Ending The Year With Ballons, A Smack To The Face, Blurred Eyed, Hurting, And With The Creeps!

The year 2020 has been more than interesting for me. I have had challenges and blessings. I have lost contact with some friends, and I have gained new ones. 2020 probably has been the year with the most contrast of all the years I have spent on this Earth. I am not sorry to see it go. Not because it was a horrible year. For me is was almost fictitious, unreal, nonexistent. I looked at the calendar on March fifteenth, looked up and it was gone.

Like everyday since the start of 2020, I started my day with the grumbling of my Huskies, suggesting that it may be time for them to go out. Being the dutiful human that I am, and wanting to avoid the chorus of dissent that was sure to follow if I delayed too long, I got up and took out the whole pack, that included the two felines of the pack. While out with them I decided to take a walk to the pond to check on Lucy, a Royal Poinciana sapling that I was gifted from a neighbor, from his memory garden. She is very fragile now, after having her branches damaged by Charlie Brown two weeks ago. Charlie Brown is a community nuisance that comes to visit without warning or welcome. He is a massive brown bull that is gentle and stubborn, and loved.

Lucy appears to be okay, so I am holding on to hope for her recovery. Out of the corner of my eye I see some flickering. I turned my head to see what was causing the movement, and I am looking right into the sun, but I could make out what looked light white dots, maybe white leaves falling from the surrounding trees? I am surrounded by pines mostly, no trees with white leaves. Just as my mind was ready to make a logical shift, I get hit in the face with a spider web. Puzzled for a nanosecond before getting hit on the arm by a web. I am standing still, so I didn't walk into the web, the web had flown into me. At this point my brain engaged and I slapped myself in the face, several times. I slapped my arms, and tried pulling the web from off me, feeling the little ballooning spiders all over my being, even places they did not exist.

I continued this seemingly useless feat while running to the house. I jumped in the shower, clothes and all. Trying to wash the web from my face, I could tell I had gotten some on my eyelashes, and it didn't seem to be coming off. I grabbed the witch hazel bottle and tried washing it away with the astringent. That seemed to work, but by now, my face was raw, hurting, and stinging. I even used witch hazel in my hair because I could feel thousands of them trying to make a nest in my hair.

It has been over an hour since I got out the shower. I am still afraid to get dressed. I still feel them crawling around in my hair and along my arms. Even though I know there are no spiders on me, my mind is not willing to accept it right now. I am hoping that all of this will end with 2020. I hope that my brain will once again be home to what is true, not was is perceived, and that it will once again make room for commonsense.

This is the absolute truth. I know it sounds over the top, and hard to believe, but all that I shared happened to me, this day December 31, 2020.

I have no doubt 2020 has affected the majority of us and made us more skittish or worse. Definitely a case okay what is gonna happen now. My brother started the other day telling me some outlandish story about what is going on in his life, I accepted it and was giving him solutions, and he started laughing going no I'm just pulling your leg. In 2020 you believe any thing is possible.

Honestly, aliens could land on the White House lawn and Id be going it figures...

What an awful end to the year!!
I’d be needing therapy, for sure. Or a drink or two....

I think I’d just burn my clothes......

a reply to: snowspirit

Thanks for reminding me. They were still in the shower. I just got the nerve to put them in the washer.

I am doing better about the rest of me, but I am still scratching my head too frequently.

If it were not for the fact that I am on call the whole day, that drink would sound very tempting.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

Your tale was nicely narrated and gripping.

I think you can consider this event a good omen. In Italy there is a legendary idiom: "Ragno porta guadagno!" - in English it translates to Spider brings riches/prosperity. It's ancient, going back and linked to the birth of christ. Encountering spiders would be a foreboding of good fortunes.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn
I am doing better about the rest of me, but I am still scratching my head too frequently.

Ya got one right there ... crawling towards your neck and down your back.

AHHHHHHH!!!

Welcome to 2021 ... !!!

I freak my fiance out on a regular basis. In Summer, if I see a spider in the house, I get it to crawl on my hand and then take it outside and put it on my tomato plants or my Bonsai. She's standing 20 feet away with that WTF ARE YOU DOING look on her face.
It's eats the bugs that eat my plants.
I know that some folks have a phobia about insects, I just don't get it though.

a reply to: Encia22

I learned something new.

