D is for Damn it, I Forgot D. And Dog Food.

I failed on Day 4 of the A to Z Challenge, and did not post for the letter D. Which means I owe you two posts today, and it is already 8:17 p.m. And I am drinking beer.

This can not end well.

This morning, after I had settled the children at the kitchen table with their breakfast, I walked out to the garage with Shutup Roxy's food bowl. I keep her food in a lidded trashcan just inside the garage door, where I'd moved it from the laundry room back in the fall. I moved it because - well, I'm not sure why I moved it, except that it was taking up too much room in the small laundry room, and pissing me off.

I don't need anything more in the laundry room pissing me off.

So out I went to the garage, flipped the lid off the trashcan, reached down with the bowl, and got a big scoop of dog food.

That's when something jumped.

Except I knew it wasn't just something. I knew exactly what it was, which is why I screamed MOTHERFUCKER and threw the bowl of food up in the air. I walked, in a fast like manner, into the bouse where the Husband stood in his underpants, ironing his shirt.

"It appears," I began, calmly, "That there is a critter in the dog food and you are going to need to get out there and get rid of it. Right fucking now."

"A critter?" he says, looking at me like I'm Ellie May Clampitt, just in from the ce-ment pond. "Like a rat?"

"OH MY GOD! NO! Smaller! GOD. Don't say that word!" and then I lost my poop and started doing the little girl afraid of a mouse running in circles pee pee dance. You know what I'm talking about.

The Husband, who loves to tease me mercilessly, never ever teases me about this. The phobia is so irrational, so deep, that I am prone to bursting into tears or dry heaving at the thought of the things. He was the good husband this morning, disposing of the Beast by whatever means, and never calling me a whiny baby. I am grateful.

He did make fun of me a little when I took the measuring cup out of the can with a paper towel (because you know The Creature touched it), all the while going "EEEEEEE! EEEEEE!"

There is a type of phobia therapy called Implosion Therapy. It's like the extreme version of Aversion Therapy. In Implosion Therapy, the patient is exposed to extremely high levels of their phobia and driven to hysteria and then past it, to the point that they cease to be phobic. In my case, I might be forced to touch a Creature, or multiple ones, or having extended contact with them.

What kind of bullshit is that?