This year we have a new living room with much more space for decorations, get-togethers and the tree. I picked out a great spot, set up the tree (too many asthmatics in our house for a real tree) and fluffed out the branches, each one ready for an ornament. I took out my beloved ornaments, one by one, and carefully dangled them from the tree, taking care to space them out and give the tree balance. I took out Matthew's homemade crafts from daycare and school and found them places as well.
Next was a box of glass balls, with snowflakes and stripes. I picked it up, hugged it in a moment of sentimental crap, and removed the cover. But wait, what is that? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT???
Yup. THAT is a nasty, squashed, horrible-looking centipede-like monster bug on my beloved ornaments. The beloved ornaments that are so beloved that I just hugged them, and unintentionally the disgusting mutant bug creature as well. Irrational thoughts flooded my brain, and the desire to fling that box of glass ornaments as far from me as possible was almost too much to bear. I forced myself to lower the box back into the bag they were kept in, where of course a spider was making itself tea.
I don't mind spiders. Spiders are much like myself in that they would kill any type of bug on the spot if given the chance. Sure, we differ on what to do with the then-dead bug's corpse but aside from that we're pretty similar in that we'll happily share a living space with one another provided the other stay the hell out of our way. I name most spiders living in my house, turning them from a trespassing nuisance into a type of pet.
This was not a spider, and I kicked the other spider out for not doing its job very well.
The problem was the other ornaments that had no disgusting alien insects on them. What if this demon insect laid eggs inside my other ornaments? What if the cold of the basement didn't kill them but merely put them into an angry, hungry, dormant phase that would end in the warmth of my living room, and they would hatch and shatter my glass balls (even the shatter-proof ones) and land on the floor, fully grown with an adult appetite, looking for the blood of their sleeping victims? What if they could then crawl inside ME, laying eggs everywhere, which would hatch and shatter my not-shatter-proof body, landing on the floor...
OR, I could just throw them all out. ALL OF THEM ALL OUT. I stood contemplating this course of action, wondering how bad it would be to actually toss the whole lot out by the garbage can. We could start over! I could buy new ornaments, make new attachments to them, and never worry that they are possessed by what appeared to be Satan in insect-form.
I won't lie, there was some flailing.
Eventually I did calm down and checked every single ornament inside and out for eggs and baby mutant centipede-like demon bugs. I did throw out the ornaments inside the infected box, it was my civic duty and I was proud to do it. I brought it out to the garbage bin outside, stepped on the perpetrator for good measure (smeared it around as well, just in case it has an indestructible and protective outer shell and was only playing possum) and would have set it on fire had I had the proper structured fire pit that falls within city limit by-laws.
I may have run back inside flailing a little afterwards and left my boots outside to freeze, but that's just necessary caution and not neurotic in the slightest.
And quite frankly none of your business.
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