Glossing Quickly...

- attended a birthday party in the park across the street for Mira, who just turned 37 and bought a new frock for the occasion. Watched some ants hefting pretty sizeable crumbs across a dark plate – looks like Aussie picnic ants are just more industrious than their lazy American cousins.


- awoke one morning to see an inch-and-a-half long dark oblong sitting in stark contrast on the white pillowcase. Squinting in half-sleep and without my glasses on, I worried for a second that it was a cockroach. Instead, it was a big fuck-off spider. I went to the kitchen and got a juice glass, scooped it in and left it on a corner of the kitchen table, intending to give it some closer inspection/take a picture in the daylight and after a few more hours’ sleep (this was somewhere dawn or pre-dawn like). I figured it was probably one of the infamous Huntsmen I’d heard so much about – those spiders that can grow to the size of your hand but are essentially harmless. Perhaps I’d just encountered one of the smaller ones. But in the morning, when I went out to the kitchen, it and the glass were gone. It then occurred to me that perhaps I should not have left a giant fuck-off spider on the kitchen table for other people to find first thing in the morning.


Apparently the housemates had set it free in the park across the street. And it wasn’t a harmless Huntsman; it was a Whitetail, which is apparently very nasty and can leave horrible sores if you are unlucky enough to suffer a bite.

- Am being eaten alive by all manner of mosquitoes, fleas, and no-see-ums. Tea tree oil has been very good to me for the welts they leave all over my legs, tummy, back, and arms, but haven’t found anything yet that works preventatively. Have tried Aerogard, which I think just attracts them more, B vitamins, avoiding bananas, and citronella coils. The flies that swarm around and light on your face and arms as you walk about are annoying, but as long as they don’t bite me I don’t have a problem. The biting ones, however, just. Fucking. Love. Me. I’m willing to try unconventional methods. Lavender oil, rolling around in the dirt, setting myself on fire. The bugs can’t catch you if you’re constantly on FIRE.

- Took a picture of a spider web I saw outside of Jesse’s house when I was waiting on the front stoop as I was early for rehearsals one day. The only spider webs I’ve seen in person make little spirals radiating outward from the center, resulting in little trapezoids of increasing size between the spokes. But this is the first one I’ve seen outside of photographs that makes zigzags between the spokes, instead.



Apparently last week was all about bugs.