My Spidey Sense

The funny thing about this blog is that it doesn't document my burning hatred for winter because I started this one in June and we didn't really have a winter, per se. It got cold, a few times. It snowed, like four times. I only had to shovel once, and only for about a half an hour to dig out my car from when Nick (bless his heart) plowed our driveway.. This winter just didn't have it in her. It didn't bring me down because it didn't bring it's one-two punch. 

Thank Christ for small favors, amiright?

But now we are in that other particular time of year that I hate and have trouble getting used to before I can really embrace summer and all of the things I LOVE about it: It's the bug season. It's started early this year, and it's making me put up quite a fight to keep my sanity.

First it was the ticks. We heard it was going to be a bad year. I pulled the first tick off of Elise in early April and have found six, count 'em SIX more so far! Luckily I was born in good old Salem, Connecticut, which borders all sorts of Lymes. Old Lyme, East Lyme, South Lyme, HADlyme and LYME. So I am very familiar with daily tick-checks and have thusfar avoided Lyme Disease for 29 years. 

Then, god help me, the spiders. 

I see them here and there. Lurking. They slink across the basement walls, and the big ones, I see them saunter through the grass all sure of themselves. Then two days ago I got in my car and left for work and I hadn't gotten a quarter mile down the road when I saw a MONSTER of a spider skipping across my dashboard right fucking in front of me. You know those kinds of spiders that don't so much walk on their nasty little too-many legs as they JUMP UNEXPECTEDLY EVERYWHERE? It was one of those. It was about the size of a quarter (which, to me, is collossal in size) with a thick black body and these yellow stripes on its back. 

(OH DEAR GOD I JUST TRIED GOOGLING AN IMAGE TO SHARE WITH YOU AND THAT LASTED A WHOLE FIVE SECONDS UNTIL MY WHOLE BODY WAS TINGLING AND SHUDDERING)

I have this thing where I am unreasonably terrfied of spiders. They make my body REACT. See all the capital letters I am using here? THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW I'M FREAKING OUT.

I slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road. There were no cars behind me, thank god, because I didn't bother moving over to the shoulder. I pounded my foot on the brake and sat there freaking out, looking in all directions to find something to kill the spider with. I couldn't use my hand, obviously. I considered an old coffee cup but then realized that the bottom was recessed and that would just anger the spider. I picked up from the console the envelope containing my brand new car registration, planning to hand slam/squish with that - but the fucking spider was gone. Somewhere. IN MY FUCKING CAR. 

That was two days ago, and last night the fear of the spider lurking somewhere in my car manifested itself into nightmares of unusually bad proportions. I dreamt there were two spiders in my house and neither of them were ordinary. One was menacing and black, stalking between Elise's room and the living room, disappearing and reappearing as I searched it out to kill it, always avoiding me. And then then there was the gargantuan brown THING that built a web in the corner of our entryway, spinning it's disgusting egg sac, growing bigger and bigger by the minute until finally it's legs looked more like shiny tentacles that were dripping down toward the floor and able to grab me.

I didn't sleep well last night, obviously. And now here I am, one in the morning, writing about spiders and having to stop to itch myself every five seconds because I can feel those imaginary little fuckers crawling all over me.

God, I hate bugs.

Mark Strand, "Lines For Winter"

Tell yourself

as it gets cold and gray falls from the air

that you will go on

walking, hearing

the same tune no matter where

you find yourself—

inside the dome of dark

or under the cracking white

of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself

what you know which is nothing

but the tune your bones play

as you keep going. And you will be able

for once to lie down under the small fire

of winter stars.

And if it happens that you cannot

go on or turn back

and you find yourself

where you will be at the end,

tell yourself

in that final flowing of cold through your limbs

that you love what you are.

Things I Think About at 2:45AM

I hate winter. I hate it for a lot of reasons, number one being THE COLD, and then there are all of the other little indignities that aren't worth mentioning yet, because we've been lucky (in my opinion) and have had a lot of unusually warm weather lately. 

The second thing of winter that I hate more than other things is the depression. I am SAD. Well, I have SAD, and I really need to get to the doctor and do something about it before it really brings me down.

