Get that chicken away from me and step on that spider while you're at it!!

First of all, I want to say thank you to Michelle at Waddlers and Toddlers and Mama Grits at Thirtysomethingland/Land of Mama Grits (I think Mama is in the process of changing the name of her blog, hence the double title) for answering my questions from my last post. I appreciate it so much! Michelle at Waddlers and Toddlers even went so far as to make a button for my blog! Check out these two blogs when you get a chance! What wonderful women I have met blogging!

So, I've got some irrational fears.

Raw chicken and spiders.

I am terrified of them both and I have no idea why. I have never been poisoned by undercooked chicken, nor have I been bitten by any kind of venomous spider, like a brown recluse or black widow. Never. Although, a wolf spider jumped out of a closet onto my sister's chest once while I was standing next to her. And in our first home as a married couple, my husband and I had a brutal brown recluse problem and once counted 22 dead brown recluses on the Terminix sticky paper behind our couch. And I found two brown recluses crawling on me in my bed in that old house. Trauma!

Everytime my husband grills chicken, which is about every other night because he doesn't want us to heat up the house in the summers by using the oven (this is actually great because I never have to cook in the summer. I have somehow been able to avoid learning how to use the grill.), I have to thoroughly inspect the chicken before I will eat it and every time, without fail, I ask, "Are you sure it's cooked?"

This question sends him into a rage. He is so tired of hearing this question that sometimes he just looks at me before I do my ritual inspection and says, "Don't even say it, Amy."

But, I can' t help it and I say it anyway!!!

It is an urge that I have no control over. The question just comes out before I can stop it. What is wrong with me?


Me: "Does this chicken look pink to you?"
Husband: "No."
Me: "Are you sure it isn't pink? It kind of looks pink to me."
Husband: "No."
Me: "Are you really sure? I don't know if I can eat it."
Husband: enraged silence

I can't even stand to touch raw chicken. I use a hook to transfer raw chicks from the package to the skillet. And if any raw chick juice gets in the sink, I almost have a meltdown. I panic and my anxiety level goes through the roof. I know. Therapy.

I also have keen spider senses. I can detect a spider anywhere in the room. I just feel their presence. I can see them out of the corner of my eye. I can see them hiding in the corners of the ceiling. I can see them even when they are camouflaged by tan carpeting or wood floors. I am a woman obsessed. I think I attract them because I have seen a tarantula (most people don't get this pleasure) and wolf spiders bigger than my hand. Freaky...

There is a song by the Indigo Girls called "Galileo" (here I go quoting the Indigo Girls again) that is about reincarnation and karma. "And then I think about my fear of motion / Which I never could explain / Some other fool across the ocean years ago / Must have crashed his little airplane." The song also says, "And now I'm serving time for mistakes / Made by another in another lifetime."

Perhaps this is from where my irrational fears come. Maybe in another lifetime I was poisoned by my husband with a piece of undercooked chicken. Or maybe I was a cook in another life and I poisoned someone else. Maybe I died from a black widow bite. Or I went into a jealous rage and put a black widow in my lover's bed.

Who knows?

All I know is I have to shield my eyes from even pictures of spiders and I would rather lick the ground than touch raw chicken.

My biggest fear, however, was that my husband would lose his job. Now, that this has happened, I can focus all of my panic and dysfunction on raw chicken and spiders.

Anyone else have any irrational fears?