Spider Season

We're having a particularly dry and cold winter here in Marin this year. It's cold enough that I expect to see snow flurries every now and then. But, as I said, it's also dry.

One of the best parts of a cold winter - and yes, I'm fully aware there are much colder places, but this is not one of them - is that the spiders hide away. I like being relaxed and knowing a spider is not going to jump out at me at anytime. I can let my guard down at this time of year.

Except that I've seen three spiders in the last two-days. My husband and I were in bed either about to sleep or having just woken up and I saw a spider dangling inches from his head. Inches! What was that critter thinking it was going to do? (Besides getting smashed as soon as I saw it and panicked.)

Then, I was wrapping presents on the floor of my bedroom and I saw another spider hanging out on the floorboard, trying to invisible, I'm sure. I almost let that one be, except I thought it might take advantage of me and grow large and startling.

Last night, I was printing some stuff and I was looking at the blank paper when I saw a spider crawl towards me. Just then, the printer sucked up another page and the spider got sucked in along with it. I didn't see it again.

Does this mean we've begun Spider Season? I hope not, but all signs point in that direction.

Cookies? Cereal? What's the Diff?

I got hungry this afternoon. As it turns out, I skipped lunch, unless you can call eating a yogurt cup lunch. And that second cup of coffee, that wasn't exactly filling either. Around 3:00 PM, in fact right before writing this, I finally had something to eat.

I'm kind of an idiot in the kitchen. It's not by place to be my Best Self, if you know what I mean. I was foraging around in the cupboards when I settled upon the one thing that I love and that never lets me down: a bowl of cereal. Does anyone else do this?

Next, I went to my computer to read something because I like to eat and read. I came across this on the NY Times site. It's an article about how corrupt our world is. My world. My cereal! Fortunately, I don't eat any of that crap, I eat different crap, but still...

My Massive Headache

Since I started getting these massive three-day headaches a few years back, I've been reluctant to call them migraines. It always seemed to me that migraines were just awful and debilitating to the friends who experienced them. Surely, if I could manage my day-to-day this couldn't be an actual migraine, right? They kept that name, however, for lack of a better more appropriate one.

Well, yesterday, my Day Two headache was massive. I couldn't even talk because it required too much brain work. I holed up in my bedroom and slept as much as I could considering I have two kids. I looked forward to my Day Three because I can usually medicate this one away to a certain extent and get back to living. Only it hurts still.

A lot.

I'm back in bed and waiting for the time to come when the pain will be gone. I'm thinking about all the things that need to get done and how I can't do them. And how this hurts so much I feel nauseated. I'm waiting...

A Little Blurb About A Snake

I was going to write about how our family went to a Christmas tree lot and cut down our own tree on Sunday, only to have the wonderful event over-shadowed by my daughter getting stung by a bee (on the leg, through her pants) who was promptly out-done by her sister who got stung by a bee under her hair on her neck. These were crazy bees, too. I think they were yellow jackets. Ironically, these bees are also called "meat bees" and my kids are vegetarians. Go figure.

My oldest daughter, with the the sting on her leg, was so affected by the sting that she could talk of nothing else for the next 24-hours. I think she may be gearing up for the school play coming up. (High drama!) My youngest, who is usually the one who makes mountains out of mo-hills, took it well in stride.

After deciding not to write about that, I was going to write about how my dog has licked a hole in his tale. Not literally, but he does have a bald spot. I've gone to my Dr. Google, who told me what to expect, among other things. The first order of business was to give him a long, long walk. The second, a bath. Believe it or not, my water-loving Lab refused to get in the tub today. I was shocked.

I dragged him in there finally and got a look at his tail. Above the bald spot, there was a patch that looked crunchy. It looked like it was scabbed or had dried blood on it. It  didn't look nearly as bad as I was expecting and I'm going to give him lots of attention and keep him away from his "spot." I started this bit of extra attention by vigorously drying him off and then blow-drying him. My arms were spaghetti when I was done, but I managed to accomplish something I have never done before: I got him to leave me alone! I was free from his incessant barking and pestering for more play. I don't even know what to do with myself now!

No, I'm not going to write about that, either. I'm going to write about how I saw an itty bitty snake today while walking my dog. It was so small that if it was a ribbon, you would be hard pressed to tie a bow. It was already dead, which I discovered when I got a closer look and picked it up. That's it. Nothing exciting in today's post. Just a little blurb about a snake.

Climbing the Family Tree

I love puzzles. Most puzzles, that is. I am not especially fond of a 10,000 piece puzzle where most everything is blue: blue water and blue sky without much of anything else. I don't really even mind the complicated ones that have a bunch of detail because there is a place that they obviously have to go.

I'm climbing my family tree these days. I started looking because of my daughter and it became a near-obsession for me. (I only say near out of vanity. It really is an obsession!) I've found that certain parts of my family tree are like the blue water/blue sky puzzles. I can't find diddly squat. Other branches, however are like getting a nice picture and the voila! These two parts fit together. They just had to, after all!

Some of the clues come from things that I'm learned throughout my life - like the oddness that some members of my family ended up with the same last name as relatives a few generations back. That helped find some folks. And it's alway really lucky to find likeminded family members who have compiled the tree, too. I had a breakthrough from this luck today.

My daughter has long since lost interest in my quest. She was excited to find that Harry Houdini* was Hungarian like we are (as I am one-quarter.) But mostly, the search is interesting to me and she may find that it interests her too when she gets to be my age. We'll see.

*I am not related to Harry Houdini. Nor am I related to Sandy Koufax, as I told people for years after mistakenly remembering a conversation where I learned instead we may be related to Ernie Kovacs.