Spiders in the Rain

I have always disliked spiders, but as I age, the fear gets dimmer. When I was 14, there was a huge spider in my bedroom which I ran from and made my parents kill. I wasn't able to sleep in my room for days. Some time passed and I told my first therapist about my fear. A few months after that, I saw a garden spider on my ceiling, which was about 4 or 5 feet from the bed I was lying on at the time. I grabbed a shoe, killed the thing, and went back to bed.

When I first moved to San Ramon, I noticed that massive webs with "big ol'" spiders seemed to be pretty normal. As long as there is enough distance or a window between me and the spider, I love staring at them in the atriums of the buildings at work. In my old apartment, there was a time when I killed a massive spider at least once a week, but this apartment doesn't have as many. Earlier this month, I saw a smaller, but still pretty large spider crawling on my bed while I was getting ready for work. It was too big to smush with my hands, so I grabbed a TV remote and managed to smack it. Call me the Spider Killer, I guess, but its only when they come into my dwelling.

This spider was on a light pole outside my place last week. That was when I decided that I want to document my 8-legged finds. I hope you'll enjoy the series. My morbid fascination with spiders definitely aids in overcoming the somewhat irrational fear.