After we found out about the termites, we tossed around various options. The one option we really do not want to take is to have to pay someone an insane amount of money to come in and do a treatment that we could do ourselves, especially since the termites haven’t actually made it to the structure yet, so are still basically containable.  Since Richard’s asthma precludes him going into our crawlspace (dust + possible mold + severe asthma = bad mix), it was up to me. And I really did think I could do it too. We went out and bought the treated stakes that were recommended to us by our contractor friend, and we borrowed my parents’ rake to use to clear out the debris, and we came home and emptied out the hall closet where the trapdoor to the crawlspace is located, and I changed into my grungiest clothes and pulled back my hair, and we scrounged up a flashlight, and off I went into the crawlspace. Except….not. I climbed down there, and then looked under the house, to where the dark enclosed space stretched out for a very long way, and I just couldn’t make myself do it.  I felt like a stupid, lousy home owner, incapable of doing even the most basic of home owning tasks, and I thought longingly of the days when we were renters and someone else would have had to do this, and I wondered briefly if the insulating properties of having a raised foundation had really been worth *this*.

That was Saturday. We talked to a few people on Sunday. I chatted with a friend with a ten year old son to see if he might be willing to rummage around in our crawlspace (and we would definitely pay him well to do so) and all the while I felt like the biggest loser because I am such a wimp that I cannot get over my issues and just get into that damn crawlspace and take care of it myself.  And then I stopped and thought about *why*, exactly, it was that I was so scared.  It wasn’t the fact that it’s an enclosed space. Sure, that’s not exactly comfortable, but I can deal with that. It was the fact that it is dark under there. And I do not do well in the dark. I realize that I am nearly forty years old and being scared of the dark is something that you are supposed to grow out of before you reach double digits in age, but there it is. The thought of being underneath that house, the flashlight suddenly going out, and not being able to see where I was, let alone how to escape, terrifies me completely.

I got to thinking about how I could deal with this, because no matter how illogical the phobia, it’s still real and no amount of self-lecturing will ever make it go completely away, unless you have a really good plan. And I suddenly thought of the perfect solution. Christmas lights. We have lots of them up in the attic, and they are wound conveniently onto little wheels. I could still bring the flashlight with me, but they would be not only my back-up  in case the flashlight batteries died, they would also be the path that led me back out.

So, last night we tried it again. Richard got a wheel of lights down from the attic, and I got back into my grungy clothes, and this time, it wasn’t scary at all. Good thing I had those lights, too, because the flashlight was not being very cooperative. I got down into the crawlspace and I rolled out my string of tiny little lights and inched my way further in, and that’s when I discovered that this was all pointless anyway. Because there is only about two feet of clearance under there. Literally the only way to move around is to slither forward, snake-like, using my elbows and my toes to drag myself along. And while I can manage that for a short period of time, there was no way I was going to be able to slither myself around the entire crawlspace to do what needs to be done. I got myself down there and I was damn proud of that, but I hadn’t counted on the simple fact that I just wasn’t going to be able to *move*.

Sigh. Last night I had dreams of being back in that crawlspace, except that it was large enough I could walk around. I was scraping mud tubes off the sides of the mechanical vents, but they were the size of manicotti shells, and the termites that emerged were the length of my hand. But the weird thing was that through it all, I wasn’t scared. Not one bit. If only the real thing could be this easy.