Category Archives: the real world hates me

lizard brain

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Apparently I slept in a way last night that caused a muscle or nerve in the back of my neck to seize up. Not hugely uncommon for me – I tend to carry all my tension in my neck and shoulders, plus I type eight hours a day and have relatively poor posture while doing so.

The muscle or nerve in my neck that’s unhappy happens to be right near the base of my skull, so every time I move just right, it sends this pain up into my head and my lizard brain is like ‘WAAAAH, MENINGITIS! WAAAAH, STROKE! WAAAAH, TUMOR! WAAAAH, PARASITIC AMOEBAS EATING MY BRAIN!’

Ten years ago I was a pretty much full-blown hypochondriac and wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking that I was sitting here slowly bleeding out into my brain pan or something. I would have eventually worked myself into such a panic that I’d have made myself physically ill. Nowadays I can identify that lizard brain is the culprit when I start thinking a random ache or pain is Something More Serious. I can’t put lizard brain totally on mute, but I’ve gotten a lot better at not letting it control me.

Or maybe that’s just what the parasitic amoebas want me to think…

 

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Amoeba aliens. In my brain.

I’ll take ‘WTF Do We Do Now’ for $1,000, Alex

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My family is all pretty close, at least in the geographic sense, if not the emotional sense. We all basically live within about ten minutes’ drive of each other. A strong love of place no doubt factors into why we’ve all stayed so close to the area we grew up in, but stronger still was the near-gravitational pull of my maternal grandmother Mary, aka: Nana.

It’s not that she ever made any of us feel like we couldn’t or shouldn’t move away and do our own things; she just had a way of making people want to be around her. She was funny, kind, welcoming and generous with her time. She liked nothing more than to have people stop by for a visit and tell her all about what they’d been up to. You could sit and talk her ear off for hours, but when you finally sighed and said you guessed it was time to go, she’d always say “well, you don’t have to hurry”, as if she’d be just fine with you going on about your boring-ass day for another hour or two. And she probably would have been, because that’s just how she was.

Nana was the force holding us all together around her, but she was also someone I looked up to and admired greatly. For all her softness, her generosity of spirit and her ability to make people feel comfortable, she also had extraordinary strength of will. She was whip smart, fiercely independent, and when that woman set her mind to do something, you had two choices: get on board or get the hell out of the way. She was born in the middle of the Great Depression to an already dirt-poor family of miners and subsistence farmers. Education and hard work were the only ways out of that situation, and she made a life-long habit of both. Her mantra was that you could do anything you put your mind to, and she was living proof of it. The stories she told affected me from a very early age, both directly from her tellings and indirectly via the way she had brought up my mother and aunts. Nana was a woman I aspired to be like; she was the stick I tried to measure myself against.

The call came early Monday morning that she had quite unexpectedly died. She had been fine the day before – she had gone out for her regular Sunday morning breakfast at the diner, she had done her grocery shopping and washed some windows, and she had spent the evening visiting and watching the Patriots game on TV with some family members. It had been pretty much her perfect day. At some point very early Monday morning she had woken up with chest pains, called my aunt (who lives next door), called the ambulance…and she was gone before they even got her halfway to the hospital. The whole ordeal probably lasted less than a couple hours, depending on how long she waffled before she decided to call my aunt for help. She had high blood pressure but she hadn’t had any serious heart problems above and beyond what would be expected of an 81 year old woman. She had suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis for more than a decade though, and while she didn’t generally speak of it much, she was in a lot of pain on a daily basis – sometimes to the point of being quite debilitated. In the past few weeks she had apparently expressed to several family members her desire to ‘just go to sleep’, and her worries about trying to make it through another tough winter. I don’t think that she would have decided to take something in order to end her own suffering, but I do very much believe in the power of will and the ability to talk one’s self into dying if that’s what they truly want…and I believe that’s what she did.

Nana wouldn’t have wanted a fuss to be made over her. She would have liked for us to take what we wanted of her stuff, give the rest away to people that it might help, and then get on with our lives.

