Holy Crabapples, There's A Monster In My Bed

[Considering that this happened a day or two after getting the iPhone, I really cannot excuse not taking a picture of the giant terror, but there you have it.]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

I turned off my computer twenty minutes ago, finally feeling like I could be a good little girl and get some sleep. Washed my face. Put my phone on loud so I'd hear it if it rang. Turned down the covers-- holy fuck, there's this giant caterpillar staring up at me. To which I screeched, "motherFUCKER!" and promptly woke up my mother.

(Aside: she doesn't wake up when I'm screaming and crying because I'm getting attacked in my own bedroom, and our grown-up male lodger doesn't come out of his room when that happens even though he hears, because he thinks it's not his business, but the whole house will gather at 7 am for a caterpillar emergency. No, I'm not bitter at all.)

For the record, critters generally do not bother me. There are a couple I don't like - maggots scare the crap out of me, and spiders and roaches can go either way - but as a rule I am not bothered by beasties. (I hesitate to call them insects, since I'm sure there's at least one entomologist on here who'll call me out on using incorrect terminology, so I shall stick to nice little fluffy words like beasties and critters.) In the garden, I'll happily examine them and even let them crawl over my hand. In Spain I expect to find centipedes and millipedes in the bathtub and sink. In the winter, earwigs gather anywhere that's warm, which often includes laundry piles, and in the summer the clothes on the line attract all sorts, so I'm used to shaking everything really well before I put it on.

None of that is the same as turning down your bedcovers to find a two-inch long, one-inch circumference, black and gray caterpillar that can move like Speedy Gonzales. Live, at that, and it really shouldn't have been, considering it was right under where I was lying on top of the cover.

I do not deal well with surprises. Anything that shocks the nervous system and screws with my adrenaline production is a no-no for Sati. Even NICE surprises make me feel physically ill - I'm the kind of person who will walk out of a surprise party that people have sprung on her. My brain chemistry is so screwy anyway, what with my PTSD, and my calcification, and the electrical disturbance that is my alpha-EEG anomaly, and my extremely high Substance P production, and my low serotonin and dopamine, and a pineal gland that doesn't seem to want to stay still, that anything that upsets the fragile balance takes me days to come down from. Remember last fall, when Oli broke up with me out of the blue? Didn't sleep more than a couple of 2-hour naps in a hundred hours. Remember January, when I met Kid and Bubbles? For two weeks or more I went around in a daze, either in Joan-of-Arc raptures or floods of tears that I couldn't find a reason for. (That time was totally worth it, but still.)

So, ix-nay on the surprises. That means you too, denizens of the leaves.

Yeah, I've calmed down a bit now. Writing sometimes does that to me, although not if it's stories. I think I can prolly eat something sweet, and take my meds, and read a bit of tacky romance, and then sleep.

Although the thought has crossed my mind that maybe I AM asleep, and this is some fucked-up dream where I'm being punished for my FarmVille addiction.