Creepy, with a Capital C...

...that rhymes with T and that stands for That Which Must Not Be Named.

Patrice has been pondering a lot lately on the power of positive (or negative) thinking and visualization, and the law of attraction which basically states that you get what you give. So, if you focus strongly on positive thoughts and images, those things will find their way into your life. By the same token, if you dwell on the ugly and negative thoughts and images, those things will also find their way into your life.

I have very carefully (and consciously, I might add) avoided naming the Thing I wished to avoid seeing here in the desert. The rattlesnake on my doorstep was an unwelcome visitor, but the brave firemen took it away. The scorpions are also unwelcome creepy critters, but they are small and most often dead when we cross paths. The wild cats and dogs stay out of neighborhoods for the most part.

I have been successful in either avoiding or just not seeing the Thing. The other day at swim practice, my friend Ilene was talking about her husband's mortal fear of spiders and mentioned that in 4 years, she has not ever seen a tarantula. As soon as she said it, I felt like all the wizards in the Harry Potter stories whenever Harry boldly pronounced Voldemort's name. She said it...out loud... the horror! The horror! Just a couple days later at our last swim race, she told me that as her family left, her husband stopped the car abruptly to repeated exclamations of "OH MY GOSH!!!" She thought he ran over one of the coach's dogs, but she missed the thud and was sure that they were going slow enough not to have hurt it. Then she saw the enormous tarantula in the road. When she told me this story, she said "funny how we were just talking about that!" Yeah, funny. Ha ha.

This afternoon, Nicco and I got ready for a swim. I asked him how the pool looked and if I needed to skim. He said it looks good, but I do need to skim a little bit. I found this floating, dead, in the pool:

Funny how we were just talking about never seeing tarantulas, isn't it? {{shivers}} Floating dead in the pool is the best case scenario for coming across a tarantula in my opinion.

My nephew has been gathering bugs for an upcoming school project. I already sent him a scorpion. I wonder if arachnids count as bugs?