Icky Spiders

Last week Ian went to get something from the storage room. When he came back this was our conversation: "Mom, there is a HUGE spider down in the storage room, and I'm not going down there again until it's gone." "Oh, Honey I'm sure it's not that big...just go kill it." "No, way it's too scary." A few days went by and I sent him down to get some paper towels. He said, "No, way...I told you I'm not going down there because of the HUGE spider." At this point I wasn't in to mood to make a huge production out of it. On Sunday Ian had a similar conversation with Dad, but this time Dad wasn't going to back down and he WAS to get paper towels or else... Ian flat out refused to get the paper towels; he said the spider was too scary. I never really realized how scared Ian was of spiders until then. He stood on the top stair trying to get up enough courage to go down into the storage room. Jeff gave him several warnings and finally had to ground him for a WHOLE week because of his refusal to listen. Jeff finally had to pick Ian up and carry him down the stairs and at this point Ian was so scared he was hyperventilating. And all &*^%$ broke loose when the door to the storage room opened. Jeff made Ian point out the spider that was causing all sorts of panic with Ian. This is what he saw. Jeff came up the stairs to get the vacuum to suck it up and kill it. Jeff and I had this conversation, "You need to go look at that before I take care of it, because I guarantee if you had seen it you would refuse to go down there too." Me “I don't need to see it, I believe you that it's, big, huge, hairy and ugly." Well, I got brave enough to go down and look at it. It was high above the ground in a really big spider web, and yes it did give me the weebie jeebies. Jeff sucked it up with the vacuum hose but then couldn't find it in the container, so he kept turning the vacuum on to see if he could see the spider whirling around in there with all the dirt. So, he got his heavy duty gloves on, took the vacuum into the garage and took apart the whole vacuum, with no sign of the spider. Jeff came to the conclusion that when he sucked it up and whirled it around in all the dirt that it broke apart into tiny pieces. So, needless to say now I don't want to use the vacuum because, what if it's still in there somehow or crawled out and now it's making a web in my closet????? EWWWWW...the thought makes me a little nauseated. Poor Ian got his fear of spiders from me and this time I have to say his fear was justified. He learned that he should have communicated better, so we could have taken care of the situation rather than having an all out panic attack.