I looked it up, and I sure hope that it is a blessing that rains down on me, because 2020 has left me with financial challenges that a stimulus check will not put a dent in, whether six hundred or two thousand.

Thanks.

a reply to: Snarl

2020 is going out with a story to tell.

I just hope that 2021 will make that story historic. Just a relic of the past.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

On a positive note spiders are normally considered good luck

a reply to: DAVID64

I wouldn't call it a phobia. I would call it.... a healthy respect.

I don't mind most things that creep, crawl, or fly. Just as long as they are not on me.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

On a positive note spiders are normally considered good luck

I just learned that from @Encina22. I consider myself very lucky that I survived the ordeal without knocking myself out, slipping in the shower, going blind, and escaping a trip to the hospital where I may have come in contact with COVID.

Good bye 2020 and thanks for the memories.

I was standing on a ladder running a water line down in our basement this past summer. I was working in between the floor joists for the main floor over by the exterior wall. I had to reach into the recess above the foundation in between the joists and I felt something on the back of my hand. I pulled my hand out and the back of my hand as well as all down the back of my arm was covered with a very dense spider web with numerous dead insects in it. It was a spider web alright, but not just any spider web; it was a Black Widow web!! (and we get them frequently around here). I'd stuck my hand right into her lair.

Standing on the top of a ladder is not the time to freak out, so I attempted to fly down by flailing my arms around me like a crashing helicopter on mind altering drugs. I might have screamed like a little girl too (not 100% sure on that). I also tried to turn my head around backwards like that chick on the Exorcist, trying to see if the spider was on my back.

When I regained consciousness my wife was over me asking me what the hell all the screaming and crashing around was all about.

They don't like you either.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

You survived. That is all that mattered. I would have been off that ladder with a lot less grace, probably a massive concussion, and a couple broken extremities.

The favorite hiding spot for the black widow around here, is under the porch plant box. Even found a couple in the niches of the table where I sit some of my potted plants. That is why I don't mind the lizards on the porch.

originally posted by: ntech
They don't like you either.

Now I remember why I always loved Godzilla.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn


Although, I am personally sorry for the misfortune; I'm delighted you're well; I must say, your reality sounds beautiful. gorgeous peacock tree, K-9's, water features and nature !

If you lived near me, we would assuredly, be great friends!

Happy New Year, to you, Night!


edited in real time- A WHLOE PACK OF DOGS!!!!! HEAVEN TO ME

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

Oh man Skye, I feel for you in your ordeal--got a good dose of the creeps from reading your very well-written (and dare I say, humorous? Or is it too soon?) post.

Wishing you all the very best in the new year! Love the symbolism--the spider balloons and the farewell party 2020.

I'm just waiting for Augustus to show up.

He loves spiders.

a reply to: ReadLeader

I do recognize my blessings. Most people who have never been out here, especially workmen, are surprised that we even exist. They call it a little slice of paradise, that requires a six mile bumpy ride down a widened cow pasture, with no houses in sight the whole way. Scary when it is your first time.

My four Siberian Huskies have a talent for making you rethink how blessed you are, on occasion. And my little homestead seems to have become the Dr. Doolittle's House of Refugee, because I get everything from baby owls, sick goats, terrified, rabbits, broken winged birds, and sick abandoned dogs, showing up at my place.

Also I have plenty of non sick critters showing up on occasion. A rare Florida panther, wild boar, even had a family of domesticated pig that got loose at my pond. All my neighbors horses, peacocks, donkey, and cattle, head straight for my pond, when they get loose.

It is a lot of work, but I love it out here, and do indeed consider myself highly blessed.

There was no harm done to me physically. I have even stopped scratching my head, and have returned to some semblance of normalcy. I have lived out in these woods for over twenty years and have never seen anything like it before. My neighbor that has been out here for well over fifty years laughed at me, they had not had it happen to them either, but says we will share stories later tonight about the craziness we have experienced, out here in the woods.

Thanks.

a reply to: zosimov

I am going to have my sister make me a t-shirt that says, "I survived the ballooning spiders of 2020!" That will be a conversation starter.

I am on call so I have to wait until Saturday night to celebrate with spirits. Right now I am just looking forward to hanging with immediate family and neighbors later tonight, as we eat more than we should, share memories of years past, do our yearly countdown, then head off to bed. That is if I don't get called in.

I am laughing about it now myself, along with friends and family. I will always remember this as the year with the last day beginning with me slapping myself silly.