If I don't get my necessary seven and three quarter hours a night, I'm no good to anybody. (Some might query whether I'm any good even if I have had it. They may well be right.) I generally wake up once or twice a night, but unless I've got something to worry about (which will always seem ten times scarier at 3am), I usually go back to sleep pretty quick.
Last night, I had a particularly disturbed night's sleep. It began when I woke from a dream to feel something tickling my hand. I twitched my fingers, thinking it was just an itch... and that's when I felt THE SHAPE. The... sort of... spider shape. Under the covers, in bed with me.
I'm not the world's biggest arachnophobe (that'd be my sister), but that doesn't mean I want to share my bed with one. (It's bad enough when they're in my bath.) And when you're half-asleep and you suddenly realise you've got one of the little blighters trying to spoon you...
Eeaaaarrrrghh!
I leapt out of bed, threw off the covers, and switched on the light. The spider was gone. But I'd definitely felt it. I'd flicked it away with my hand. I hadn't just imagined it. And so began a hard target search of the bedroom, bedclothes, and every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in the area. I'd just about decided that maybe I had imagined it after all (maybe it was just a stray bit of navel lint or something) and was about ready to settle back down into bed... when I shook my dressing gown and out popped the critter in question.
Eeaaaarrrrghh!
Now it was hardly a tarantula, and under normal circumstances I'd probably have let it go on about its business unharmed, were it not for the fact that I'D BEEN SHARING A BED WITH THE LITTLE BASTARD. So I wasn't thinking rationally. But I didn't mean to kill it, officer, I swear there was no malice aforethought. I was just trying to scoop it up using my patented Hulk mug and Bat Out Of Hell beermat* technique, so that I could open the window and release it to freedom. What happened was just a terrible, terrible accident, and I feel bad for it, I really do. I have genuine remorse. It took me ages to get back to sleep.
(But at least I didn't chase it with a lighter.)
And then, about an hour later, I awoke with another start - cramp in my calf that had me leaping out of bed and hopping round the bedroom all over again.
So excuse me if I'm not making much sense today...
*Sadly, I made this bit up. I don't own a Bat Out Of Hell beermat. I wish I did. I do own a Hulk mug though (two!). Obviously.
Posts
14 rants and reactions:
I have this thing - can't remember what it's called - where I snap awake convinced that I've just watched something happening (usually a spider walking across the wall) and react accordingly. Jumping out of bed, yelling, flinging the covers aside, turning the lights on. The whole circus.
And, you know, after more than twenty years of this nonsense, Mrs Chev. just calmly (if blearily) sits up, helps me look for whatever it is I'm after - usually, but not always a spider (once I saw a pencil case I had in infant school float across the room...) - and waits until I fully wake up and realise I'm making a nuisance of myself at three in the morning (and not in a good way) and then she goes back to sleep. I'm then awake for hours...
So I'm guessing that he wasn't hogging the duvet, or you'd have noticed him much earlier...? :-)
I recall as a teenager reading in bed once and as I was holding up the book, saw spider legs waivering to climb onto the page I was on!
Think I screamed in shock and dropped the book. Said spider ran under the bed.
Thing is, how did it get onto my book? Crawled up my arm? I'm not scared of spiders but felt sick thinking about it!
7 and 3/4 hours sleep is a lie in for me at the weekend - I make do with 5.5 - 6 hours a night during the week, which allows me to function semi-adequately in a fashion!
Worst thing that ever happened to me in this vein was waking up one morning to feel a tickling sensation making its way very determinedly up the back of my neck. I sleepily reach round with my hand and picked it - whatever it was - up and held it up to my face to look at it. It was a wasp. Thankfully a very drowsy one. I screamed (in a manly fashion obviously) and promptly dropped the bloody thing into the bedsheets from which I then leapt up like a scolded cat and had to undercover every bit of bedding until I'd found the sodding thing. I did manage to get it safely to an open window (the old mug and beermat technique seldom fails) but sleep did not return for a long while.
I meant to say "uncover" not "undercover". Apologies. My nightly operation with MI5 are beginning to get to me.
You killed him for trying on your dressing gown..didn't you???
That's very harsh..It was quite chilly last night !
YUK! I hate bugs in the bed. I used to live in this divey old flat in Florida when I was in university and would regularly wake up with cockroaches in my bed. I cringe thinking about it.
I didn't know there was even a possibility of there BEING a Bat out Of Hell beer mat! (Altho' I did see Meatloaf on House the other night and barely recognised him).
Spiders - Amanda Stephens ©
Spiders are fast
Spiders are creepy
Do they slow down
When they are sleepy?
Spiders lurk
They make me scream
If they sleep,
Do you think they dream?
Chev - further evidence that Mrs. Chev is a saint.
Weenie - yeah, but you young people need less sleep anyway.
Steve - the mug and beermat sometimes fails.
MG - but it didn't suit him anyway. Only two sleeves.
Free Man - spiders are one thing, cockroaches quite another. I share your cringe.
Sag - thank you, that was lovely. I'll have to keep an eye out for Meatloaf when the new series of House finally starts over here.
You are completely entitled to spider murder in those circumstances. No one is allowed in my bed unless they pay the mortgage or I gave birth to them. Anybody else gets the mug treatment, and no apologies from me.
You know, I thought you'd have been more of a spider man really....:)
I simply leave the room and the sweetie wifey takes care of it. It being centipedes, cause I don't mind much of anything else. So count yourself lucky you don't have them! xoxo
Yeah, I hate centipedes. Louise has got her cats trained to eat them.
BTW, Tart, I've tried leaving a couple of comments on your blog this week, but it keeps crashing on me. You got some kind of quality control going on?
What the hell was god thinking when he invented spiders.
"One day, Stan Lee will find a use for them."
Post a Comment