Random Thoughts

So I've been thinking a lot about spiders these past few days. Which would not generally be a problem. I like spiders, after all. I even had one as a pet once--a Chilean Rose Haired Tarantula. I'm not including a picture, because I know there are other people who have problems with arachnids. I can trace my love of spiders all the way back to my first reading of Charlotte's Web. Then there's the fact that, as a totem animal, spiders are linked to writers and story tellers. What's not to like about that, right?

But none of that is the reason I've had spiders on the brain lately...and I mean that pretty literally, btw.

A couple of mornings ago I woke up with a pain in my head. Not a headache kind of pain, it was more of a, "Did someone sneak into my room last night while I was sleeping and hit me over the head with a shovel?" kind of pain. Now, let's ignore for the moment that, in my current living condition, the idea of someone sneaking into my room while I'm sleeping is not at all far-fetched. It happens pretty often, actually. And the hitting me over the head with a shovel part? Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that.

But, as I said, we'll ignore that for now. I'm a pretty light sleeper and I think I'd remember being hit over the head with a shovel. But my head ached and, as it turned out, I had several nice lumps on my head, as well. Marble-to-ping-pong-ball-sized lumps, to be more exact, in a meandering trail that started on the top of my head and ended just below my left ear.

It wasn't that hard figuring out what had really happened--especially once I got the "hit over the head with a shovel" idea out of my head. It seems the piece of tape covering the tear in the screen (by the window just above my bed) had mysteriously disappeared. Sometime during the night a spider (or many spiders--I don't really know) must have crawled in the window and become annoyed at having to traverse my head on my way to who-knows-where.

Or, you know, maybe they were love bites. It could happen.

So, anyway, now it's three days later and I'm still achy and lumpy and really not in a great mood. And, yes, I know, most people would just dose up on the anti-histamines and have been over it by now; but I can't take anti-histamines. We don't get along. 'Nuff said.

But I called this post random thoughts and so far it's all been one, elongated one. So, here's the next thing I've been thinking about: the wind. We get a lot of wind here. A lot of wind. The reason being, we're on a hill and, at this altitude, there's nothing between us and San Francisco Bay but empty air. The wind gets so strong that there are times when I can't use my outdoor office...but more about that in a bit.

Whenever I think about the wind, I think about the Christina Rossetti  poem I had to memorize back in elementary school, "Who Has Seen the Wind?" I've been thinking about a lot of childhood memories lately. Weird, random things, like buying my first bra. I got two, actually, the same garment in white and in pink. I really liked the pink one. It made me feel pretty. Even if it did squish my breasts into weird cone shapes, bisected across the middle with a not-so-pretty seam.

Odd, memories of by-gone days cropping up out of nowhere and underwear-shopping issues are two of the things I currently have in common with my mother-in-law. This morning she woke up from a dream in a rather confused state thinking she had to go to school to take her equivalency exam. The other day we went shopping for her and I made my first purchase of Depends.

All in all, my life is very interesting these days and, I must say, my muse has never been more pleased. Which brings me back around to my outdoor office. See how nice that worked out?

I have to talk about the office for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's fun. It's my new shiny thing. Second, I'm too nice to post pictures of spiders and too vain to post pics of my oddly lumpy head...oh, wait, that was me being nice there too, come to think of it. BUT no one can object to shiny new office pictures, like these...

Now all I need to do is figure out the best hours and angles, so I can avoid the really hellacious glare on the monitor.

On the other hand, if I end up having to spend a couple of hours every day writing in longhand, that doesn't seem like such a bad trade-off.