So, that’s what I’ll try to do. It won’t be easy. But, like Nana taught me, I can do anything that I put my mind to.

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Mary Godfrey – 3/31/1935 – 9/12/2016 Photo credit: R. Williams

Delivery Day

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Yesterday I worked from home because I had to be around to sign for the new washing machine that was being delivered.

As an aside, my old washing machine committed one of the ultimate washing machine sins: it died during a load of post-vacation laundry. At the time, I may have actually kicked it and yelled, “YOUR TIMING COULDN’T POSSIBLY BE WORSE, YOU BIG METAL ASSHOLE“. I’ll give credit where it’s due, though: it at least had the good grace to finish the cycle and drain all the water out of the tub first. It’s not like I was left having to bail water out of the washer with a coffee cup. I would have yelled something a lot fucking worse if that had happened, trust me.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, working from home.

When I work from home, I usually sit at the kitchen table with the laptop. It’s near a window, it’s near the fridge, I can see out the front living room windows and hide in plenty of time before anyone gets to the front door…it’s an all-around good locale. The only downside to working at the kitchen table is that it’s about the farthest point away from the bathroom in our entire apartment. Which, granted, it’s a pretty small apartment so it’s not like it’s THAT far away…but still. Sometimes seconds count, especially when you have to traverse a staircase.

The delivery guys were supposed to show up sometime between 10:30 and 12:30. I wanted to be super extra adulty and ready to meet them out front so that I could direct them where to park the truck, so I tried to make sure I had everything personal done and squared away by 10:30.  The creepy cobwebs around the laundry room door had been knocked down (which was a traumatic fucking experience in and of itself because you know how I feel about spiders), I had consolidated all the empty wine and beer bottles (aka: ‘the recycling’, but let’s be real. It’s all bottles.) into a plastic bag, and I walked Junior not once but TWICE just to make sure I wasn’t halfway across the lawn watching him do his patented ‘four crab-walk circles of varying widths before I finally shit’ dance when the truck showed up.

I was totally prepared.

10:30 came and went. No truck. Unperturbed, I drank my coffee and dug in to my computer work.

11:30 – still no truck. ‘That’s fine‘, I thought magnanimously, ‘I’m surely not the only delivery they’ve got scheduled today. Besides, I have plenty here to keep me busy‘. I drank a bunch of water (I believe in aggressive hydration, partially to make up for my converse habit of occasional aggressive inebriation), ate a big apple, and did some more work.

Noon – no truck. Again, not that big of a deal. Except…

…coffee makes me need to poop. Apples also make me need to poop. Drinking a liter of water doesn’t specifically make me need to poop, but what goes in must come out, and…yeah.

My guts gurgled somewhat forlornly.

I looked at the clock.

I looked out the front windows for any sign of a truck coming down our road.

I looked at Junior.

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“I’m so disappointed in you, Mahm.” – Junior, every day of his life for the last 6.5 years

His beady little eyes seemed to be saying to me, “Just go. You’ve got plenty of time. Plus, you know I’ll bark like the world is ending as soon as I hear anyone pull up. Go on, you got this.”

With as close to a blessing as I’m ever likely to get from the dog, I made my way upstairs to the bathroom to care of business. I won’t get into the graphic details, but suffice to say it was not merely a tinkle-and-dash situation. It took a few minutes.

Roughly four minutes into the proceedings, the worst case scenario became real: the dog started barking his fool head off.

“Of COURSE the delivery truck is here. OF FUCKING COURSE IT IS,” I muttered to myself, finishing up as quickly as I could.

I got downstairs and looked out the front window. No truck. ‘Balls, that means they’re already backed up to the breezeway, unloading the washer! They probably knocked and I didn’t even hear them! UGH. I AM A FAILURE AS AN ADULT. ‘

The dog kept barking and barking, jumping against my leg so I couldn’t move quickly lest I kick him. It took me a full minute to get from the bottom of the stairs out to the kitchen where I could look out the front door to see…

…nothing. No truck, no delivery men. Nada. There wasn’t even a god damned neighbor cat around that would have set the dog off. I’M PRETTY SURE HE WAS JUST BARKING TO GET ME TO COME BACK DOWNSTAIRS, YOU GUYS.

