Freaky Friday!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

I was cleaning off the shelf next to my desk, minding my own business organizing my discs  - I glance up and AHHHHHHHH!!!! This was just inches from my head!  I shiver uncontrollably thinking about it!

Can you believe this weird-o spider was inches from crawling into my hair.  Oh disgust.  

I'm usually not so weirded out by spiders, after all, mini spiders and daddy long legs have basically been cohabitating with us since we moved in the house, making housecleaning a miserable experience as I constantly am in battle with them to eliminate them and their dratted webs that pop up within minutes of me clearing away the old one.  Anyway, those spiders, as this one probably was, are harmless, but they are not as big or as fat as this one was.  It's brown speckled body looked like it was full of something - prey it had just eaten perhaps?

  Ugh!  

In case you don't get the full effect of the chilling horror I felt, here are two more pictures. 

 Rest assured that I managed to bite of the expletive my first instinct was to shout.  I do think I screamed a little bit because the children jumped and said, "What happened, Momma?"  And I was good at trying to hide my fear.  But I did have the irrational fear that it was going to jump on me!  

I apologize to any of you that truly love all creatures of the earth, but I took off my shoe and smacked it good and dead.  

*Shiver*

I swear the spider was the size of a quarter!  

After doing some research, I think I have identified the spider.  It is a Cross Orbweaver.  To learn more about it, you can do a search for images on google for Cross Orbweaver.

I must point out that it says the females of this species seek out protected locations to lay 300-900 eggs!  Can you even imagine.  I literally have goosebumps and chills thinking about the possibility of 900 of those spiders near me.