My Fresh Hell
Life in Scribbletown.

Ashes to Ashes

2004-09-27
Apparently, fall is Spider Season. Out here, we get more than our share of lovely garden spiders who weave very lovely and very LARGE webs to catch�and I�m guessing here, based on the size and sheer number of the things�raccoons and groundhogs. Not that I�ve seen a raccoon caught in a spider web but it could happen. They�re that sturdy. But those spiders stay outside. Where the food is. I am not opposed to spiders at all. In fact, if my heart had cockles, spiders would probably warm them. Outside is where they usually reside and outside is where I like them to be. I don�t normally mind the occasional spider in the bathtub. I do not have a spider phobia.

But. Now, the big ones are getting chilly at night and have decided that the house is cozier. And by big, I mean meaty, Survivor-style spiders. And, until the first one appeared, Red had been sleeping in a cradle on the floor. Now? She�s in the bed with me again. We�ve had so many crawling along the baseboards that my husband has designated a ricotta container to be the Spider Catcher. Once trapped, he places a sticky note on the lid that says �spider inside� to remind us to release it back into the wild. This sticky note has been used more times than I�d like to recall. Enough with the nature already.

Perhaps this is why we�ve shunned the State Fair again. Why pay $18 a head to experience animals I can see by looking out my window? What�s that, kid? You want to see a horse? Take a couple of steps (watch out for the poo!) and lean over the fence. Pet the velvet noses as long as you wish. Want to see a cow? Pull up your window shade. We hear roosters in the morning. Goats are down the road. Recently, a neighbor decorated his front yard with the stereotypical triangular shaped corn stalk stack with pumpkins at its feet. I snorted and then realized, those are his actual damn corn stalks from his actual damn corn field and his actual pumpkins. Real pumpkins from his personal patch, not purchased at the grocery store. Corn stalks not purchased at Ben Franklin. These country folks and their actual real stuff, I tell ya! To paraphrase Dusty, �They are so freaking me out!�*

Speaking of Dusty, she is still obsessed with death. Yesterday she got out the Playdoh and turned her Fun Factory into a crematorium. Remember how I worried about getting into the whole buried in the ground vs burned up and placed in an urn thing? �I�m making ashes. These snakes are dead and I�m making ashes in the factory. This is ashes,� she tells me pointing to long strips of �doh coming out of the four-hole opening in the plastic ruler-like extruder. Later, though, the factory became the Happy Smiley Face Popcorn Factory (perhaps based in Tokyo?) and she made �popcorn� strips out of three containers worth of Playdoh. We cleaned up by cramming the popcorn in the little buckets so they could be shipped out to stores across the country. If that thought doesn�t make you hungry, perhaps the knowledge that the Playdoh, which originally started out as yellow and blue and red, is all now a grayish green color. That�s how I like my popcorn (never mind my ashes)! How �bout you?

Red continues to find midnight the perfect time to go to sleep for the night. She�s got stuff to do, apparently, like grab her toes and giggle and watch a Steely Dan DVD with us on the computer. So at least there�s that.

*We make Dusty listen to early Bob Dylan very often in the evenings and while listening to �We Shall Be Free, No. 10� recently she exclaimed, �He is so freaking me out! That song broke my brain!�

|

9:27 a.m. ::
prev :: next