We had a quiet discussion after that.

Phrases like “poopus interruptus” and “payback’s a bitch” may have been bandied about. We eventually came to the understanding that I as the human, provider of kibble and meat, purveyor of walkies and scritches, actually had zero rights in the household and that if he, as the dog wanted to bark bloody murder until I came running to see what the matter was, that was entirely his prerogative. Further to that, I should probably be thanking him for the privilege.

At least we’re all on the same page now.

Epilogue:

The delivery truck showed up at 12:15, at which point Junior had an even MORE frenzied barking fit. They took away the traitorous old washer, hooked up the shiny mystical new one, and were gone by 12:30. Junior was the beneficiary of several more walks after that, during NONE of which did I interrupt his crapping in any way. Because some of us have MANNERS.

Vindication is sweet, especially when it comes from unexpected sources…like random 14 year old girls.

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I think I’ve talked before about how my office-mate listens to the Margaritaville XM radio station on his computer all day, every day…and I don’t mean on his headphones, either.
The station is a mix of Jimmy Buffett originals, him doing covers, other people doing covers of HIS stuff, reggae, country…basically anything vaguely beach-themed. Which doesn’t sound that bad in theory, right? I don’t mind reggae or country. Hell, I actually LIKE some of Jimmy Buffett’s music.

What I DON’T like is not having any control over what I’m listening to for eight hours a day. After a while it becomes like an audio version of waterboarding. I am literally incapable of tuning noises, especially voices, out a lot of the time. Fighting with my brain to focus and get things done when I’m constantly distracted by background noise (especially ones that annoy me) quickly becomes exhausting.

Also, with this station it’s not like you hear a song once on a Monday and then don’t hear it again until Thursday or something. No, this is the same maybe 40 songs over and over, day in and day out. A lot of them are covers, so you might actually hear three different versions of the same song done by various artists over the course of the day. That’s just completely eye-twitch-inducing in my book. The only defense I have is to put my headphones in and listen to my own music or to white noise tracks…otherwise I am stuck listening to this fucking Margaritaville station for seriously 40 hours a week because I’m too “nice” to kick up a fuss and make him shut his music off.

So this afternoon when I happened to have removed my headphones briefly, I heard office-mate’s 14 year old daughter, (who is coming to work with him all this week (which is an entirely different rant that I’d like to write but I won’t)), pipe up with the following:

“Dad, don’t you get sick of this station? I mean, it’s just the same songs over and over again.”

…I kind of wanted to hug her. Finally, FINALLY, proof that I’m not just being a spoiled asshole (in this regard, anyway. There are plenty of other areas where I’m sure I could be proven to be a definite spoiled asshole), and that I’m not imagining the repetitious nature of the radio station.

SUCK ON THAT, RADIO MARGARITAVILLE.
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Pocket Trap

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A few weeks back, I went shopping for some summer clothes. I bought, among other things, a pair of white twill capri pants. I have no business owning light-colored pants (or any other light-colored clothing, for that matter) to begin with, but these capri pants wouldn’t quit calling my name while I was wandering around the store (possibly because they actually fit my epic ass, which is a momentous thing. The fitting, not the ass. Well, both actually, but I digress…), so I said fuck it and bought them.

I hung the pants in my closet (only new clothes get hung up. After the first washing it’s laundro-bed all the way), and basically forgot that I bought them until this morning when I realized I was out of clean jeans…aaaand pretty much every other work-appropriate bottom-half covering garment. My options were a) wear the skirt I’m always vaguely uncomfortable in, b) wear the white capri pants, or c) come up with an excuse to work from home so I could just give up on adulting completely and wear yoga pants all day. Since I knew I had a meeting this morning that I couldn’t reschedule, staying home was struck from the list immediately (and sadly. So, so sadly). Vaguely uncomfortable skirt was a total no-go on meeting day as well because I can’t concentrate for shit when I’m self-conscious. So, white capri pants won by default.

