I really hate being a fraidy cat.....

Not sure who is aware of this but can be a real scarrdy cat.  Okay so I can't spell that made up word, don't judge.  I am sometimes afraid of failing, of illness, of not being a good mom, of punching a deserving person in the nose sometime....  I am also very afraid of animals.  Not dogs, I have a dog, he is great.  Currently flea ridden, but great.  Cats I am getting better but it has to belong to someone I trust and it absolutely cannot make hissings noises or stare at me.  There is no explanation for this fear it just is, and because of the irrational origins it is extremely irrational in its demonstration.

For reasons I will never understand or possibly forgive, my parents allowed Preston to keep as a pet, IN OUR HOME, a baby squirrel that was rescued in a garden shed after hurricane winds.  I have never spent so many weeks thinking my parents hated me.  I am pretty sure this is when the anxiety issues plaguing me today took root.  I think they lie dormant until when, like that crazy squirrel Chester,  they leaped out of nowhere to pounce upon me and cause my heart to palpitate in the most unpleasant ways.  Well Chester died and unfortunately my fear of creatures, especially rodent like creatures, did not.  Years later my dear friends Steve and Dawn, clearly they were on drugs confused, had a pet ferret.  Talk about testing a relationship!  Maybe that is why their son Jake is my favorite kid, his arrival meant Duke the scary pet was GONE!

Well this morning, I thought I saw an animal in my peripheral.  I looked up quickly but it was just a trick of the eye or something, because nothing was there.  Then I saw it again, just the quick sense of movement.  I needed Scott so I stood on the couch and called for him.  Now our house is pretty small but adequate, the issue is that all of our space is vertical.  So the kids sleep up stairs our room is in the basement and the living room in in between.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to call in a "I'm in a bind and need you dear" voice loud enough to wake Scott but not the children?  Let me tell you, it can't be done.  So I stood on the ottoman, to be closer to the basement door, no luck.  I stepped across to the love seat and then like a grownup I climbed to the safety of the bar.  As I knelt on the bar I was so glad I'd lowered the blinds....turns out I  lowered didn't close them...Anyway, still no success getting Scott not your early morning hero's attention.  I thought well I could use some fortification from coffee but I DO NOT want to walk past the spot where I saw the creature. What to do what to do...AH HA!  I stepped to a chair picked up another and set it closer to the coffee pot and then another, all of this chair lifting before coffee was very taxing.  Finally I made it to the coffee pot and then I had to figure out how to get back and not spill.....

Unfortunately, after getting safely back to my spot I saw it again!  It seemed bigger this time.  Don't you think I would have heard it as well as seen it in my powerful pre-coffee, allergy eyed peripheral vision?  Which kinda leaves as the only solution, hallucinating.  This is not good.  I mean who, without the aid of mind altering drugs, hallucinates about largish rodents moving stealthily back and forth from her bathroom and kitchen?  I think it is clear what is going on here, repressed issues from having to live with a probably rabid squirrel.....