Well This Sucks.

While doing the grocery shopping at my nearest Sainsbury's earlier, I was browsing the soups when StereoNinja took me romantically by the arm and led me over to the produce. When I asked what he was doing he said "Getting you away from the spider." I turned around and there was a massive spider on the floor right where I had been standing: he'd been coming right for me.

So anyway, now I can never go shopping in that Sainsbury's ever again.

NO.

I hate reality television, I really do. Doesn't really matter what it is - D-list celebrities dancing like they just discovered they have legs, ridiculous cooking shows that try to find out who the best chef is by putting them in situations no chef in real life would actually come across, storage locker auctions where people argue about whether a Huffy bicycle from 1985 is a priceless heirloom or a piece of shit, anything with a Kardashian in it - I just absolutely do not care and can't grasp anyone's emotional investment in their preferred X-factor contestant or poorly educated duck hunter (is that what they do? Hunt ducks? I don't even know. Also it doesn't seem that hard to me considering if I leave my back door open too long ducks will walk right into my kitchen like they own the place. Then again, I didn't quit school in the 3rd grade).

Be that as it may, my absolute favorite show right now is a reality show. I have no idea if a version of Gogglebox has made it's way to America yet, or if in fact it started there first (like I said, I don't watch reality shows). In case you're unaware, Gogglebox is a show where they put cameras in people's living rooms and then film those people while they watch tv. Which sounds stupid in principle, but is actually brilliant. They watch everything from the news to Downton Abbey to police reality shows, and it is hilarious, particularly Steph and Dom, known as "the posh couple" who appear to have no filter whatsoever and have pretty much become the stars of the show. I love it and I watch it every week, even more religiously than I watch Doctor Who (by the way, DID YOU SEE THAT LAST EPISODE? I did not see that coming AT ALL), which is saying something considering the number of daleks I have in my house.

That is until this week. I mean, I was watching it, but I ended up missing the last almost ten minutes of the show, despite the fact that I was still right there in the room. Why, you'd like to know? Well, this week, the producers thought it would be just a *peachy keen* idea to have everyone watch a nature documentary...ABOUT FUCKING SPIDERS.

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK GOGGLEBOX? I TRUSTED YOU.

When I say "documentary about fucking spiders" I am not being derogatory either, like, "oh those fucking spiders again, always trying to eat my face". I mean fucking spiders literally: the show was about those creepy monsters getting their freak nasty on. People study this you see. For a job. They film spiders doing it and then they deliberately watch the most terrifying porn in all of history including the shit those Romans were into. I am personally and deeply offended by the idea of spiders having sex. That is MY thing, you guys. Walking horror shows should NOT be allowed to enjoy my hobbies. EVER. And of course now, not only am I on high spider alert for any of the living nightmares that may be inside my house at the moment, but I am also now faced with the knowledge that they may not only be lurking inside my house but porking in it too.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, SPIDERS. ONLY I AM ALLOWED TO HAVE SEX IN MY HOUSE (and StereoNinja. Because that's sort of an important aspect to the me doing it in my house scenario). You shouldn't even be here in the first place. You can live wherever you want; you carry the materials needed for home building inside your own butt. But you DEFINITELY need to not be boning in here. Is it boning if you have an exoskeleton? It doesn't matter, just STOP DOING IT.

Thanks, Gogglebox, my life is ruined now.

The Invasion Continues

I am hysterical right now.

I have mentioned before that this house has a spider problem. That problem is getting worse. StereoNinja sprays and sprays, and all that happens is they start showing up where he hasn't sprayed. Spray the corners? They move to the middle of the crown moulding. Spray the whole perimeter of the ceiling? They move down to the middle of the wall. Spray the walls? "Fine, we'll just crawl on the floor!" they laugh derisively.

It's a daily, multiple spider problem. I didn't write about it at the time because it was a happy post, but while I was cleaning the living room for my 4th of July party, I had to stop dusting just to the right of the television because just left of the television I could see four spiders clinging to the wall. Work ceased while StereoNinja eliminated those and the other ones he found that I hadn't seen on the adjacent wall and inside our wall sconce. I handled life fairly well after that, up until last week. One morning last week, I woke up at 6 a.m. for what seemed like no reason...until I lazily looked up toward the ceiling and discovered a spider hanging down over the bed, over ME, not three feet above my head. I slid out of the bed onto the floor and woke up StereoNinja. I must have used my OH MY GOD I'M GOING TO DIE voice because he woke up already in instant rescue mode. But then he had to coax me back into bed, because what if they were lined up somewhere I couldn't see waiting for their turn to try to GET ON ME while I was sleeping? What if they'd formed a colony behind the headboard and were going to swarm as soon as I closed my eyes? I didn't sleep the rest of the night.

Since then I've had to deal with spiders daily. I won't walk around the house without socks. I carry a can of spider spray with me everywhere I go, with the cap off, holding it in front of me like some kind of fucking sword. StereoNinja comes home every day to a report detailing where all the spider carcasses that I sprayed that day are so he can remove them and check the area for friends of theirs that might have come to mourn or to get revenge. I take lightening fast showers because I'm terrified of being in such an enclosed space. Today the fast shower didn't work. I had JUST got out and started drying myself when a spider decided to just mosey right across the door frame on my bedroom floor, no doubt laughing maniacally. Once it had passed, I ran out and jumped on the bed, where I had left my spider spray (I won't be making the mistake of not taking it into the shower with me again) and turned around... and then I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it because it was one of those skinny beige spiders with legs the thickness of human hair that like to hang out in bathrooms. And the carpet in my bedroom is, of course, beige. It is also covered in clumps of my hair because my hair is too long right now and when I brush it, it gets everywhere. All hairlike things immediately became suspect, as did my actual hair since if it got in my hair I wouldn't notice that it was ON ME until it was too late. It could be anywhere, and I was naked on top of the bed, clear across the room from my sock drawer. I texted "I'm trapped" to StereoNinja. And he called me and talked me into throwing the duvet on the floor to create a bridge to the door so I could escape. This was a less than perfect plan however, since beyond the door I still wouldn't be wearing socks and I didn't know what else was out there. Also my toothbrush was inside my bathroom which I a) could not get back to unless I was sure the spider wasn't in there and b) was terrified of getting trapped in. StereoNinja said to grab my toothbrush and go in his bathroom but I was adamant that I couldn't: "What if it went in the bathroom? It's one of those ones that likes the bathroom." I stood on the bed another five minutes psyching myself up. Eventually, I threw down the duvet and jumped on it like a drowning man who found a life raft floating by. And then screamed loud enough to wake up the entire island. The spider HAD gone into the bathroom and was already hard at work building a web from my counter to the door, and I had located my island of "safety" RIGHT FUCKING NEXT TO THE DOOR. I sprayed it and it took forever to die, but at least I knew where it was. Unfortunately, my toothbrush was behind the web it was building and it could have been ON my toothbrush for all I know. But I did at least get to grab some socks so I could go to a different part of the house.

The problem with the spiders is that the alarm response is cumulative, and every time another one appears it reinforces the idea that nowhere is safe. I checked the WHOLE bathroom for spiders before I got in that shower, only to have one attack me the moment I got out. Obviously vigilance will not save me. So when I say I'm hysterical right now, what I mean is, the entire time I've been typing this I am perched on the edge of the couch (that way I'm not touching the floor but can easily jump off if a spider crawls onto the couch - this has happened twice in the last few weeks) and I stop every few words to check, in this order: the perimeter of the ceiling, the rest of the walls, the floor immediately in front of me, the floor between me and the door, and the back of the couch behind me (with another look at the wall behind the couch and the ceiling behind the couch for good measure). I will do this in every room I go into, every doorway I go through, every time I get into my car, until a sufficient amount of time has passed between spider sightings that I eventually calm down. If I've seen one spider on one day this takes a couple of hours. If I've seen many spiders on one day it take many hours. If see some two days in a row it can take the better part of a week to calm down. If I keep seeing them, in multiples, for so many days in a row that I can't remember the last day I haven't encountered one...I don't actually know. I imagine it could take weeks. Which is where I am at right now.

