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Monday, September 25, 2006

Worms, Just Like I Promised

Okay, here's the story of why worms give me the heeby jeebies, and why I can think of about a million things that I would rather spend my time catching...

One summer day, when I was a teenager or in college or something... I remember being young enough to climb the maple tree in the front yard. The tree was an easy climb, with limbs that were close to the ground. Anyway, I was only up one or two branches, when I put my right hand in a crook of a branch in order to lever myself up to the next branch... But when I got up to that next branch, I realized that I'd put my right hand right in with a bunch of bag worms sunning themselves in the crook of the branches. Only, they weren't sunning themselves now! They were crawling all over my hand... I jerked my hand back so hard to fling off all those worms that I lost my grip on the tree and feel backwards onto the ground... Luckily, I was only up a few feet at the time, and landing on my butt on the grass of the lawn wasn't much of a fall. But I have been ridiculously terrified of worms that can crawl all over you ever since, and even though I know that I'm being ridiculous, it doesn't help... Worms just give me the heeby jeebies... and probably always will.

So catching that worm the other day wasn't the easy task I made it out to be. I first had to deal with the fact that I couldn't breathe from the second I saw it crawling on the floor by the back door, then decide to fetch Ellie's bug jar, then catch a worm that definitely didn't want to be caught... UGH! I don't understand what Ellie sees in bugs... Maybe because of the fact that bugs move a heck of a lot faster than I can colors my perception of them. I just plain don't like anything that crawls... That, however, lends a bit more understanding to my utter revulsion last Friday when a huge wolf spider crawled right up to my desk and disappeared underneath it after playing around the legs of my walker for a minute... I still don't know where it is, and I check everywhere I go in the Family Room. Double ugh!

I've been writing lately, which is why I've been so quiet lately. I finished a very long story (50 pages long - I checked out of curiosity, not for bragging rights or anything). I was quite pleased with the final versiion I got on this one. But then, that night I thought of another story plot. Only, when I started writing his new story, it was nothing short of utter drivel... I deleted it from my computer and started over. It's much better this second time around, but it keeps me busy enough t make me have to take the time to write a post... Now you know what I've been doing... That story has me so befuddled in the mind that the rest of the world might as well not exist for all I notice what's going on it in...