Everything was going swimmingly as I got dressed. I even remembered to wear light-colored underpants so that people weren’t pointing and laughing at my shadow-wedgie any time I walked by. ADULT WARDROBING POINTS FOR ME! The capris actually fit even better this morning than when I tried them on in the dressing room, so that was good for a little happy dance. After putting on my shirt, I grabbed my phone and slid it into my pocket.

Except the phone landed on the carpet with a thud.

Because these pants?

THEY HAVE NO POCKETS.

Actually, to put a finer point on it, these pants have something worse than no pockets: they have those bullshit totally non-functional faux pockets:

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Looks like a pocket, doesn’t it? Well it’s NOT a pocket. IT’S A TRAP. A BULLSHIT TRAP.

Because the fashion industry, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that all women are obviously more concerned with smooth lines on their clothing than they are with ACTUAL FUNCTIONALITY.

So now, instead of a slightly misshapen hip (which was going to be covered by my shirt anyway, fashion police), I have a slightly misshapen TIT because the only place I have to stash my phone is in my FREAKING BRA.

How is the threat of potentially short-circuiting my phone with boob sweat (or possibly more importantly, the idea of irradiating my boob with radio waves) a better idea than having pockets in these pants, fashion industry? I mean, granted, you’re not FORCING me to stash my phone in my cleavage. I COULD technically carry it around in my hand every time I get up and go do anything, thus rendering my hands half as useful as they’d be IF I HAD POCKETS.

And true, purses are technically an option that many ladies use. But I need my phone during the day. Do you know how idiotic it would be to have to carry a purse around the office all god damned day? PRETTY IDIOTIC. People would be side-eying me and saying stuff like “Geez, is she carrying coke around with her in that thing or something? And if she’s doing coke, why is she still so fat?”  And then I’d have to be like “bitch, who needs coke when there’s cheese“, which would a) answer the fatness question and b) confuse everyone, and I’d have to explain to them the article that I just linked, except out loud in my own words, which is WAY more difficult for me because I get easily sidetracked talking about stuff like marmots and existentialism and the pros and cons of different forms of magnesium supplements, and basically at that point everybody loses.

The moral of this story, I think, is that if having actual functioning clothing is important to you, then you need to either a) be a man, b) be willing to wear men’s pants (which I’d be totally fine with if I could find ones that actually fit but apparently my Jessica Rabbit-esque waist-to-hip ratio precludes me from having that option), or c) check for pockets BEFORE you buy new pants. And don’t just check that it LOOKS like there are pockets – make sure you can actually get your hand, phone, vial of coke, marmot, or whatever else it is you want to not have to stash in your bra, into said pocket.

Don’t fall for the bullshit faux pocket trap. Let my suffering be a lesson to you all.

 

Too Hot To Squirrel

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It’s been hot here lately. Not just normal summer-level hot (even though it’s not even summer yet AND I live in the sub-arctic tundra that is Vermont so we practically don’t even GET summer. We get like six months of winter, a month of mud season, two weeks of black fly season, six weeks of mosquito-and-thunderstorm season, and two months of fall. Also, I stopped doing the math on that a while back so don’t send me hate mail if it doesn’t add up. LALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU).

Anyway.

I’m talking, it’s been a lot hotter than it should be. Hot as balls. Scorching hot.

Hot. In. Herre.

I’m that asshole that doesn’t even really like summer, by the way. I mean, summer is ok in principle. Things are green and pretty, stuff smells good (once rotten lilac season has passed, anyway), and it stays light until like 9pm. Also, campfires and s’mores. I think of all these things and I’m like, “YAY, SUMMERRRR!”.