I tried an app that is supposed to help with arachnophobia called "Phobia Free". It was developed by a psychologist who specializes in the area and features a pink cartoon spider with a bow in her hair called Itsy that barely looks like a spider to help you. I made it through most of the first three levels. But then it makes you play some games. In the first one you have to flick flies into a spider's web (not Itsy, a more normalish spider but still very cartoonish in shape and color) so it doesn't starve. I tried and tried but kept over shooting or under shooting until I finally realized that the only way to land the fly in the web was for your finger to go over the spider. That was as far as I got. I KNOW YOUR GAME, SPIDER APP THINGY, YOU CAN'T FOOL ME.

I came on here to write this hoping I could make it funny and that it would calm me down, but it hasn't really worked, and also does not appear to be all that funny. Not the way my other spider stories have been. This is not a joke anymore, you guys, it is EFFECTING MY SENSE OF HUMOR.


UPDATE: OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE. Since posting this at lunchtime, I have encountered seven, that's SEVEN, more spiders. The first was a huge one hanging out on the blinds at my therapist's office while I was in therapy. OH THANKS A LOT SPIDER DICK IT'S SO MUCH EASIER TO TALK ABOUT MY PROBLEMS WHEN MY BIGGEST ONE SHOWS UP AT THERAPY TO TAUNT ME. So I sat through an hour of CBT while staring at a thing in the corner lest it move and going over and over my escape plan if it did. So you know, I'm sure I made a ton of progress today. THEN, I left therapy and got in my car to go home. It's hot in my car because I need more coolant for my air conditioning, so I rolled down the window. And then rolled it right back up again as a startled spider I'd failed to notice dropped down and tried to get in my window, so the whole way home I was all FUCK NOW I'M TRAPPED IN MY CAR. Once comically removing myself from it (when the heat became unbearable and my choices were face a spider or actually die) I went in the house and found another five spiders, one in the kitchen and four in the living room. I haven't been back to my bedroom since this morning. I'm currently stress eating to pass the 4-5 hours before StereoNinja gets home. Sorry, MrBalls, I'm eating your american Doritos (I did warn you they'd get eaten if you didn't come rescue them).

SECOND UPDATE: Trying to do laundry. Laundry seems safe - I had StereoNinja check the laundry for spiders this morning, what could possibly go wrong? A SPIDER IN THE BOTTOM OF THE LAUNDRY BASKET, THAT'S WHAT. C'MON MAN, THIS IS NOT EVEN STATISTICALLY POSSIBLE ANYMORE.

THIRD UPDATE 7/24: StereoNinja went through the entire house when he got home that night, spraying things and killing dozens more that were hiding in corners I hadn't looked in. They're STILL HERE. Right this moment he is outside hosing down the house and spraying things and killing spiders he can't reach with a broom. He says he's killed about 100 on the outside of the house. Pretty sure I'm going to die.

The Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises

I'm in the midst of a recovery day, my friends. There has not been so epic a weekend since the Epic Austin Weekend of Boobs and Cake. I am in actual physical pain due to its awesomeness and am also having a small existential crisis, and that is the result of only one of the three, THREE!, fantastical events in a roughly 30 hour period.

I would begin at the beginning, but I feel a need to explain something first. I noticed back in autumn that homesickness seemed to be at its worst during times that are important to your culture but just a regular day where you live now. For example, I suspect that Canada Day, for a Canadian who now lives in Spain, is probably kind of a bummer since no one is saying "Happy Canada Day!" or pouring maple syrup all over their naked bodies (is this what you do on Canada Day? I don't know, I'm not omniscient). I felt it a bit at Halloween - because people do Halloween here, but not like it's done in America where everyone goes insane - but when it really jumped up and kicked me in the cunt was on Thanksgiving, which in this country is just known as "Thursday" and everyone goes to work just like a normal day. I had Thanksgiving dinner with my neighbors, but it was on Saturday, not Thursday, and they were all very excited about this novelty dish I made called "cornbread" - I mean, they raved about it (because of course they did, it's CORNBREAD) which was very nice, but delighted surprise is not a typical reaction to cornbread at Thanksgiving dinner. Also there wasn't a shitty Cowboys game going on in the background. It felt weird.

Having experienced this once already, I decided that I would try to head off the "boo-hoo everyone is having fun but meeeeee" feels by having a 4th of July party. Unfortunately this is the time of year that literally half the country goes on holiday so most of our closer friends couldn't make it and also our neighbor The Commodore, so called because he recently became commodore of the nearby yacht club, stole all of our neighbors and took them to a ball at said yacht club, so it ended up being a much smaller affair than I had intended. BUT! It actually worked out great because the people who did come were my American study buddy (hereafter known as the academic) from my masters program and his English husband, my childhood friend the turk, who now lives in London with her English husband, and another American classmate from my program who I don't have a blog name for yet. We did it up American style, with burgers and brat(wurst)s on the grill, florescent yellow mustard, America shaped cookies, buckeyes*, and an enormous pasta salad. I have never seen people so excited about a pasta salad. It's not like pasta salad doesn't exist here- I've eaten some from M&S myself. But it seems using an entire package of pasta to make a party snack is uncommon here. This arrangement turned out to be perfect. We sat in the garden (these people all live in the city and were absolutely knocked the fuck out by the sheer volume of wildlife available a mere 40 minutes from London) drinking beer and/or wine and/or margaritas playing rounds of Cultural Differences and debating the proper pronunciation of words. One I didn't know is the word skeletal is pronounced here as skhe-LEE-tal, which by the way is wrong as evidenced by the fact that He-Man's nemesis is not called "SkeLEEtor". Eventually it got dark (i.e. spiders were starting to surround us) and we went indoors to tell childhood stories of terrible camp songs, fencing lessons (the turk and me, 5th grade) and archery. In the midst of this we saw some flashy lights outside and upon opening the door realized they were accompanied by exploding sounds...IT WAS FIREWORKS YOU GUYS. WE GOT TO SEE FIREWORKS IN ENGLAND ON THE 4TH OF JULY. Having achieved a perfect day, I took some people back to the train station, the academic and his husband (potentially Mr Coffee???) stayed overnight and I went to bed happy and exhausted.

StereoNinja and I got up very early the next day and rudely left our guests to fend for themselves, because we had tickets to the British Grand Prix and it is well known that driving to and from Silverstone on race day is a colossal clusterfuck. Now, I know nothing at all about F1 or any racing really, mostly because I don't have any real interest in cars or going fast and in my country the popular racing to watch is NASCAR, an interest I find fucking hilarious in other people. Conversely, prior to my converting him into an ice hockey fan, F1 was literally the only sport StereoNinja followed or gave a single fetid shit about. I haven't been exposed to his F1 fandom however, because we don't get Sky on principle so he can only watch about one out of every three races which makes it hard to follow. I was excited to go because he was excited and because I got to do a new thing, but my excitement had little to do with with the race itself. We got there and inhaled a shitty hamburger before finding our seats in the grandstand. Which is about when the Red Arrows started flying their impossible formations of awesomeness, complete with red white and blue smoke and a fucking heart that they drew in the sky. I got some sand or something in both my eyes.

And then it was race time. I was all ready to experience my first F1 race and excitedly awaited the first time they would go flying past me. I wound up waiting a long time, since 58 seconds in there was an enormous crash that knocked three cars out before it had even really started and damaged the barriers to a degree that took and hour to replace. But eventually the race got underway again and...You guys. The last thing I needed was another sport to follow, particularly another sport that it was difficult for me to be able to watch due to limited availability. However. FORMULA ONE IS FUCKING AWESOME. It wasn't even a particularly good race as it was clear from about halfway through who the winner was going to be and the only thing in question was who would win the battle for fifth place. But. For serious. Driving inches from each other at those speeds, making a play to get past someone in a corner by breaking later, which is pretty much challenging them to a game of high stakes chicken...I don't know how these cars can even go that fast with how much their balls must weigh. Next thing I know I'm reading in the program about innovations in engine design and strategies for dealing with the new limit of 100kg of fuel per race. So apparently I'm now both a racing fan and burgeoning petrol head. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.

