I'm Tingling

The Spider

One of the perks of owning a swimming pool is that you get to clean it. Either you pay somebody to do it, or you do it yourself, but it has to be done. If you opt to do neither, what you have is a pond. I do the pool cleaning myself. Yes, I wouldn't mind having that hot pool boy that's always portrayed in the movies, but in reality he doesn't exist. My last pool 'boy' was just a few years older than me. I didn't fire him, he just stopped showing up. I assumed he died of old age. That was when I took over.

 

My tenants have visitors from the north, and they have promised me that they want to go swimming despite the chilly seventy degree water. So early on New Year's Day, I got out the skimmer, the brushes, and the chlorine, and I cleaned the pool. I snagged the leaves that had settled on the bottom, brushed the algae off the sides, and cleaned the raccoon poop off the stairs in the shallow end. It was when I pushed aside the bushes to get to the filter that the spider bit me. I didn't even know I was stepping into a spider web until it was very much too late. There was spider silk in my hair, on my arms, and in my face. I calmly stepped back and screamed like a little girl knowing that, that's what scares spiders off the most. Usually when I brush against a spider web the spider skedaddles out of the way and all I have to do is clean the web off of my self. This time I could not find the spider. It was not in what remained of its web. So I started patting my hair, slapping my arms, and whipped my shirt off over my head. I did not find the spider. What I did find was a little pin prick of a spider bite on my chest. It is bugging the hell out of me because it feels like I have a needle stuck in me. I don't know if it is a poisonous spider, and I'm not sure of what side effects a bite by this spider might cause, but I am getting the urge to start trying on some Spandex.