But then summer actually gets here and it’s like a fucking greenhouse built INSIDE a jungle that’s living INSIDE a terrarium (are terrariums hot? I know they’re damp, at least. APPLICABLE. I’m keeping it.), and I just…can’t. I used to think it was because I’m a life-long fatty but the older I get the more I realize that I just  have cold blood (which is different than being cold-blooded. I don’t bask and I can’t lick my eyeballs). I’m clearly at least part wildling. My optimum operational range is like 25 to 75 degrees. I can walk around outside in yoga pants and a sweatshirt at 25 degrees with no problem, but above 75 degrees I’m usually red-faced, sweating and pining for a pool to jump into.

So, this weekend when it was 95 degrees and fuck-this-noise percent humidity, I just refused to leave the apartment. We watched TV, we played video games, we puttered around the kitchen. One of these trips through the kitchen was when something outside caught my eye:

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That, my friends, is a resounding “UGH, WHY” in squirrel body language.

Have you ever seen a more unimpressed looking squirrel in your life? Look at the dangle-y paws. She’s the embodiment of rodent ennui. “L‘écrou? Non. Le siiiiiigh…” she murmurs as she takes a puff off her tiny squirrel cigarette wand.  We’re pretty close to the Quebec border, after all. Francophone squirrels could totally be a thing here. Probably not cigarette-smoking ones, though.

Also, sidenote: I think this squirrel is pregnant, which may be the source of at least some of her hot-weather ennui. She had a litter back in March, but it’s not uncommon for squirrels to have a second litter when there’s plenty of food around. And seeing as how these little bastards have been sucking down birdseed (provided by me) since about November, I’d say food conditions are pretty friggin’ ideal for them. She’s been stuffing her face even more than usual lately and is looking overly rotund again. Not that I’m one to judge.

Anyway, point being, it was too hot to even squirrel here over the weekend. Here’s hoping for some more rodent- and me-friendly weather, at least until summer TECHNICALLY gets here.

Lilac Season

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There are several enormous lilac bushes that grow just outside my office. And when I say “enormous”, I mean that the tops of the bushes are level with my second-story office window:

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Stupid fucking window glare! I’m an accountant Jim, not a photographer. Also, objects in this picture are way closer than they actually appear. If I popped out the window screen I could reach out and pick those lilacs.

So really, they’re more lilac TREES than bushes at this point, given they’re like 12 feet tall.

IS there technically a bush / tree height classification cut-off point?  Are bushes only bushes until they reach a certain height, then they’re considered trees? Who would arbitrate such decisions? Why is life so confusing?  Where are my shoes?

Anyway.

When the lilacs first start to bloom, my office is the best-smelling place in the world. The scent wafts in on the breeze, so ethereal that you’re not even quite sure whether it’s actually there or just a figment of your imagination. It’s like being gently haunted by the essence of springs past. It makes me think of the lilac bush (also much more tree-like in stature) that grows on the corner of my parents’ lawn, and makes me remember my childhood ritual of picking several vases full of lilacs for my mom’s birthday every year.

As more lilacs bloom, the scent gets stronger. Two or three days after that first magical ghost-of-springs-past whiff, you’re into Obvious Lilac Smell territory. I don’t mind OLS territory. It still smells good in a non-distracting way, like a pleasant background note.

Four to five days after the initial bloom things start to really go downhill, though. The scent becomes this syrupy, ironically almost artificial smelling caricature of the original exceedingly delicate scent. This usually coincides with a heatwave around these parts, which only serves to further intensify what has now becoming overzealous granny perfume stank. Baked lilac is NOT a good scent, folks. At its zenith, it’s nearly strong enough to taste and is borderline headache-inducing. This is the point at which I usually find myself stomping around shutting windows and firing up the A/C, just to escape the smell.

Speaking of which, it’s supposed to be 90 degrees here today, so if you’ll excuse me I have a few last deep sniffs of reasonable-level lilac smell to enjoy before I slam all these windows shut, fire up this industrial-sized air conditioner and descend into a nice cool cocoon of white noise, low humidity and non-smelly-ness.