The race ended with with a British racing driver as the winner making everyone mad with joy and patriotism, and me bewildered at myself and realizing that I had a sunburn for the first time in over 10 years (it's all coming back to me now. Having a sunburn SUUUUUUUHHKS). StereoNinja and I hightailed it back to the car in order to drive all the way to London to see Ben Folds with the Heritage Orchestra at Barbican. I've seen Ben Folds with an orchestra before. What I had not seen before was Ben Folds' new piano concerto which he'd spent a year writing and which was a highly unusual mix of classical and modern styles. Nor had I seen him lead an entire orchestra in a spontaneous episode of Rock This Bitch. For the uninitiated, Rock This Bitch is a thing that happens at many Ben Folds shows in which someone in the audience waits til a quiet moment to shout "ROCK THIS BITCH!" and then Ben Folds makes up a song on the spot containing the words "rock this bitch" that is completely different from any version of Rock This Bitch he's played before. This is not the first orchestra he's convinced to play Rock This Bitch with him, but it is the first time I'd seen it live, so I can pretty much go ahead and die now. If you'd like to be ready to die also, here's a video of the whole process:

Once Ben Folds had finished blowing my fucking mind again, we headed home. After a concert, an F1 race, and a brilliant party, I was completely exhausted (also crispy and pink as all fuck) and not looking forward to going home and cleaning up the mess we'd made on Saturday. So imagine my total fucking delight when we finally got home only to find that the guests we had abandoned in our house had cleaned up absolutely EVERYTHING before they left like a couple of magical party debris erasing genies, thus making the entire thing into a PERFECT weekend. Or indeed, the Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises.

Update: I have just remembered another conversation from my 4th of July party between the four Americans that occurred when the turk mentioned she had gone somewhere that had REAL rye bread and the other three of us all sat up and went "Get out. Seriously? With the seeds and everything? WHERE? WHERE IS THIS RYE BREAD?" The reason we all reacted so strongly is that we've all had a common experience, shared I suspect by almost all Americans living here, of having ordered a sandwich on rye or rye toast somewhere and being served instead with bread that is actually white bread and pumpernickel swirled together. Listen, because I cannot stress this enough: that is not rye bread. There's not even any caraway seeds in it, which while some real rye bread doesn't have caraway seeds either, that kind of rye is pointless. If there is one food I miss from America more than any other food it is rye toast to go with my omelette. Without rye toast, an omelette is just eggs with some other shit in it. Rye toast is the shit, man.

I now return you to you irregularly scheduled self deprecation and spider freak outs.

*These were specifically for the benefit of the turk since as a native Ohioan she was the only one likely to have had them before. If you don't know what a buckeye is, as far as I can tell it is a nut (or seed? I'm too lazy to google which one it technically is but I think of it as nut) that is either exactly the same as or indistinguishably close to a conker. The tree it grows on is the state tree of Ohio and it is the mascot of the state's largest institution for secondary education, The Ohio State University. Somewhere along the line, some total fucking snack genius got the idea to make balls of candied peanut butter and dip them in chocolate, which is both delicious and looks exactly like a buckeye. Despite not encountering them before, the group ate the crap out of them and now I don't have any more.

They're Baaa-aack

I've been feeding the next door neighbors' cat all week because they are out of town. I say "neighbors' cat", but it's really a stray cat called Hissing Syd, who won't come within 10 feet of people, but who will sit exactly that distance from his food bowls and look around in judgement if they are empty when he gets there much in the way of a normal house cat. I grabbed the cat food and was about to walk through my back door when crumpled in the door jam I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in England. So big in fact, that I looked it over for some moments actually thinking "maybe it's not a spider. Maybe it's a scraggly piece of something that fell off of a bush." But nothing else in the world has leg joints in exactly those places. Nothing. I seriously didn't know they had spiders as big as this here. I think it must have followed me here from the U.S...from Texas probably (I'm made to understand everything is bigger there). It wasn't moving and looked as if it had been smushed by the door, so I made the assumption it was dead and closed the door on it. Then I grabbed the cat food, went out the front door (after very carefully checking the entire doorway for spiders, because if I missed something and then came back and there was one outside THAT door I wouldn't be able to get back in the house), walked halfway across the island to the common entrance to the marina, and then all the way back to their garden while muttering "ohgodohgodohgod" with my heart trying to escape from my chest the entire time to feed the goddamn cat. I am now back in my own house, have texted StereoNinja to inform him that I am NEVER GOING IN THE GARDEN EVER AGAIN. I am checking everything in the house for spiders before I touch it (I looked inside the Dorito bag) and experiencing a mild to moderate level of general panic that I know will subside gradually over the next few days UNLESS another spider appears.

What I hate about this phobia is not so much that it controls where I can go and what I can do - there are work arounds for that, obviously, as I've just walked clear across an island to feet a cat sitting 30 feet from my backyard - but the (I assume, I'm not a psychiatrist) post traumatic stress that I end up living with for days, sometimes weeks at a time. And the effect is cumulative: seeing another spider in that state doesn't just extend how long it lasts but heightens that feeling. I was already in that state before the incident today from a small spider I saw on the outside of my car a few days ago. I've walked the two miles into town twice since then rather have to face getting in my car. I tell myself I'm getting exercise, but I'm really just paralyzed by the thought that if it has gotten in the car I'll be trapped with it and no one can help me.

It's the worst time of year for me. Spring is when all the spiders come back, and just to reiterate, I live IN a river. In the past few weeks, I've seen StereoNinja lunge across a room to step on a spider I hadn't seen yet and go into the toilet and immediately come back out again to get the bug spray before going back in there calling over his shoulder "I didn't just see three spiders in there." I've seen two in my bedroom when he wasn't home that I had to spray myself before texting completely insane yet wholly serious messages to him: that I needed him to remove their dead bodies when he got home and then burn our duvet, or that I was moving to France. And now it's effecting him too. He used to see a spider and not have any sort of reaction at all but now when he sees one he has almost a fear response - not of the spider itself but more like "Oh god holy shit there's a spider in the house kill it immediately before Amber finds out AAAAGGHHHH".

Ugh. You guys. IT WAS SO FUCKING BIG and it was ALMOST INSIDE MY HOUSE. I don't know how to stop thinking about it. Even the "research" I'm doing on "extreme" pornography for my next paper isn't helping me. SINCE WHEN CAN I NOT CONCENTRATE ON PORN?

I Think I'll Just Take A Nap For A Week

I have just finished my paper and turned it in. I'm pretty sure it's fucking terrible, mainly because I have no idea what I'm doing. I've been assured by my classmates that their papers also suck, and by the stranger that all grad students think they don't know what they're doing.

It's a miracle I even got it done, actually. I had been at the kitchen table all morning revising and trying to relearn how to write references and in line citations since I'm in a different country now. I needed a break so I thought I'd fold some laundry. By the way, I do laundry now. So I picked up some things I had folded the day before to put on the table...

...AND A FUCKING SPIDER FELL OUT OF THEM.

An outside spider even, I don't know what the fuck it was doing in the house (yes I do, it was trying to GET ON ME). It jumped out of the laundry I WAS HOLDING IN MY HANDS and started running around my kitchen table and ALL OVER MY FUCKING PAPERS. I grabbed the raid and sprayed it. Like, seven fucking times because the motherfucker just would not die. Then I called StereoNinja in hysterics because there was now a dead spider (which had just tried to GET ON ME) in between me and my laptop and he crawled on my papers and I'll have to throw them all out and HOW WILL I FINISH MY PAPER IF I CAN'T GET TO MY LAPTOP? I am not kidding - a dead spider is only slightly less dangerous than a live one, plus what if his friends come looking for him?

StereoNinja, by the way, is either the most amazing boyfriend in recorded history or a terrible enabler. He actually came home from work to clean up the dead spider carcass, check all the laundry for more spiders, lay all my papers that the spider had crawled on out on the table so I could look at them without having to touch them, and eat a bacon sandwich (ok, that last one has nothing to do with rescuing me from spiders, but still). I seriously have no idea how he puts up with this.

Anyway, once the house was despidered, I was able to finish my paper, and since then I've just been staring at my screen wondering what I used to do before I wrote papers for school. Anyone remember?

My Second Worst Nightmare

So tonight I learned that if you do a presentation in class because it's required which took you all day to psyche yourself up for because you are terrified of speaking in public, your professor will corner you later on and tell you that with such an interesting take on the subject, you are going to have to start participating in class. Now all I need is for all my classmates to turn out to be giant spiders in disguise and I can die in the worst way imaginable! I need to go lay in bed wide awake and stare at the ceiling wondering if I'm having a heart attack for a while.