I haven't been writing lately, and I've been trying to brush it off as just me being lazy. I've been spending too much time in bed watching TV on Netflix instant, I have been reading books and never finishing them, I have been staying up way too late at night and in bed way too late in the morning, I've been eating way more chocolate than usual, and have been afraid of getting on the scale. 

All of these things shouldn't surprise me though, I realize now. Maybe all it takes is reminding myself that it's not ME - I'm not really a lazy fatass chocolate addict that would rather do ANYTHING than be productive in any way. I want to do things, I DO do things. It's just that in the winter getting out of bed is so much harder, and letting myself get sucked away from the world and into my own head is a lot easier.

I'm trying to figure all of this out. With every day that passes I feel like I am getting closer to some threshold, some point I am going to cross over when things will really change for the better, and slowly but surely I am getting there. Aren't I? I wish I had a map for this journey.

Winter's Coming

I am, by design, a night owl. Most nights, regardless of whether I need to be up at seven in the morning to get Elise on the bus, I stay up until the wee hours of one or two o'clock, and sometimes even later if I am writing and on a roll. 

Last night, I was feeling funky. I wasn't really tired, but I didn't really feel like doing anything either - I wanted to blog but didn't know what to write about other than the usually fluff of complaining about writing (hah), I didn't feel like working on my outline for NaNo or working on VZFS! or the zombie story that I've been hacking away at for years... so I put on some Desperate Housewives around 11pm... and I was passed out.. soon after. I woke up a little after midnight, having no idea what I had just watched or whether I had processed any of it at all, and then I just shut off all the lights and went to sleep for real. It's probably the first time that I've gone to bed early in, well... I can't even remember. Since I've been sick, probably. But I'm glad I did.

This morning, I woke up and I wasn't tired. Novel idea isn't it? Going to bed when I'm tired, and not when I'm DONE doing things for the day? I woke up and actually had a spring to my step. I got Elise breakfast, packed her snacks and bag, helped her brush her hair, and got her on the bus.. then, oh man, I came back in the house and made myself a cup of coffee. I got back in bed and read a book for a while, made another cup of coffee, had some cereal, and now here I am. Blogging in the morning. Awake, wide awake, feeling good. 

Still, there is the half-dread that in forty minutes when I walk into work I'm going to have my day ruined by the presense of my boss, the spirit crusher. I never know whether he'll be there, what the mood will be like, whether my resentment will grow as it has been doing pretty consistently for the last six months or so. It's hard to tell.

But I can tell you one thing - I took Elise to the Shack for dinner on Friday night and as I was watching the waitresses bustling around, delivering food, smiling at patrons, making little conversation as they freshened coffee and took away plates - my heart literally ached, that's how hard I came to the realization that I just want to go back to waitressing again. I just want to have the kind of job again where I go to work, do my job, and just come home. No thinking about things left unfinished, no worrying about bills and spending money that isn't mine... I feel like that guy in American Beauty - I just want a job with as little responsibility as possible. It sounds wonderful. 

But that means I have to be brave - I have to go out on a limb, first of all, and do that thing that I hate doing more than most things, which is go job searching. Am I ready? I should be. I don't know what I am waiting for sometimes. 

But meanwhile, I'll keep getting ready for NaNoWriMo. I'll finish my outline, I'll say my goodbyes to friends and family and social life, and I'll be so glad when next Monday comes, so I can get writing at midnight. I'm really looking forward to it this year, for a lot of reasons. I'm really looking forward to an excuse to stay in and spend more time by myself, for one thing, because as much fun as I've been having with the campaign and friends, I feel like it's sort of wearing me out a bit. There's a reason, there's definitely a reason, sometimes I'm much better off alone.

And, winter's coming. This is not a good thing. Last night I fell asleep in a sweatshirt under blankets and I was still cold, but when I woke up I was sweating because the heat had turned on in the middle of the night for the first time this year. It was only about 40 degrees when I took Elise out for the bus, and I imagine it was much colder than that during the night. This is not a good thing. But if the winter's coming, here in my room is exactly where I want to be.