Day 5 -- Fears

Today's prompt is... Fears

Wow. Nothing like sharing your fears with the world (or the 3 of you who read this blog). So, here goes!

1. Someone taking/hurting my kids. Hands down, my worst fear ever. I don't think this one needs any explanation.

2. Heights. I sort of conquered this one while on our cruise this summer by doing the ropes course & dangling out over the side of the ship about 17 stories up, but that was on a small scale. Things always sound like a great idea... until I look down. My oldest son & my nephew talked me into going on the "Drop Tower" at Kings Island. I don't think my hands have ever sweated that much in my entire life. My son said all he could hear on the way down was me screaming. They talked me into going a second time right away. I thought "it shouldn't be as bad the second time, right?" Wrong. Still scary, still screamed my head off. Needless to say, I don't look to go skydiving anytime soon.

3. Grating that you can see through. Like, the vents in the sidewalks? Yeah. I'm the person that purposely walks around them. It doesn't matter if I'm mid-conversation with you, I'll divert my path, jump, or whatever is necessary to avoid walking on the sidewalk vents!

4. Stairs or playground equipment that you can see through. Like the metal ones with holes/drains in them? I will literally start sweating. When my oldest niece was probably 3, I took her to a park where there was one of those huge slides where you slide down on a burlap sack. Do you remember those? Anyway, she bolted up the see-thru stairs like lightning. I, on the other hand, was hand-over-hand, holding onto the railing, sweating, and hoping I didn't pass out due to fear of falling. Meanwhile, my niece in all of her cute sassiness, is standing at the top with her hands on her hips saying "Aunt Jenni, hurry UP!" Suffice it to say, my kids never had that opportunity because their mom was too much of a chicken to do it again!

5. Wolves. I have no idea why. It's not like I've had a bad run-in with one, but I've had nightmares about wolves for as long as I can remember. A few years ago, my husband rented the movie "The Grey", starring Liam Neeson. The Cliff's Notes version: a group of men are flying home. Plane crashes. It's cold & snowy. A pack of giant (at least it seemed to me), hungry wolves stalk, hunt, and end up (spoiler alert) killing them all. I watched most of that movie under a blanket, to which my husband laughed. And, I had a nightmare about wolves that night. My hubs now understands my fear. I know it's an irrational fear, but there you have it.

6. Scorpions. When my oldest son was just a few weeks old, we lived in Oklahoma. My husband was sleeping in the extra bedroom because he had an early flight, and needed good sleep. (It's difficult to get that when you have a newborn!) I had just finished feeding our son, and had him laying next to me, with the body pillow on the other side of him. I drifted off to sleep, and something woke me up. It was dark in the room, but with enough light coming in through the window, I could see a small, dark figure crawling up the body pillow, right next to my son. Being half-asleep, I was trying to figure it all out. Then I saw the tail curl up & over the figure. It was a scorpion crawling to my newborn. I freaked the freak out, grabbed my son, and hit the pillow. Great. Now the scorpion is on the floor. I grabbed Ryan & went screaming into the extra bedroom to my hubs about a scorpion. He was totally asleep, yet shot straight up in bed, trying to understand my yammering on about something. He jumped out of bed, armed himself with a wooden spoon & an empty McDonald's cup and went in search of the big, giant, mean scorpion. He found it. It was your run-of-the-mill, brown scorpion. Average in size. Totally normal for Oklahoma. Totally NOT normal for this Indiana girl who was still hormonal from just having a baby. I couldn't sleep in that bed knowing there were probably more lurking in the shadows! So, we checked into a hotel. We only had maybe 3 more weeks of still living in Oklahoma, and neither my hubs or I were comfortable with where we were living... so he sent Ryan & I back home to Indiana early, and he packed up all of our belongings & drove everything home a few weeks later. Stupid scorpions.

That's enough fear for today! What are your fears? Rational or irrational?