Here We Go

Right. It's May now, and I don't have a job anymore, and I promised you that I would start posting again when that happened, so I'm going to start doing that right now. I need to post about France, I need to post about the meet-up, and I need to finish reading that damn book so I can light it on fire. But as I'm just getting back into the swing of this, the first post you are going to get is one about a spider. Honestly, if you've been reading me for more than five minutes, you should have seen that one coming.

So yesterday, while I was waiting for StereoNinja to finish watching Doctor Who so we could Skype and discuss the fact that Vastra, Jenny and Strax need a their own spin-off show, I went into my room to sit on the bed and play Candy Crush Saga, again, because I can't fucking stop and should never have downloaded it to begin with, and as soon as I sat down, I sensed movement just above my window. I looked up to see a very big, very black spot that should not have been there and for one brief second I was hopeful - normal spiders that you find inside your house in Chicago are usually medium sized brownish- or greenish-yellow things, and this was big and very very black and so maybe it was just a beetle or something. But then it started moving. The one magical power I think all arachnophobes probably have is the ability to tell whether something is a spider or not based on the way it moves, because NOTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD crawls with such deliberate, malevolent evil. I can tell you whether or not something is a spider from the other side of the room without my glasses on and while crying a waterfall of terrified tears. And THIS, my friends, was a fucking spider if I ever saw one.

I immediately began a barrage of insane text messages to StereoNinja, who was ineffectively 4000 miles away from being able to solve my problem:

OMG WTF BIG FAT SPIDER IN MY ROOM HELP HELP

IT WENT BEHIND THE CURTAIN I CAN'T SEE IT

THIS IS BAD

IT'S BACK IT'S HEADED FOR THE FREEZER IF IT GOES BY THE DOOR I'LL BE TRAPPED

IT'S GOING TOWARD THE DOOR OH GOD

I'M TRAPPED

NOW IT'S COMING FOR ME WHAT DO I DO

FUCK IT'S CLIMBING DOWN

IT IS ON THE CEILING OVER MY BED THIS IS A NIGHTMARE

It was at this point that StereoNinja decided to call me. In the time that I have known StereoNinja, he has only ever seen me have a spider meltdown once. It was on the weekend we met when we were both standing outside waiting to have our photos taken at our cousin's wedding and the garden was fucking full of them. I was crouched in the middle of the patio in my bridesmaid dress hyperventilating, but doing my very best to keep it together long enough for the photos, and he had no way of knowing at the time how bad I usually am. Consequently he was unprepared, and I dare say slightly irritated to find that his normally extremely rational girlfriend who worships at the altar of science will lose every shred of logical reasoning she ever possessed when faced with an arachnid. "It's trying to get me," I said by way of greeting. "No it isn't," he responded calmly. It went downhill from there.

First he tried suggesting that I do things to it - hit it with something, a towel maybe?, knock it off the wall and then I can squish it, or failing that put a jar over top of it so it can't get out. His alternative solution was for me to simply leave the room. The relationship is still new, you guys, he just didn't know. I shot down every single one of his completely rational solutions based on my own insanity - getting close enough to hit it with anything might cause it to GET ON ME, I could not predict the trajectory it would take when it fell and I could lose it or it could GET ON ME, if I squished it it might escape and GET ON ME, ditto putting a jar on top of it, and leaving the room would be the worst of all because I might not be able to find it later but it will still be there, WAITING, and I will never be able to go in my room ever again. As I explained this nonsense, it crawled over my bed and started heading down the wall toward it, and I completely lost my shit. "See?!?!? It's trying to get me! It's trying to get on my bed! They are after me! It wants to kill me!"

He decided to try a different approach. "It's not after you. You know that, right? You know that it can't be after you because they don't have an intelligence to do that."

"I don't know anything right now. They ARE after me, why else would it be going towards the bed? Why are they only ever in my room?"

"They're not just in your room. They can be in any room."

"Yes they are. They are in my room MORE THAN CHANCE."

"No they aren't."

"I have NEVER seen one in the dining room. EVER."

He finally realized he was not dealing with a sane person, and came up with a suggestion that worked: I texted the bartender in his bedroom to tell him there was a spider in mine. He came right away to examine it, then came back with a jar and an index card. Normally I would insist that he squish it right there, then flush it down the toilet, then flush a couple more times, then wash his hands before he touched anything, but this one was big and black and not the sort of spider you normally find in the house. We didn't even realize what it was until he got the jar over top of it and it went nuts: it's one of those black jumping spiders you normally find on the outsides of buildings or sometimes on plants. Except, about four times the size as a normal one. I had a secondary freak out over the fact that it could have just jumped right ON ME at any time during the whole ordeal and WHY IN THE FUCK WAS IT SO BIG.

Crisis averted, I called StereoNinja back, who described to me his idea for the ultimate spider removal system for people like me, with a reach length of nearly an entire room and built in fail-safes for every possible escape attempt. It only had one design flaw: the fact that I would need it to be wielded by someone else for fear that the spider might GET ON ME.

H-Town Rescues Me From The Internets

H-Town:  jesus christ on a pogo stick

a facebook friend just shared "I Fucking Love Science's" FB photo for today

DO NOT LOOK AT IT

 

me:  It has to be spiders. now i am afraid.

no facebook for me today

 

H-Town:  yeah, it's spiders

and it's awful

don't risk it

 

me: there needs to be another facebook page called "Fuck You, Science" where they put all the horrible things

Apologies And Recommendations

I seem to be having something of a motivational problem at the moment. Partly this is due to the increasing obviousness that I am in the wrong country and partly because I seem to have come back to a crap ton of actual work to do whilst at work. Mostly, though, it's because I read books that I actually enjoyed when I was abroad, and then another one when I got home (I had been waiting for its publication for YEARS, or so it seemed) and, you guys, it is SO HARD to look at that third book sitting on my dresser, knowing the atrocities that await me, and have ANY DESIRE to actually pick it up and look at it. I promise you I will. And I also promise you I will write about those awesome bits of my trip that can actually be shared here. I'm just not sure when. I haven't forgotten you, I swear.

In case you are looking for something hilarious to read (which many of you have complained that you are), the book I just finished is brilliant. It is called This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude Don't Touch It, and if that sounds like an incredibly stupid book for me to be reading, don't worry. The book doesn't contain any actual spiders. Yes, I know that's what it says. Rule number one about David Wong: he lies. His name isn't even David Wong. This book is the sequel to his previous motherfucking amazing book John Dies at the End, which was originally published on his blog as a web series. Both books are the greatest mashup of horror/sci-fi and dick/fart jokes to have ever been penned.

I can also recommend the book Micro, which I absolutely inhaled on the flight home. It's the piece Michael Crichton was working on when he died, and was finished by Richard Preston. But be warned: Unlike This Book Is Full of Spiders, Micro actually has a spider in it. And a centipede. Also, you'll never look at ants the same way again. But it's good.

Speaking of spiders, last night one of them decided to zip line himself down from the ceiling in the bathroom just as I was about to wash me hands. He was two inches from my shoulder before I saw him. Luckily, the bartender knows a spider emergency based on the tone of my voice screams and he came in and rescued me pretty quickly, but we only have the one bathroom in our apartment and I have NO IDEA where I'm supposed to pee now.

Real posts from me are coming, I SWEAR TO XENU.

50 Cries Sadder

H-Town and amberance read Fifty Shades Darker so you don't have to.

H-Town: oh my god, fuck this book in its stupid dumb fucking face

me: oh my god this book

H-Town: KILL IT WITH FIRE

me: every time I read this I notice my face is hurting after. I think I am making monster faces the entire time

H-Town: lol

Chapter 18 begins with Christian (driving Ana’s car since she can’t be trusted to drive it herself) and Ana on their way to yet another surprise. They pull up to a massive fucking house in a massive fucking yard that is right on the coast. The house is old, but opulent. She makes a point of telling us there are four crystal chandeliers – in one room. They go out to the balcony and the view of the Sound nearly knocks her over. Turns out Christian is thinking of buying this house (from the realtor who Ana is instantly jealous of because she smiled at Christian, natch). You know, for when they are married. Assuming they are getting married. She hasn’t answered him yet, and we have been reminded about it on every fucking page since four chapters ago because he keeps trying to demand an answer from her.

me: So we left off all the way back at them looking at that house

H-Town: yes I love that she describes how he puts down the window in his car as he drives up to the house stupid stupid descriptions
also, how does one smile ironically?

me: I'm not sure. I should learn so I can smile ironically at this book

H-Town: I know how to smile demonically, because that's what I do when I think of hunting down EL James

me: her description of the sky is equally bad

H-Town: yes, the field - she wants to lay down in it and look at the sky. And I want to run over her with a tractor

me: "vermilion hues bleed into the cerulean sky, with opals and aquamarines"
I wrote "you're going to lose those crayons up your cooz"

H-Town: HAHAHAHA
her blood is pooling DOWN THERE in a lovely deep bronzey red
gross
sorry
OH AND THERE ARE FOUR CRYSTAL CHANDELIERS
I took that as sort of a "Fuck you" to all readers who don't live in a house like that

me: yes, so the obvious thing to do is tear the whole thing down and start over (“I want to buy it, demolish it, and build a new house – for us,” says Christian before going on to explain that he wants a house more eco friendly and sustainable. Or you could just go BUY A SUSTAINABLE HOUSE.)

