Driving with Miss Muffet

Let me tell you about my morning. It’s horrendous.

As we drove to our friend M’s house this morning, the boys were laughing and telling me there was a spider above my head. That it was going to jump on my head and poison me.

To be fair, this is quite normal.

I try to concentrate on my driving and leave them to it. We often play silly tricks on each other, well, they often play pretend games with me and usually it involves things they love but I can’t stand, like scorpions, spiders and other creepy crawly yucky things.

There’s also a back story you need to know about this morning’s situation;

I recently blew up my car, so the boys and I are using Daddy’s estate car which he uses on weekends. On Sunday, he used it to clear his Mum’s garden and he came home with a delightful story about seeing a giant tarantula sized spider crawling across the dash at some point during the day.

Great.

He said he’d tried his hardest to find it for me, he even came across as quite stressed about the fact that he couldn’t help.

“There’s nothing I can do!” he yelled at me, in (sorry to say it but its true) typical ‘Man from Mars: I need to fix things’ speech.

Great.

On Monday we needed to go on a very long journey. The boys and I swept out the whole car, finding all sorts of little bugs, but no massive beast. We couldn’t not go just because Mummy is a big wuss, so off we set. Two minutes into the journey the boys started yelling that there was a spider on the roof, coming to get us. I looked in my rearview to spot a tiny little, inoffensive thing dangling down from the roof, so I drove on. During the whole trip I drove slowly, checking the dash the entire time, nerves on tenterhooks. Not great for one’s stress levels at all.

I freakin hate spiders.

But the thing never turned up.

When we got to our destination, I did everything I could think of to scare it out; I put the blowers on, bashed the dash, I even put Katy Perry on really loudly.

Nothing.

Since I'm quite stressed out these days as it is, there are certain things I refuse to stress about and certain things I have to consciously let go of.

We have a lot of places to go this week.

I had to let go of the tarantula.

We used the car yesterday, and though it was kind of in the back of my mind, I didn’t let it bother me as much as it did on Monday.

Which brings us back to this morning.

So, the boys are giggling excitedly, yelling about a massive spider above my head. I disregard it as another money spider and drive onto the motorway.

Big mistake.

When they finally persuade me to have a look, I glance to my right, just above my window, and there, indeed, is the biggest spider I have ever seen in my entire life. Its about two inches away from my head.

I stare back at the road.

…………………………..(insert about 4 swearwords) what the hell am I gonna do?

I can’t pull over.

Katy Perry’s CD case is sat next to me, A-AH!

I slam it over the beast. I hold it there a while, not brave enough to move it and so I can squeeze in a glance at the road in front of me. I have no idea how fast I’m going at this point, which is very unusual and unnerving for me.

When I glance back up I realize the bastards legs are coming out the other side…the fucking roof isn’t flat! I have to maneuver the spider and the CD case to a flat part to make sure it’s squished. Spider innards smudge on the roof. Yuk. Breathe again, only look back at the road….I’m riding the middle of a two lane motorway, with a boy racer in a lurid lime green thing bombing towards me. A mirror check, a small swerve to the left, and thankfully the boy racer times his swerve nicely and misses us, just. Not sure anyone except a hyped up boy racer would have missed us so for that I’m grateful. It all happened so quickly he didn’t even have time to honk his horn at me.

About 30 seconds later, the corpse lands with a thud in my lap, which resulted in another squeal and a small swerve to where I didn’t belong. I can only imagine the words coming out of my fellow drivers on the motorway this morning, and I don’t blame them.

I was glad to finally arrive at M’s and spent a few minutes brushing myself down, oogling at the massive corpse and spraying rescue remedy on my tongue.

By the time we actually got to M’s door, you would’ve never guessed we nearly just died.

Just because I’m a pathetic.

But then who else would have been able to continue as normal with that beast looming overhead?

It could’ve jumped onto my head at any point, climbed into my eye and eaten my brain.

Ugh. I hate spiders.

I’m trying not to be angry with my husband. He did do his best after all. But I think, if I was my husband, and I knew how bad my reaction would be, I would’ve taken the whole damn car apart. I wouldn’t have risked my wife and my darling (cue emotional guilt trip) children. I know how badly I react to these things. I knew it would be this bad, although, to be fair I thought there would be more arm waving and screaming. As it happened, I just tried to stay focused on killing the bloody thing and not the boys in a horrible spider related car crash.

And FYI, I don’t always kill spiders. I try to leave them to it and go back to their hidey hole. But the car, well that’s a different matter.