One of my biggest pet peeves in life is having to repeat myself, whether it is in words or in actions. I may not pick up everything the first time it is shown to me, but I will typically get the hang of it after a couple of demonstrations and I feel like when I am in the role of instructor it is perfectly reasonable to expect other people to have the same learning curve. (Let's be honest, if I am teaching you how to do something it will not be rocket science anyway.) So I admittedly don't have a ton of patience for people who need me to show them the same thing 10 times and then ask me the same question after I just finished answering them. This is why I typically take over and like to do things on my own because I would rather do something myself but only have to do it once than go back later and undo the work someone else already did. It's a little bit control-freakish, but I feel like it just works out better for everyone involved because if I never try to delegate the task it saves me from having to get annoyed at another person. As you would expect, my annoyance level only goes up the more tedious the task I have to do but things don't get really bad until I have to start repeating those really tedious tasks.
I have a long-standing policy that I won't go out of my way to kill an insect which isn't bothering me. I figure as long as they are outside they are doing their best to avoid contact with me and aren't looking for a fight. Well, that policy expires the second the bug gets near the place where I sleep and in the last week my bedroom has become infested with miniature spiders (I'm talking no larger than the head of a finishing nail). When you first see them you think they are specks of dust, but then they start to make their way across the ceiling, which requires a closer look. An internet search (so you know its true) makes me think they are wood spiders, which makes sense given all the trees near my house. I had a similar problem a couple years ago and just like in that case I can't tell where they are coming from to either spray it with bug killer or seal the opening. I remember that also happened during a particularly warm stretch of weather and have heard that spiders seek out air flow, so I can't help but wonder if these spiders are in search of some relief from the heat and would have stayed outside if the temperatures were more reasonable. As sympathetic as I am to their plight (because it is too damn hot out), unless they want to chip in on this month's electric bill they can stay outside and roast.
Normally killing a tiny spider wouldn't be a big deal because it only takes a second, but it is just that there are so many of them. Unlike a normal spider where you only see one or two, these woods spider travel in packs so when they come out there will be at least 5 of them. Even worse is that they won't come out and let me get them all on one swoop - I have to take them in waves. I kill 5-10, wait a couple hours and there is a new batch crawling all over my ceiling. It is like shoveling against the tide with no idea how many more of spiders I have left to deal with. Without a hint of exaggeration, I can confidently say that I have killed 60 spiders this week. But I don't consider that much of a victory when I have heard that your average spider lays thousands of eggs at a time. I just don't want to have to worry about spending the rest of my summer doing this. On top of all that my textured ceiling means that I don't have a lot of flat surfaces to crush these bugs on and even though I am trying really hard to make sure my ceiling doesn't start looking like a Rorschach test, occasionally there are some areas I just can't clean. If these spiders continue to show up I'm either going to have to wash my ceiling or give it a fresh coat of paint. Given my lack of enthusiasm regarding tedious tasks, that is the last thing I want to see happen.
What's worse is that what these spiders lack in size they make up for in web-spinning ability. Seriously, I have seen abandoned houses which have fewer spider webs than my bedroom this week. These little buggers like to crawl down a few feet just to see what is going on before retreating to the ceiling, leaving a web trail behind and even worse they work fast, so every time I leave my room for even a small amount of time I come back to walk into a fresh batch hanging from the ceiling, which means all week I have been walking into tiny, invisible strings of cobwebs. (I fully expect to walk up one morning webbed to my bed like Gulliver.) I don't think I need to tell anyone out there how annoying that crap is, especially when they hang low enough that it just hits your hair. Even worse is that no one else can see what caused you to suddenly start acting like you are being attacked. I'm really glad there are no cameras in my bedroom because watching the tape from this week I would appear to be randomly freaking out and swiping at nothing in the air. It has not been my best moment. The entire thing has become an incredibly annoying experience. I mean, if these spiders are going to create all these webs the least they could do is learn to spell and write me a cool message. I would even settle for something simple, like "Look out!"
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