H-Town: I KNOW
"I want to rebuild it eco"
wtf Christian
that is not at all Eco
you stupid bag of body wash

me: Oh you mean I can renovate what’s there to be more eco? I had no idea
you have INFINITE MONEY

H-Town: "I'll have to ask Elliot."
YOU ARE DUMB
EL James is dumber than 100% post-consumer waste
also, come on Christian, if you're really into being green, you wouldn't have 700 giant houses and 400 gas-guzzling cars
 
me: correct. maybe just get the one Prius and be done with it

H-Town: the sexiest Prius ever
0-60 in 15 seconds
AW YEAH
anywhore
she goes, "Christian, you had me at the meadow."
you mean the meadow he just said he was going to build a horse paddock in?
because he just shit on your field
FUCK OPEN SPACE, I WANT TO BE GREEN AND BUILD ON IT
ECO HORSES!!! THEY RUN ON HAY!

me: LOLOL
which she then called horses 4-legged fiends of Satan?

H-Town: horses aren't evil
they're lovely
spiders are eight-legged fiends of Satan

me: EXACTLY
so then let's go the club and celebrate your stupid promotion that you somehow forgot about even though it just happened 6 hours ago (Christian specifies “one of” his clubs. Because, you guys, he is so rich oh my god. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that yet.)

H-Town: also, the Mile High Club
REALLY?
I jumped out the window when I read that

me: I know, I wrote NO IT IS NOT FUCKING CALLED THAT

H-Town: as if no one's going to get that joke
seriously, that's like calling a restaurant Hooters
it's not exactly subtle

me: The bartender used to work at a gay bar called Manhole

H-Town: haha, I remember him saying that
HEY GUYS, WANNA COME TO MY NEW RESTAURANT CALLED "SEXY TITS AND CUNT LAND"?
YOULL NEVER GUESS WHAT IT'S LIKE!!
tell him to change the name of Tai's to "Sexy Tits and Cunt Land"

me: I would totally drink at that establishment

H-Town: same here
anyway, now they do a stupid no-panties dinner
blah blah seduction with seafood (Christian makes her take her panties off before dinner and then refuses to touch her at all while they’re eating. We are then subjected to six – SIX – pages of detailed descriptions on how they sexily ate food at each other. It is not sexy. It is fucking ludicrously irritating.)
I'm such a square, I was all, "I hoped he washed his hands before touching his slacks."
Think of the dry cleaning!

me: my only note from that whole 6 pages was "oh my god make this stop"
"I suck the hollandaise sauce off the asparagus"

H-Town: yeah, I wrote "HA HA Why talk about issues when we can just bang?!"
because she almost said that exact thing

me: OH THAT"S RIGHT
"issues, schmissues" is what she said
awesome
you are obviously carefully considering this marriage

H-Town: let's just screw, that will solve any problems we have
and then later, "Let's not talk about my weight. I like being slim."
You are not slim, you are starving.
People in Darfur eat more than her.
*goes to hell*

me: Karen Carpenter was a face stuffing fat ass next to Ana

H-Town: Kate Moss is all, "Hey, maybe eat a cracker."

me: a talking broom was like "you should really put on some weight"

H-Town: The fake skeleton in my anatomy class was all, "Eat a goddamn sandwich, you waif."

me: A guitar string told her she should get some help for her disorder
then more elevator tension (Christian fingers her in the elevator with other people around who don’t notice, then Ana makes a joke about having never had sex in a car which obviously makes Christian angry with her. By “obviously” I mean because he gets angry for no goddamn reason every time she figures out how to string together a complete sentence, not because anger in that situation would make any fucking sense. Then they barely make it back into the apartment before desperately fucking on the table in the foyer.)

H-Town: INTERCOURSE
then she goes to work, right?

me: oh right, in a low cut skin tight red dress (I’m not sure why James points this out since no one tries to rape her later. Force of habit I guess.)

H-Town: she says something about how the day flies by
and I wrote "Oh how the day flies by when you are not at all qualified for the job you have."

me: she's George Costanza with the Penske file

H-Town: hahaha
and now we've arrived at one of the stupidest things EVER

Ana goes out for drinks after work with Jose, who is in town to deliver the photos Christian bought so no one but him can ever look at Ana. Ana keeps trying to get in touch with Christian, but he refuses to respond to her. She assumes this because drinks with Jose has made him into the Hulk once again. She would probably be right under normal circumstances, but that day is not today. Instead she gets a phone call from Christian’s brother informing her that Christian and his helicopter are missing. Chapter 19 starts with every person Christian has ever met in his life gathered in his apartment, all terrified because he is obviously dead and the authorities have called off the search. Mind you he has only been missing for eight hours, an amount of time that would not even trigger a search unless the person missing is 7 years old. It is also all over the news. Ana spends most of this chapter in a trance, staring at the fireplace, lamenting about how she can’t go on without him, and recalling everything he’s ever said to her. Included in Ana’s thoughts here is the line “And we don’t know where he is.” Thank you, Einstein, I had no idea that’s what “missing” meant.

me: oh my fuck

H-Town: he goes missing
FOR EIGHT HOURS
EIGHT GODDAMN HOURS
no one would've gone looking for him yet

me: the last note I wrote for chapter 18 was "good. maybe he's dead."
especially no one would have gone looking for him and also ALREADY CALLED OFF THE SEARCH

H-Town: apparently you should never go missing in the northwest

me: Noted

H-Town: because they just give up very easily
they're all rapists, but you can hide pretty easily, I guess they stop looking

me: well I’m not going there anyway since everyone is a rapist
"I'll be nothing without him"
Jesus, you could try being an individual

H-Town: also, you can't just step out for a few minutes, because they'll put you on TV as missing and you'll be all, "Dammit, I was just going to get some takeout."

me: yes but this was because it's CHRISTIAN GREY, H-Town

H-Town: EVERYONE KNOWS HIM
the world mourns

me: if it was a lesser man like the President they'd wait and see first

Turns out Christian is alive and well, which we find out when he walks through the door and is startled to find that his entire family is upset that he was missing because he is a bad bad man who doesn’t deserve love. His explanation: The person he was flying with had never seen Mount Saint Helens so he decided to do a quickie fly by (which I’m pretty sure you can’t do without registering a flight plan, but whatever) when all of a sudden there is a fire in the tail and both his engines and the electronics all died (or he cut them intentionally because of the fire, it varies from page to page because E.L. James has the attention span of a frightened gerbil on cocaine). He manages to land Charlie Tango and put out the fire, but now he is in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, so he and his companion walk for four hours (he claims it take four hours because she’s wearing heels. No woman alive would walk through the woods in heels for four hours, she would take them off and keep an eye out for pointy sticks) until they find a road, by which time both their cell phones have died. In the course of him telling this story, and then later in the next chapters, it is foreshadowed no less than six times that all those malfunctions happening at once might mean the helicopter was sabotaged.

H-Town: and two remarkably stupid quotes from this chapter
"oh the feel of this warm, vital, sensual man beneath my fingers."
and
"you are my talisman, Ana."
You are a fuckstick, Christian.

me: the whole series of events:
everything that can break on a helicopter breaks at the same time

H-Town: but there's intrigue!

me: somehow there is not time to radio for help before shutting off the electronics

H-Town: they let on like someone did it!

me: no cell phone reception
walking for 100 miles
then cell phone dies
...if someone I was dating gave me that story after going missing all day my first reaction would be "Yeah right. Who are you fucking?"

