Maybe a little unreasonable

This morning, I was late for work.

Not hugely late - about five minutes late. Still, when your job is to teach, the general expectation is that you will be there when class starts. So, as I was walking from my car to my office - I wasn't about to try to run for it, since that would make me all sweaty and I'm not fast enough to really gain enough time by running to make it worthwhile - I thought a bit about what I was going to say to my students when I finally made it into the classroom.

I realize that makes it sound as though I was trying to put together a plausible fib to encourage them to forgive my lateness, but that's not it. I'm a terrible liar, I have no poker face whatsoever, so my default is to just be honest and tell the truth all the time. Today's truth was this: I was five minutes late because it took me five minutes longer than it should have to get ready. The delay was due to the presence of a spider in my bathroom this morning - I spent too much time staring down the spider in order to move efficiently through my regular routine.

I've never considered myself to be someone with arachnophobia, and I still don't - I don't freak right out when I see a spider, I won't refuse to be in a room with one, I don't run screaming when I see one. They do, however, make me deeply uncomfortable, and while this would be perfectly warranted if I lived somewhere where spiders posed a real threat because they could potentially END you, I live in a place where there aren't any seriously risky spiders. This morning, when I saw the spider crawling along where the wall met the ceiling, I knew that it was a harmless-to-me spider. And yet, I watched it, unwilling to move much lest it detect my presence. (I'm not sure why a spider being aware of me would be problematic.) If it had been within reach, I would have killed it - smashed it with some toilet paper and flushed it away. But, it was too far up, and it stayed up there - as if it knew of my murderous intent - and I tried to proceed as usual, but my eyes kept straying back to the spider's path. I was only able to really get back to business once it found the space between the shower stall and the trim around the bathroom door and slipped in there, out of my line of sight. From there it probably continued on into the wall space, which admittedly does not make me happy, but there's nothing I can do to chase after it without getting wildly and expensively destructive, so I was able to get back to business as usual once it had moved on.

I've been thinking about this a bit all day - I guess I haven't really let it go - and wondering if this is actually a reasonable response to a spider. I tell myself it is normal to fear things that have the potential to pose a risk, but there really was no risk in this situation at all - and I knew it. I knew that it was a harmless little spider that found its way into the house because it is warm in here, and outside is cold, particularly at night. In fact, that spider might have been living happily in our basement for months, which might have something to do with my general avoidance of the basement too. My feelings about spiders clearly aren't completely debilitating, but I must admit, they don't seem entirely rational either.

Then again, my students seem to consider this to be within the bounds of acceptable behaviour - there were some sympathetic chuckles and smiles, and no one got a look on their face like they thought I was out of my mind with insane paranoia, so maybe I'm just overthinking things a bit.

Hey look! The shawl's bigger!



Nearly through colour #4, nowhere near through a complete repeat #4, so definitely not getting that fifth repeat in there. I'm even getting a bit nervous about getting the complete fourth repeat in there. The urge to drop everything and just knit away on this is strong - I wanna see how it works out!

I also may have some waiting room time tomorrow - not sure yet - and this piece is now big enough that I don't think I should be dragging around all over hither and yon. I may be forced into the sock decision.

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