...I woke up in the wee small hours of the Saturday of camping weekend (Saturday before this last one) feeling a little disoriented and slightly startled. Looking around, I realized that I wasn't in my nice soft bed, but sleeping in a sleeping bag in the middle of my living room floor with my daughters on either side of me.

They were still sleeping peacefully, so I don't know what was the catalyst that woke me up. But nevertheless, I had a small shiver of fear - probably from the unusual surroundings. That got me to thinking about all the things that I'm afraid of.

I'm afraid of having a spider walk over any part of my bare skin - I don't care how big or small the spider is.

I'm afraid of big hairy scary Larry spiders (inside joke between me and the DH) - the thin daddy long legs sort or the really tiny ones don't scare me in general, unless they're crawling on me (see above). Just seeing a hairy one really freaks me out.

I'm afraid of ladders. I'm ok with heights, but after almost falling off a 6 ft. ladder when I was 14, I don't like them. I'll work with stepstools, but that's about it. I leave most of the ladder climbing to DH, and don't even climb them to put up cobwebs at Halloween - thank goodness for relatively low porch hangings.

I'm afraid of my kids not loving me anymore. I know someday that one or the other (more likely both) will tell me that they hate me, but I know that they won't mean it. That's what the teenage years hold in store. But I'm afraid of them someday telling me that they don't love me - and that will hurt worse than anything.

I'm afraid of my daughters telling me "Mom, you just don't understand" when they're teenagers, and being right about that. 99% of the time they'll be wrong, but I fear that 1%.

I'm afraid of losing my job. It's not a realistic or rational fear, but one that always hits me when I think about the fact that I work for a company that does business on the internet.

I'm afraid of my DH not loving me anymore, or leaving me. Also not rational or realistic. But one that most women go through unless they have an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore.

I'm afraid of dying young and leaving my daughters without a stable female role model. Ok, that's crap - I'm afraid of leaving them without a mommy when they might need one the most.

I'm afraid of house fires and earthquakes. For obvious reasons. I'm afraid of a storm being strong enough to knock the maple tree in my backyard over into the back of my house. Not afraid of the storm, mind you, but the tree being knocked over. That would be damn inconvenient.

I'm afraid of people who I consider dear friends turning their backs on me. Not realistic - just an insecure holdover from high school when something like that *did* happen for reasons that are still unexplainable. Something about me not wearing my hair the right way was one rumor that made it back to me. Not a lot of ways to deal with hair that comes down past your rear end - you braid it, that's about it.

I'm afraid of plane crashes. Mine or anyone else's.

I'm afraid of Alzheimer's... I would really hate to go down a path where I'd be trapped inside myself. I think those who know me well would hate it too.

I'm afraid of someone breaking into the house - but only when DH isn't in the house do I worry about that. That's when I set the alarm too. When he's home, it never seems to cross my mind. So much for independant female who can take care of herself, right?

There are so many more things that I could probably put here, but I'm afraid of you wondering why I'm talking about this. Hey, it's just something that happened to cross my mind in the middle of the night...

...and I wrote it down quickly because I was afraid I would forget.