Today's walk report: 052813

Arachnophobia, Nosocomephobia and maybe a few more.

Yes, I do that. I worry too much. The thing is I'm a little bit hypochondriac, a little bit paranoid and kind of a lot phobic about medical stuff especially if it includes a visit to a facility set up for medical practices. A doctor's office is a sliding scale and can be easily controlled but hospitals cause me high anxiety from the parking lot. I'm not exactly sure where or why all of this came about but it did. My best guess on the time frame is early to mid-80s. My mid-late 20s.

Yesterday I woke up and felt this really aggravating itch on my left arm inside my elbow but slightly up toward topside. I don't ever get mosquito bites and immediately upon looking at it I declared, that's a spider bite. I scanned the room for a perpetrator but saw nothing. I don't believe I've ever been bitten by a spider before.  As far as mosquitoes go either I taste bad or as I told my sister today, All of nature's little critters love me..." I'm sure it sounds conceited but I think it's true in a way. I think animals sense that I'm not a threat for whatever reason. I'm certainly anthropomorphizing to an extreme to include insects in the mix but hey... I did make a major, really a huge, transition in my life with bees about a year and 1/2 ago. I grew up being anything from petrified of bees in early childhood down to a state of extreme avoidance in adulthood. I would get really pissed off at people around me too who'd start flailing their arms as soon as anything with a stinger was in proximity. After all at 6' 5", 210 lb, I'm typically the largest, easiest target. But a year and 1/2 ago I started taking pictures of bees from several feet away (70-300mm lens, minimum focus of 1.5m),  and gradually I got more and more comfortable until I was mere inches away with a 60mm macro lens or a close up attachment @ 300mm. Close enough to feel some of them flying around me.

This has been my desktop image for the last 6 months

Carpenter bee on Chinese houses.

Oh yeah, the walk, I need to work that in still... Well 1st since I took the picture, here's the spider bite...

Gruesome? 'Looks like a little crater there to me, like something may have walked off with a small chunk of my flesh in its mouth. This went from super itchy, uncomfortable to a minor annoyance for most of the day. It became a preoccupation during my walk too because I tend to reflect on a lot of stuff during my walk but I also clear my head some over all sorts of shit I need to work through. I think my logical, problem solving side takes over frequently during walks. In other words, I'm not freaking over this bite anymore. Before the walk I had made the mistake of going online and reading medical advice on spider bites and I also made the much bigger mistake of looking at photos of stuff like people with gapping holes that look more like bullet wounds than bites from spiders. That sort of shit gets me going.

The walk itself was like a Monday walk since yesterday was a holiday. It had short cuts and I pretty much wanted to be done with it. 7.16 km of not much fun.

Finally, this is the spider which has been in my room, seen on various occasions for quite some time now. It's a female Phidippus-johnsoni, AKA, a red-backed jumping spider. The bite results in swelling and pain at the bite site, lasting for several days. She's taking the blame for the crime and if I see her again she'll be in a paper bag and heading outside quickly. No, I won't kill her.

Phidippus-johnson on top of my bedroom TV.