H-Town: speaking of silly
The baby just got home from the library and immediately removed her dress
she's now in her shoes and underwear

me: that's my girl

We had to end the conversation here because H-Town was rudely interrupted by people who want her to do work, but the only thing left in the chapter now that Christian is home and safe and Ana doesn’t have to throw herself off a bridge is that since it’s after midnight, Ana tells Christian he can open his birthday present. It’s a stupid piece of shit tourist keychain of the Seattle skyline with flashy lights. On the back of it the flashy lights are blinking the word “YES”. SIX FUCKING WEEKS SHE HAS KNOWN THIS ASSHOLE. You know what? Fine. Fucking marry him so this whole thing can end in a murder suicide and I can stop reading this.

The Invasion Continues

me: there was another spider in my living room last night

H-Town: wtf, amber
W
T
F
burn your apt down

me: right? i might have to move
luckily it stayed where it was all night so the bartender could kill it when he got home

H-Town: a HUGE spider keeps building a web across our back lawn
I don't know how they do that
I walk into it every morning
and yesterday HE WAS ON IT

me: NOOOOOOOOOOOO

H-Town: OH GOD
thankfully he didn't get on me
but I did say, out loud, "Holy crap, you're a huge fucker!"
thankfully no neighbors were outside

me: you'd think he would get tired of you ruining his hard work every day and go somewhere else

H-Town: I know that's what i was hoping
the huge ones on our front porch got the hint when i kept destroying their webs with a broom each day
only took two days, they figured it out moved it off to the side

me: they should have a talk with him

H-Town: spider meeting
"come on, man, stop trying to catch humans. it won't work"

me: "it's really not worth the effort. you're better off hanging out over here with us. we have some great flies."

H-Town: "We're right by the front porch light - it's a freakin' buffet, man."

For those of you keeping track at home, that's EIGHT spiders in my house in two weeks. EIGHT OF THEM.

H-Town apologizes for not reading more (i.e. at all) this week. She has good excuses though. Wednesday was her birthday. She's going camping this weekend for some reason. And today is her 10th wedding anniversary. Please join me in congratulating H-Town and A-Town on 10 years of destroying the sanctity of straight marriages everywhere. Ladies, I love you both. Or, more creepily, I love you both, ladies.

They Are Mobilizing

Current status - Wide awake at 3 in the morning in my bed with all the lights on and writing a blog post on my iPad. My laptop would be easier, but it's in the living room and I can't get it. Why? Because the spider was or is still in there.

My newest readers probably don't know this yet, but spiders have been trying to kill me for years, and recently they seem to have stepped up their game considerably.

They started with psychological warfare. This is partly my fault for letting Mrs. Sizemore talk me into a midnight showing of The Amazing Spider-Man, but seriously, I'd already seen the Toby Maguire version and was expecting a similar origin scene - a single cartoonishly blue and red spider gets out and bites him. It's not the best thing for me to watch, but I can handle it. What I was not expecting was an origin scene where Peter Parker winds up covered in HUNDREDS of realistic spiders, and that the one that bit him would keep popping up in AT LEAST three more scenes. I did my best to look at the floor, but the damage was already done, and that, THAT is all the opening they need. What followed was a good three weeks of nearly daily nightmares about spiders, no doubt beamed there through the crack in my psyche from some secret laboratory on the other side of my bedroom wall.

Once they had me on the ropes, the invasion started. First they sent a scout, one of their allies, a centipede. It showed up in my bathroom one day, running full speed up the shower curtain I had JUST HAD MY HAND ON like a giant asshole moustache. The bartender found it later that day and put it outside instead of killing it like a sane person. THAT WAS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED. He obviously reported back to them because next came the vanguard. While the bartender was away, I decided to make some cookie dough for dinner one night, but on opening the cabinet, a smallish black spider came running out and I screamed and ran away and vowed not to go back in the kitchen until the bartender came home. I decided to take a bath instead, since I was broken from stretching class. But as soon as I put the bathmat on the floor, the kitchen spider's identical buddy came crawling up the side of the tub. This was FIVE MINUTES after the kitchen thing happened. I managed to wash him down the drain (and then ran scalding hot water down it until there was no more hot water), but there was nothing I could do about kitchen spider except retreat to my room and lay in bed obsessing about all the ways it could have gotten ON ME.

This evening, after the bartender had left for work, because they know that I am UNDEFENDED, a spider came running across the living room floor I had JUST BEEN SITTING ON. Angela saw it and pounced, but unlike Kristen the angel kitty who would have eaten it immediately, Angela is Furry Satan and prefers to torture the bugs she finds to the point of madness without ever killing them. I texted the situation to the bartender at work, suddenly remembering that I'd heard the bartender kill one the prior morning when I was in bed and still half asleep. He helpfully texted back that in addition to that one, he'd killed two other spiders in the last two days, a fact I absolutely could have done without knowing THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

So that's where things stand right now - six spiders and a centipede in my house in the last two weeks, all trying to get ON ME, the latest of which was being tortured into a murderous rage by my asshole cat who SUCKS at protecting me, and my roommate not due home for at least three more hours. I'll almost certainly be dead by the time he gets here. He'll come in my room to tell me about his night only to find my half-eaten corpse laying on the bed next to a note that reads "I TOLD YOU SO" and an army of evil arachnids standing on top of me in an arrangement that spells out "VICTORY!" It has always been just a matter of time before they finally got me.

It was a pleasure writing for you all.

UPDATE: Angela threw up this morning. The bartender theorized that perhaps she had eaten the spider. But I know her and she doesn't eat things, so I wasn't having it. "No she didn't," I told him. "I bet it spit poison on her! They were trying to neutralized the threat so they could get ON ME." Knowing I was already beyond hope, he immediately gave up and went to bed.

SECOND UPDATE: Now he's trying to tell me that all the spiders and centipedes lately are probably from when our neighbors cut down three huge trees in their yard, and all the critters that lived there are looking for someplace else to go. Yeah, sure. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT ME TO THINK.

THIRD UPDATE (8/29): I came home from class about an hour ago, and had just settled in on the couch with some delicious cheese and pretzels to watch Futurama when something on the ceiling caught my eye. GUESS WHAT IT WAS. The worst part was I had to sit in the room with it for 45 minutes waiting for the bartender to wake up and rescue me. It was an epic staring contest. He was thinking: "Go on, blink. Close your eyes for a split second, it's all I need." I was talking out loud to it: "You'd better not move. Do not start moving, you dick." He evaded the bartender's first two attempts to kill him, and wound up falling on the floor, causing me to jump up and run to the other end of the room. He was finally squished just before the cat got to him and she is NOT PLEASED that we broke her toy, so now I have two murderous animals to worry about. SEVEN. SEVEN IN JUST OVER A WEEK.

No Pain No Gain

I can't move. I mean it. I can't. fucking. move.

The new session at the place where I take aerial classes started this week. I didn't really dig silks so much in the last session and I want to switch back to trapeze which I loved, but I'm going to England in a month which means I'll miss two weeks of class, and more importantly I'll be sleeping with half the country so I'd like to show up with nice soft hands that don't look like I lost a battle with a rogue cheese grater. That's why I decided to put off trapeze until the next session and take something new this round. This is actually how I make decisions.

The class I settled on is called Beginning Stretching and Flexibility. It seemed like a really good idea, as presumably it would enhance my abilities in trapeze AND at the burlesque studio AND that whole part I just said about my intended behavior overseas. Which in the long run, I think it will. But that day is not today.

My teacher is a laid off electrical engineer and accomplished gymnast named Char, who has the magical ability to be incredibly tiny and built like a monster truck at the same time. She has also broken her back from gymnastics a double digit number of times, so while she is happy to demonstrate every other stretch, she calls on a volunteer to show us the correct positioning for bridges. She is awesome.

The class consisted of 30 minutes of dynamic stretching that involved a lot of kicking our way across the room and me constantly being told to straighten my knee, 30 minutes of static stretching that left me wondering if I just dreamed that part of my life where I could do full splits with ease, and 30 minutes of partner stretching, which I did with a girl from North Carolina who was so good at it and so positive in her reinforcement that I was "doing so great" and "almost done" that I suggested she could make a ton of dough being a labor and delivery coach. It was great and I left tired and sweaty and just knowing that I was already going to be a better dancer by Wednesday just from the one class.