This Plant May Have It Out For Me

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Two weeks ago I was carrying my African violet from the living room into the kitchen for its weekly watering when gravity suddenly and inevitably betrayed me.

The plant was already a little lopsided from a couple of previous encounters with my dog and my husband (they both say “accidents”, but I’m not so sure). The lopsidedness combined with the fact that I was only using one hand to carry the pot balanced in its saucer, plus my general overall lack of coordination, was too much to account for and gravity was like “you know what? No. You need to learn a lesson. Now your favorite plant is root-ball up on the floor and there’s dirt everywhere. How’s THAT for a lesson? Don’t you feel smarter now? You should. YOU’RE WELCOME”…

…which is a long-winded way of saying that the plant fell on the floor. And also that I may have issues with anthropomorphizing natural phenomena. Among other things.

Anyway.

So the plant landed on its side and it broke a whole bunch of leaves. I ended up cutting at least a third of the leaves off because they were just going to die at that point anyway. I figured I’d probably lose the few flowers that the plant had recently set buds for, and I was fairly convinced that I might in fact lose the whole plant seeing as how African violets are supposed to be so picky and intolerant to trauma. Turns out I was wrong about the flowers, because the violet bloomed a few days later. Huzzah!

Then yesterday, I was moving the violet out of the way (MUCH MORE CAREFULLY…see, gravity? I DO learn!) on the kitchen counter when I noticed that not only was the little bastard still blooming but it had in fact grown a whole bunch of new leaves and set a crapload of new flower buds!

I can’t decide if the plant is a masochist that thrives on abuse, or if it has decided it’s sick of us weird pink two-legged monsters trying to kill it all the time so it’s beefing up to try and end us.

Either way, I feel a little bit weird around it now.

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I fail at picture-taking you can’t really see the proliferation of new buds and leaves. So basically this photo is completely pointless. LIKE LIFE.

PS: I DID try to warn you yesterday that I might start writing about my houseplants. I’m just saying. No refunds.

rituals (and consequences)

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There are certain things that must be done. Rituals, if you will. Certain things have their places, certain activities have a specific order they’re best done in, and some steps on the way to a destination are non-negotiable.

For instance, I have a bedtime routine that involves checking the bed for spiders.

Part of it stems from the fact that I intensely dislike being personally near spiders. Notice I don’t say “I hate spiders”, because I don’t. I totally respect spiders’ places in the ecosystem and I admire their innate engineering instincts.

I just don’t want the creep little fuckers to touch me. Ever.

So, when I go to bed at night, one of my rituals is to check the bed for spiders. I flip the blankets and top sheet off the bed, I shake the pillows, I shake the blankets and sheet, then I put it all back together again. If my husband has already gotten into bed, I’m ok with assuming he’s already gone through this process for me. If I’m the first one to bed, though…everything gets shaken.

The other night, after having gone through the whole shake-and-make process and kind of laughing at myself the whole time, I pulled out my notebook to scribble down my thoughts about it so that I could remember to blog about it later on. The note went something like this:

“Must shake out pillows and blankets before getting into bed because spiders. Problem could be solved by just making bed in morning but what if the spiders get into the bed while I’m gone to work? Better to leave bed unmade then thoroughly check for spiders whilst making it right before getting into it. Fresh bed is safe bed.”

Then, because I realized just how incredibly bonkers it looked having been committed to paper, I actually wrote the following postscript:

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Yes Internet, I know I spelled Hughes wrong. It was late and dark and I’m nuts. Don’t judge.

Satisfied that I had effectively put things into context for anyone who might come across my notebook in the case of my untimely demise, I then put the notebook away, picked up my Kindle…

…and felt a disconcerting tickle on my left arm. Glancing down was like a slow motion horror movie and confirmed what I already instinctively knew:

SPIDER. ON. MY. ARM.

