Paranoia

Down in our basement, tucked in under the front porch, is a little closed-off cold storage room.  It is a handy room in which to store canning preserves, extra foods, and other items that we can bulk up on when they go on sale.  Packages of toilet paper, cans of spaghetti sauce, Kraft Dinner, jars of baby food, and juice boxes, among other things, line the shelves and wait for their time to come.  What a handy room!  Why not store other things in there too... snow shovels and extra insulation, lawn chairs, garden hoses, extra tools, a kiddie pool, coolers, camping and fishing gear.  I'm sure that's not all of it.  You might be thinking - wow, what a large storage room but in fact it isn't all that large at all, but it is remarkable how many things you can fit into a small space when you stack, pack, and shove.  One of my future goals is to organize this room a lot better, but we will need to have a larger shed outside before that can happen.
When this organization happens, one of the things that I hope will change is the installation of a light switch outside the room.  Believe it or not, this will relieve me of a significant amount of stress each and every time I enter the room.  Why?  Well, because of an incident that occurred this spring.
We had occasion to need our cooler, which was packed deep within the cold storage room, so my dear husband unearthed it while I was getting some other things ready for a trip to Strathroy.  As we were pulling out of the driveway, I was informed that when he retrieved the cooler, at least 20 or 30 centipedes scattered out of it into the dark depths of the room before they could be smushed.   
Are you SERIOUS.  20 or 30 centipedes in the cooler certainly means a few hundred or thousand centipedes in the entire room... all waiting for me in the dark when I innocently come to retrieve a package of spaghetti noodles or a can of soup for dinner.  And before I can find those food items, I have to turn on the light - which is controlled by a pull-chain just inside the door.  Now every time I go in there and need to pull on the light, I cringe with uncontrollable squeamishness and my worst nightmares flash through my head.  I am certain that as I reach up to the chain, a writhing mass of sinister centipedes (waiting in their lair for my arrival) will skitter off the chain, down my arm and into my clothing, upon which event I will certainly have a full-blown panic attack and my dear family, when they begin to wonder where I have gone, will discover me writhing on the floor in the doorway of the cellar,  a silent scream frozen on my face as centipedes crawl around in my hair.
Pretty bad eh?  Certainly the installation of an exterior light switch would be worth it to save me all this psychological stress. While I know that my intense fear of creepy-crawlies is somewhat unreasonable, to me it is very, very real, and could probably be described as a bona-fide phobia.  It's not the only one I have, but unfortunately it is one that I have to deal with quite often, as I don't have another good place to store extra foods, although I've found that if I just leave the door open, the paranoia begins to subside a little.  I can't wait till my kids are old enough and tall enough to retrieve things for me - at least they like bugs!! 

Introducing...the CHAIN