on a scale of 1-10 this would be 100000000000. And plus? He’s not scared of them, but he doesn’t like them. What are these “things,” you ask? Flying stinging things. I cannot stand bees. I get all nervous and jumpy around them. I cannot stand wasps. I get all panicky and squealy. But the worst? Hornets. Oh my god I cannot stand hornets. They terrify me. They disgust me. They make my stomach feel all turny, and send me running into a different room. I can’t deal with hornets. Not one bit. Which is really bad, because where we live? Highly dense with the number of hornets it produces in the summer.

When I lived with my parents, they would leave the back door open in the summer for the dogs, and a hornet almost always flew in. My ass would jump over the couch and either run into the basement or down the hall until I was told it was safe. Last summer, Chris and I discovered a HUGE Chinese paper hornet (I’m 95% sure that’s what they’re called) nest attached to the side of our house. Go look that up yourself, I am NOT providing a link for you because even the thought of the sight of one sends my fingers feeling dirty. Those things are possibly the biggest, most disgusting, dangerous, MEAN, things you will ever encounter. Every night they would fly up to our back door and throw themselves into it trying to get into the house. We originally thought the nest was in the woods next to our house, but every time Chris went to search for it to kill it, he couldn’t find it. Probably because IT WAS ON THE SIDE OF OUR HOUSE. I was terrified it was in our attic (I’m always scared there is something in our attic aren’t I?), but as it turns out, it was right beside the babies window. How we didn’t hear them buzzing around out there, I’ll never know. Probably because we were only in there during the day, when they sleep.

Of course, my husband being the kind of man he is, knew he needed to destroy it. His first plan of action? Setting fireworks off at it. That didn’t work, because five minutes later, I’m watching him run down the street like a mad man. Hornets don’t like it when you try to set their huge paper nest on fire. His second plan of action was a lot better, a pressure washer. He done effed those things up, killed the nest and they didn’t bother us for the rest of the summer. But that just means for a full year now, I’ve been terrified that they’re going to come back.

Last night, Chris and I were sitting on the couch. He was watching “Band of Brothers” and I was half watching, and tweeting, when suddenly we heard something out the back door. It sounded like Linux putting something large on the steps, so I ignored it. My rule of thumb is to ignore any strange noise unless Chris acknowledges it, because then I know I wasn’t crazy and hearing stuff. We paused the show and waited, but didn’t hear anymore. Not five minutes after restarting the show however, I heard something fly past my ear. You know, that buzzing kind of sound flies or moths make? I heard that go past my ear, so I ignored it, but looked to see if I saw the curtain fluttering, or heard something in the lampshade. I figured Chris wouldn’t have heard it too, but suddenly he paused his show again and looked around. Amazingly, he had heard it. And what I thought was just a moth or fly loose in the house, he thought could possibly be a hornet. Oh eff me. At that point, all I really wanted to do was jump up, go into the bathroom, stick towels between the door and floor and hang out in there until Chris said it was safe, but he convinced me it would have been outside the house.

So, wearing only his work pants and armed with my broken broom stick, he went outside to kill whatever was out there…but there wasn’t anything. Not that he could see at least. But now, I’m all sorts of terrified the hornets have come back to seek their revenge and have hidden their huge paper nest somewhere else on the house, and we won’t discover it until one day when Caitlin and I are outside playing. I think this weekend I will have to send Chris out to inspect the entire outside to ensure there are no more nests. Then, and only then, will I be able to semi-comfortably leave the house.

If one day you don’t hear from me at all, no post or tweets, assume the hornets got me….