I woke up the next morning slightly sore, which I was expecting. For some reason, standing in first position seemed to alleviate the pain in my hips, so I stood around like that most of the day at work and while washing dishes after dinner to the extreme amusement of the bartender. After dinner I worked a little bit on some choreography I was supposed to do over the weekend, feeling mostly fine, and then took what I felt was a well deserved break and sat on my couch to watch a couple hours of Shark Week. Then I got up to get a drink from the kitchen.

And failed.

Everything was sore. EVERYTHING. I had no idea you could even have that level of pain in your hip flexors. I ate a fistful of aspirin while I laid there watching interviews with people who had been attacked by sharks and convincing myself that having my leg bitten off mid thigh didn't really sound so bad (also reminding my roommate that sharks have two penises, which is my favorite part about Shark Week - having an excuse to engage people in conversation about shark dicks).

This morning I woke up and it was 100 factors worse. I ate some more aspirin and grabbed the muscle rub, but short of bathing in it I didn't know how it could possibly help. Plus I couldn't bathe in anything because there was a centipede in the bathroom, but regardless. This is the level of pain I find myself in right now. I am sitting at my desk at work moaning. I get up every so often and walk around because moving is better than sitting still. Walking makes me look like a monumentally constipated duck. Standing up straight is not even an option at this point. Every time I want to adjust my legs under my desk, I am physically picking them up WITH MY HANDS because engaging any leg muscle makes me want to Aron Ralston all my limbs. My abs, which had been ok earlier, are now starting to ache because they are compensating for the fact that the only other muscles I can move in my body without screaming are the ones that control my face. Oh, and my dance class starts in two hours, so I have that going for me.

I'm not sure if it's rampant masochism or just endorphins from the pain, but I am kind of loving this. Except for when I try to move. Also when I try not to.

Day 13 And AAAAAGGGHHHHHH!

Spiders. There were massive fuck off spiders the size of my fist in the garden at the wedding and apparently that is TOTALLY FUCKING NORMAL IN LOS ANGELES AND NOBODY WARNED ME. By the way, fuck all of you for not warning me.

I noticed this while standing outside waiting to have photos of the wedding party taken in this gazeboish thingy. I was standing with the boys because, hi, it's me, and we were all near some sort of fruit tree. When I gave it a closer look I realized the entire thing was covered in spider webs. "Um. You guys. There's, like, a million spider webs in that tree." They turned to look.

"HOLY SHIT look at that spider!" In the tree in a spot I mercifully couldn't see, the boys had found a spider so massive that even they were grossed out by it and everyone moved away from the tree. But for me it was too late. Because upon encountering a spider, my brain goes into overdrive and then I can't stop. I looked around and realized I was fucking surrounded - they were in the tree, the bushes, hanging from the power lines. Someone suggested I might calm down if I stopped looking for them, but that's not how it works. Once I know where they are I can't STOP looking at them, because if I look away and then they move, I'm then faced with knowing there IS a spider but NOT knowing how close it is to me which is completely unacceptable.

I maneuvered myself to be as close to the middle of the patio as possible and crouched down on the ground, mumbling insanely and trying desperately to convince everyone around me that my life was in great peril. Whenever this happens I get so hysterical and say such madly ridiculous things that unless they already know me very well, most people assume I'm just exaggerating for effect and/or trying to be funny. The only person around who knew otherwise was Simmy, who blessedly started waving people off when they came over trying to make jokes about about the possibility of spiders getting ON ME or tell me stories about the biggest spider they'd ever seen.

I held it together long enough to make it through the photos and then sprinted (in five inch heels) back into the house where I immediately encountered my father and burst into tears. I sobbed on his shoulder for a good 10 minutes while he led me to go sit with my family who obviously wanted to know what was wrong with me and needed no further explanation from my dad other than "There were spiders." It was my uncle who had the magic words which finally calmed me down enough to stop crying, shaking and eventually go enjoy the wedding. Which I did, and will tell you about tomorrow.

The good news is that I finally feel a feeling about Los Angeles, which is that it can take its fist sized spiders and shove them up its ass.

England Trip Do Over - Part 3

I woke up Friday to brilliant sunshine and a wide open day. Both of these things are atypical of all my previous trips, so I was very excited. I wandered around by myself for a bit, simply because I could. The one thing I made it a point to do was wander up Tilehouse Street because it is my favorite street in the world. Since I grew up with an English family as a huge part of my extended one, I'd been hearing about it all my life, and had developed a picture of what England looked like in my own head which was shaped entirely around the loose oral history I'd been hearing about since I was 3. My first time visiting the comic he had taken me on a walking tour of Hitchin, which I thought was lovely, right up until we hit the bottom of Tilehouse Street, where I stopped in my tracks and stood with mouth agape. That was it. That was my England. Apart from its not being constantly shrouded in mist (and I've been told to come back at a different time of year because it will be), Tilehouse Street was exactly what I had been picturing all my life. It was like someone had mined my brain, extracted that image and had it built in real life. The comic insisted that was to be expected, as my family was from St. Albans which is just down the road and looks very similar, but I wasn't having it. Magic had just happened. I wanted to stay there forever.

Tilehouse Street

I was getting pretty hungry, having not eaten the night before, and had decided to call Nat the Evil Lesbian to see if she wanted to meet for lunch, but decided first to have a walk through the arcade. Which is where I simply ran into her. It was my second time bumping into someone I knew and I was probably overly excited, as walking around town bumping into people is basically her job desciption. We went and got some lunch which we ate on the lawn at St. Mary's Church, and which led to the only dark point of what was an otherwise perfect day: on finishing our lunch, we were about to throw our rubbish in the bin* when Nat exclaimed, "Oh look, there's a giant spider in there!" There was. A giant, GIANT spider. Like, huge. Like, way bigger than any spider in England has a right to be, because listen up England, one of the reasons that I go there is because there are not supposed to be any huge bugs that can get me, ESPECIALLY not spiders. THIS IS WHY I DON'T GO TO AUSTRALIA OR BRAZIL. You are supposed to be a safe haven for me, and you are RUINING my fantasy of a land of tiny harmless bugs with your ridiculously large bin spiders. CUT IT OUT. Nat, the one who is terrified of actors dressed up in scary outfits who pose no real threat to her whatsoever, for some reason decided to THROW HER THINGS IN THE BIN ANYWAY, thus disturbing the giant spider which obviously WAS a threat to our lives and making me scream like an idiot, "What the fuck do you think you are doing? THERE ARE OTHER BINS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

When I'd calmed down a bit and thrown my own rubbish away in a different, spider free bin (I made her check before I would get near it), she went about doing the tour guide portion of her town ranger job, and took me inside the church, to meet the coffee guy in the square, and to her office where I bought a bunch of souvenirs including a bottle of delicious apple juice to take home (which did not end up lasting even 24 hours). Right around this time, I got a text from MrBalls, who was on his way into town with his best friend, her husband and their offspring. I went off to meet them at Halsey's for tea where we ended up having the best waiter ever. First of all, he had no idea what cakes they had, so we sent him in to go check. When he came back he still didn't know what one of them was. "It looks like the apple ones, but the decoration on the top is different so I think maybe it's not. But the woman who brings the cakes said this morning that she had changed some of the decorations so it might be. I really don't know." I fell in love with him. After our tea and a fork duel, MrBalls and I popped over to see Felix at his salon before heading to a birthday party at the Sunrunner.

We were early, and so we got our beers and sat outside waiting for the others with one other friend, the mutineer, who had shown up when we did. People started trickling in one at a time, most of whom I didn't know but was introduced to by MrBalls, Nat or Sulu. Much of the night is fuzzy because beer! What I do remember is MrBalls saying the mutineer was the most perverted person he knew, which made my head spin around fast enough to cause whiplash so I could argue the point - they both conceded when I pulled my pink bullet vibrator out of my purse, turned it on and started poking the mutineer in the arm with it. Later, after the party started winding down, he was kind enough to walk me home and make sure I made it safely into my bed.

The next day I got up late and had time for very little other than to have some tea and a shower and get sort of dressed before heading to the train station to collect the stranger, who was spending the afternoon in Hitchin with me. I walked him through the square pointing stuff out as if I owned the place, and we stopped for some coffee and a snack at the coffee stand where I greeted Rick the coffee guy like I'd known him all my life. A light rain dissolved into an absolutely beautiful afternoon, which I missed entirely due to the fact I spent all of it indoors. However, it seemed to be thoroughly enjoyed by the wedding party going on in the hotel right outside my open window, which we spied on in between various attempts to disrupt it.

