Fear and Loathing

About a month ago, we bought 2 hydrangeas for the side of our house. (Sidebar: E has “farmer’s blood” meaning he is re-doing every landscaping plot we have).
1 lived, 1 died.

I decided I am going to return the dead hydrangea and get my money back. (Home Depot and Lowe’s both will take back your funky, shriveled up plants for a year with your receipt.)
I load it up into a paper bag and dump it into the front wheel well.
Trouble starts when I arrive at Home Depot.
Here’s what this post is really about- my irrational, deathly fear of spiders.
Yup, there was a big (ish) spider that escaped from the plant and was on the passenger seat. I’m sure everyone at Home Depot thought I was an escapee from a mental institute the way I was carrying on. I used a reusable bag to knock him out of the car, but I didn't really see where he went.
As I pick up the paper bag with my plant, I see a huge brown recluse (I think) in the soil. F this. I scream and drop the bag. (As this point, I wish a kindly gentleman would have stopped to assist a damsel, but noooooo) I manage to get the bag into a shopping cart while taking deep Lamaze breathes.
I try to explain to the Home Depot clerk I can’t take the plant out of the shopping cart or get to close to it because there is a huge spider on it. Oh then, the spider makes his escape onto the shopping cart and I almost have a panic attack at the Home Depot customer service. The way I was side-eying the cart and breathing funny, I'm really surprised I wasn't asked by security to empty my pockets.

Back in the car, I call Ethan and tell him my woes and explain how this is obviously his fault and now my shopping I had planned afterwards is ruined and I'm headed home and he needs to check the car for spiders. (He wouldn't and I was then stuck at home because I was afraid of spiders in the car, which is my worst nightmare that one will drop on me and then I'll swerve off the road crashing to my ultimate demise.)
Freud’s definition of mental illness is when a behavior affects your work or home life (I might have made that up or remembered something like that from my Psych 101 class). Obviously, I have an issue. So first I googled pictures of brown recluses to prove to Ethan how truly dangerous my situation at Home Depot was.

In fact, I learned that the spider in question was a grass spider.

Horrifying I know.

I then wikihow’ed how to overcome arachnophobia. New goals I have (in my Yoda voice).  I am at step 1 where I can look at a spider until my panic calms (with the assistance of wine and chocolate). Yup, that’s it.

This is good especially since now is the season for camel crickets (I’ve heard them called camel spiders, cave crickets, etc.). Not only do they look like spiders, they jump. High. They also make a delightful crunch when they are squashed. Shudder.

Oh, the spider I thought I knocked out of the car dropped onto Ethan’s hand while he was driving. So there. (He said he brushed it off and did not drive off the road).