Yesterday was c-r-a-z-y. My seventeen and a half hour home-staging-fest in Boerne started with an 8:00 am freakdance on the side of the road after a spider came out a’ callin’ inside my car. I had to pull over to the side of the road so I wouldn’t have a wreck mid-freakout…tried to shoo it out with a discarded protein bar wrapper but it ran under my seat. Which started a real anxiety overload, to be honest. I stood there beside my car in some corporate parking lot shaking in my shoes at the thought of that little guy running up my pantleg if I dared take the wheel again.

I wanted to buck up and be a professional about it but in order to do that, I desperately needed to know if the spider was poisonous or not. I would’ve called Jeb so he could give Google a whirl, but when I’d left the house he was snoozing and Phoebe was snoozing and I wanted to give him a chance to sleep late if she’d let him.

So I called my dad. Like I was thirteen.

Dad was in the car himself. So I called my mama. But she wasn’t at work yet.

Which meant I had to call my client. And tell him that a widdle bitty spider had FORCED ME OFF THE ROAD.

Fortunately, this was a client I’ve been working with for a couple of years on various projects, so he was very sympathetic. But let’s be honest. I had to get back into the spider car and get over to his house, pronto.

I have to admit I was driving while crying with that beast lurking under my seat. I got the “ew” shakes once I imagined this thing laying eggs in my car and all those things scurrying out and eating me and my child whole.

Pause for another “ew” shake.

Made it to my client’s house and he graciously took my Fit apart, trying to scare the spider out with his vacuum cleaner. At his own suggestion. Nice, huh?

While the guys loaded furniture, I tried to find out more about this buggar on my BlackBerry, but looking at a ton of photos of spiders and disgusting spider bites was only making my anxiety worse. I finally broke down and called Jeb, who I hoped by now was firing up some PopTarts for the dumplin’ and he quickly determined it was a wolf spider. Which is not poisonous, he said.

I told my client and he said, “oh yeah, those are nothin’.”

But just now? When I went to find a picture of a wolf spider to link to? I discovered not only is the dang thing poisonous…but it wasn’t my spider.

Egads!

I traveled to and fro to Boerne–the aforementioned “fro” occurring during scary spider witching hours of midnight to 2:00 a.m.–in relative calm based on the fact that I didn’t have a poisonous spider in my car and now, gulp, I might’ve had a poisonous spider in my car?

To be fair, Jeb was searching based on my verbal description. He hadn’t seen my spider in person, so how could he know if the wolf spider was truly my spider? But why did he and my client conspire together about the lack of scary venom these guys possess??

Even worse, I’ve now identified my creep as the gray wall jumper but cannot find out any basic information about the dang thing. Which I’m hoping translates to “fairly common, not a threat at all, Ms. Callan.”

And do not give me any bunk about how spiders are so great and how oooh, they eat a bunch of bugs. ‘Cause la-la-la-la I’m not listening.