After walking the stranger back to the train station, I realized it was getting a bit late (by Hitchin standards) and I had better find something to eat before the whole place closed down. This led me to do the unthinkable: I discovered a restaurant BY MYSELF, went inside it BY MYSELF, ordered dinner AND dessert BY MYSELF and somehow got through all of those things without dying or bursting into tears. I got a text from the comic sadly informing me of our F.C.'s latest humiliation (which I had wisely chosen not to watch) and text-gossiped with Nat about our respective transgressions the previous evening.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am not English and I am not 20, and my liver can only handle so much abuse. Consequently, instead of going out on the most lively night of the week, I called it a night and went to bed. Besides, I was meeting Steve for dinner the next day, and I had not yet spent an evening with Steve that didn't end with the room spinning. Sunday would not turn out any different.

*trash in the garbage can

PROOF!

I was talking to BrownsFan last week, because I would spontaneously combust if I didn't talk to her every day, and she showed me an article she found on the interwebs she thought I'd be interested in. This one. She also kindly covered up the photograph so I could read the article without having a nervous breakdown.

That's right people: 52,000 cars are being recalled on account of an obviously coordinated attack by the spider nation's Arachni-terrorist division, and I have one thing to say about it.

I FUCKING TOLD  YOU SO.

One type of car? Just the one? And I'm supposed to believe that this is some sort of accident of fate? This is no accident, this is the work of a CREATURE WHO SCHEMES. And these creatures are scheming to GET ME.

"But amberance," I hear you asking, "if the spiders were out to get YOU specifically, wouldn't they be building webs in the exhaust systems of MINI Coopers, such as the one you yourself drive?"

Oh you poor, naive little things. Of course not. That would be too obvious. Don't you see how a direct attack would create too much risk of me just going out and buying a different kind of car? No, no, children, they are way to cunning for that. No, they are building them in Mazdas for a reason. You know who drives a Mazda? MrSteve. A Mazda I've been in a number of times, such as when we used to go for long drives on gorgeous summer afternoons, enjoying the weather, relaxing, my guard completely down...yeah. Do you see it now? The creepy bastards are trying to get to me through my friends, and their efforts have escalated now to a pinpointed attack on Mazdas because I hang around with one. What will these foul creatures think of next? Hiding in the rims of beer kegs so they can get to me through the bartender? Gathering their forces inside bags of cat food so as to ambush me when I go to feed my kitty (she's evil too. I need to be on guard for this plan, she may cut a deal with them.)? Massing inside the floatation devices of planes used for international flights so they can jump out and devour me on my way to England (it worked for the snakes)?

One thing is for sure: they are coming for me. The proof is in the Mazdas.

I Hate You, Mentos

Remember the Mentos freshmaker commercials from the 90's? The ones that were so infectious the Foo Fighters parodied them in their video back when bands other than OK Go made videos? They were excellent. I would go so far as to say they were fresh and full of life even. I've always had a soft spot for Mentos because of their clever advertising. Until.

Have you guys seen it yet? Have you? Have you seen the new commercial where a fucking spider BEATS THE SHIT out of some dude who tries to squash him? Seriously, it's like they climbed into my brain, filmed my very worst nightmare and then deliberately ambushed me in my waking moments with it while I'm minding my own business watching TV. There are close ups. Close up on the spider crawling across the room. Close up on the battered spider reaching up and grabbing the guy by the finger and slamming him repeatedly into a wall with the super human strength I knew they'd been hiding all along. Malice! Vengeance! Purpose! Everything that fucking terrifies me about these demon spawn, on my television, and presented to me at completely unpredictable intervals. Which is the final insult: the premise of the commercial is that it's always better to know what's coming. Yes, Mentos, it is. It's always better to know that I can turn on my television and not be besieged by horrors. But no, now I can't trust my television anymore because I don't know when this commercial is going to come on.

FUCK YOU MENTOS. FUCK. YOU.

Run Away! Run Away!

They're more afraid of you than you are of them, I'm always told by exasperated people who purportedly love me each and every time I am attacked without provocation by a spider. Well I have a question then. Because if that's true, then why THE FUCK did a spider just repel down and nearly land right ON ME just now when I was minding my own business taking a shower? Huh? HUH? Because that doesn't sound like fear to me. Something that was afraid of me would have gone somewhere else in the face of a scary human who was splashing water around in a way that threatened it's continued survival. It's not like it didn't see me there when it looked around with it's eyes eyes eyes before it started down from the ceiling. No, it looked right at me and at the flying water droplets AND THEN decided to join the scene. THAT IS NOT THE BEHAVIOR OF SOMETHING THAT IS AFRAID. That is the behavior of either an adrenaline junkie that enjoys putting itself in danger or of an intrepid hunter on a mission, willing to disregard his own personal safety in order to be the one who brought down The Big Food (which is what they call me in their strategy meetings). It was I who demonstrated a reaction driven by fear: I jumped out of the shower with conditioner still in my hair and a razor blade still in my hand and RAN THE FUCK AWAY like any sane, rational being would do when faced with another being trying to kill it. So don't even give me any of that bullshit - I know what's what and I know when I'm being STALKED AS PREY by malicious and hungry arachnids. Now I'm going to go find another sink where I can wash this crap out of my hair, and when I get back I don't want to hear any more of your patronizing rationalizations, are we clear on that? Good. Sheesh.

Camping: Just Say No

A very dear friend of mine may have tried to invite me to go camping. I say "may have" because she sent me an IM that read "hey, do you camp?" which I understand is often followed by an invite to go camping with that person. My response though, "i most certainly the fuck do not," may have quashed that invite before it was ever made, so we'll probably never know.

I was being serious though. I most certainly the fuck do not camp, because outside has bugs (especially spiders) and also, camping is stupid. You people with the camping: what is wrong with you? Is indoor life and comfort and easy controlled cooking making you so unhappy that you just can't stand it and need to go sleep on twigs and eat crap that you cooked over an open flame? That is not my idea of a vacation. A vacation is being even more comfortable than normal, where someone else cooks for me and I can take a bath in a great big jacuzzi (not a river) and I can crap on a shiny gold toilet (not carry around little baggies to clean up after myself because I have to poo in the woods). I demand loads of pillows, dammit, and I demand that someone else makes my bed, which had better be a mattress on a frame and not a sack on the ground.

Oh, and before you go telling me that I can't criticize because I don't know what I'm talking about, let me just inform you that I have, in fact, been camping. Once. Because once was more than enough. I went when I was young with my friend who lived next door and her parents. To be fair, they may not have been the best people to try out camping with. Mrs. D was a charm school graduate (no joke) who had got it into her head that camping would be romantic despite that fact that she is even less suited to camping than I am. The woman brought, and I kid you not, LASAGNA for us to cook over a fire and eat. We rode the whole way to the campground in a rickety truck they had borrowed. I was stuck between some folding chairs and a stack of lumber (why?) and so by the time we got there both my shoulders were bruised all to shit. It was not an auspicious beginning.

My pain and unhappiness was nothing compared to that of Mrs. D. We pulled into the campground and discovered that (gasp) there were other people camping there. And those people were dirty and looked suspicious. She didn't like it. She informed her husband of this via a running commentary, "John, I don't like this. I don't like this John. John, I can't stay here. Please don't make me stay here John..." growing more and more hysterical the further in we went. Luckily for her, the campground appeared to be completely full. We stayed in a motel that night, which itself was filthy and it smelled like B.O. She would not allow us to walk on the carpet without socks on for fear of what might be lurking in the grime that was once a floor.

The next day we found another place to camp and the fun began!

That was sarcasm. No fun began, it was NOT fun. Putting up a tent? Sucks. Washing off in a cold murky lake? Sucks. Sleeping on the ground? Sucks a big bowl of dicks. S'mores? I hate marshmallows, s'mores totally suck. Spiders? HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING GOING TO THE WOODS ON PURPOSE? In fact, aside from this blog post some 20 years after the fact, there was not one single good thing that came out my attempt to go camping. No, there most certainly the fuck was not. Suck it, campers. Camping sucks.