Making a sound somewhere between a steam whistle and a bagpipe, I flung my arm away from my body as though it wasn’t connected and I could somehow fling it and the spider riding on it across the room if I just put enough effort into it. The Kindle went flying, the dog jumped up and started barking, and somewhere along the way I managed to partially squash the spider.

Yes, sorry spider-lovers…a spider WAS harmed in the making of this story. It probably had a thousand creepy 8-legged babies before I killed it though, and they’ll probably all come to avenge its death some night when I least expect it (OH GOD NEVER SLEEPING AGAIN, JESUS FUCK).

After several seconds of hyperventilating I managed to regain control of my faculties and go back to reading my Kindle, but I’ve been rethinking my spider-checking ritual ever since. I mean, clearly either I wasn’t vigilant enough in my shake-and-make routine, or we’ve got some kind of special breed of ninja spiders of doom living in our apartment.

I bet they came in on the grapes.

SHIT.

 

never again, grapes.

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I bought some grapes while grocery shopping on Sunday.

It was a mistake.

The grapes themselves are fine – it’s me that’s the problem.

You know those awful memes you see on Facebook where someone buys a bag of grapes and then notices there’s a GIANT FUCKING SPIDER in the bag?

Yeah.

Those things haunt my dreams. I’ve always been vehemently anti-spider (or, anti-spiders-in-my-space, I should say. I have no problem with spiders who respect my personal boundaries), but those spider-in-the-grape-bag memes have fucking scarred me for life.

Except, I forget things a lot (due in large part to the inside of my head constantly being like a freshly shaken snow globe. The snow being thoughts, not cocaine. Just so we’re clear…ish…), so sometimes the things that have scarred me for life kind of take a little while to bubble back to the surface and become Big Fucking Issues…

…which is how I ended up with a 3-pound bag of grapes on my kitchen counter that I subsequently spent quite a lot of time eyeing suspiciously, examining for signs of movement and/or arachnid legs.

THEN I started thinking about how the grapes had been in the house long enough that any spider living in them had probably crawled out by now and made a home behind my fridge or something. MOTHER. FUCKERS. At that point I began contemplating the feasibility of nuking the entire site from orbit. But, nuking would have meant having to move in with my parents until we found a new place which, at 36 years old and newly bankrupt from having bought a nuclear weapon, seemed…less than ideal.

My husband finally saved the day (albeit unwittingly) by breaking into the bag of grapes and eating like half of them yesterday while I was at work. When I noticed he’d been eating them, I told him how I bought them and then couldn’t make myself put my hand in the bag because of the spiders and how the grapes were all too close to each other in the bag so I couldn’t see, like, AROUND the grapes enough to be sure that there wasn’t actually some kind of lethal (or at least super hairy) spider in there, and how I was relieved that he had finally eaten some so now I could see they were safe and eat some too, but also that I felt kind of guilty for thinking that because I didn’t purposefully WANT him to eat unsafe grapes but I appreciated that he (again, unwittingly) took one for the team. So to speak.

I think he probably stopped listening somewhere around “internet memes of spiders”, because he’s known me a really long time and that’s usually where things start going downhill quickly for me.

ANYWAY.

I managed to nut up and take some of the grapes to work with me for lunch today. They were OK, but they weren’t really worth all the mental turmoil they caused. I think I’ll stick with apples. Or pears. Fruit that I can see completely around and inspect thoroughly before consumption. And if any of you assholes send me memes about spider-infected apples, we’re done. DONE, you hear me?!

Also, side note to any Federal agents who may have been led to this site by Internet bot scanners (don’t lie, it’s a thing. I’m not paranoid, you’re paranoid) picking up the phrase “bought a nuclear weapon” , chillax. If I had that kind of money, I’d be in a secret bunker, covered in puppies, drinking high-end merlot through the longest twisty-straw I could find, and paying a group of scientists to come up with a coating for Cheetos that doesn’t stain your fingers. PRIORITIES, YO.