Elevated heart rate (updated)

Do you know what the best cardio in the world is?  I’ll give you a hint:  It’s not running or biking or any other actual athletic endeavors.

No, the best cardio in the  world is looking up in the shower and seeing a humongous, ginormous, freaking huge black spider in the corner above you.

THAT will get your heart rate up, I tell you.

Okay, the spider wasn’t that big — more like the size of the end of my pinky.  But still, it scared the bejesus out of me.  As I rushed through my post-workout shower — six miles of riding Bubbles on Virginia’s hills, booyah — I kept glancing up to see if Charlotte was going to slide down her silken skein and chat me up.  She didn’t, but I swear it looked like she was waving two of her legs at me, as if to say:

Hi Jen.  How ya’ doin’?  Don’t mind me.  I’m just up here laying an egg sac filled with my 718 babies, who will hatch after I die and then live in Jenworld, where they will also have babies, who will have babies, who will have babies, and so on… the Circle of Life and all that, you know?  Alas, they won’t eat the stink bugs but they will scare the crap out of your kids on a regular basis, so prepare yourself.  Also?  I know you’re thinking of pulling out the Racquet of Death and coming after me, so I’ll stay up here in the corner where you can’t reach me.  Bet you’re regretting those extra-tall ceilings now, aren’t ya?

I ignored Charlotte and her taunting words and concentrated on getting out of the shower as fast as I could.  On the up side, fast showers = saving water, so score one for the Eco Women!

Then I put up the following status update on Facebook:

See? I was so unnerved that I couldn’t even type.  I meant to say that I’d be cowering in the living room.

And then I stayed downstairs for the rest of the day.  I think the subsequent twitching and shuddering every time I thought about the spider over my head should count toward my Weight Watchers activity points.

So there you go, there’s your new fitness plan.  It will totally make you heart healthy.

In the meantime, I forgot to remind Pete to take care of Charlotte when he got home from work yesterday, so now I’m going to need to woman up and go deal with her.

Update:  The reason I didn’t use the shower sprayer to kill Charlotte was because the ceilings are too high for me to reach in any way and the water didn’t go that far either.  (Now if I’d had a fire hose…)  Anyway, after my run, I went to take a shower and noticed that Charlotte was gone.  I thanked Pete for dealing with her for me and he informed me that he hadn’t done anything.  So now there’s an arachnid loose in my house.  Don’t tell my kids.