News From Hawkhill Acres

A couple of days ago, after taking a shower, I opened the bathroom drawer where we keep our toothpaste and there was a huge spider doing what looked like a buck-and-wing on the Tom’s of Maine Spearmint. Now you need to know that this spider was even bigger than Geoffrey, the spider that waves cheerfully at me from a corner overhead when I shower.

It was also bigger than Ariadne, the spider who lives under the shelf where I keep my clothes in my side of the bedroom closet. And it was certainly bigger than tiny little Ethel who is sitting (can one actually sit with eight legs, I wonder?) next to me behind my incense burner on my desk. I think I’ll call the new spider Audrey.

I always assume that spiders are harmless and will leave me alone. The geek always assumes they’re lethal and after him. Arachnophobia is one of those things that I didn’t know about Geekdaddy - or Geekhubby as he was then before we had kids. Of course, he didn’t know that I like spiders and encourage them to share my space, as it were. Hey, some people feed the birds because they like to watch them. I don’t squash spiders because I like to watch them. And I don’t have to go to Wally World for Spider Chow or hang up a feeder.

I did move Audrey to the little gap behind the hamper where the geek isn’t as likely to grab her instead of the dental floss. I don’t have to worry about Geoffrey, because Geekdaddy is blind without his glasses and doesn’t wear them to shower. Ethel is safe, because I don’t let anyone near my desk. But Dennis, who hangs around (literally) on the ceiling over the geek’s side of the bed may be pushing things. He’s a bit of a daredevil, I’m afraid.

Sometimes, when Geekdaddy is propped up on his pillows reading a technical manual an uplifting book trash, Dennis, laughing up every one of his eight sleeves, drops down until he’s almost skimming the geek’s head and then just kind of dangles there. That’s when I create a diversion by telling Geekdaddy that his computer, which is always running in the bat cave he calls a study next to the bedroom, is making a funny noise.

“Sounds like a rod knock to me,” I tell him.

Invariably, he leaps off the bed so fast that he produces a strobe effect and races to his cave, giving me a few minutes to give Dennis a good talking to and a trip to the back hall for the spider equivalent of ten minutes in the time-out chair. I think Dennis is pretty fly for a spider, but if he lands in Geekdaddy’s hair, he’ll be history.

So let this be a lesson to you, Gentle Reader. If you find yourselves in the heady throes - if heady throes is the phrase I want and it seems awfully unlikely that it is… Well, anyway if you fall in love and start thinking about settling down with Mr. or Ms. Right, take my advice, sit down with a notebook and find out where they stand on the important things.

Does he like onions in his tuna? Does he even like tuna at all or does fish leave him cold? Does she tear the crusts off her toast and, if so, are you going to shoot her for doing it after fifteen years of breakfasts? Better to know now and avoid that long stretch in Leavenworth, I say.

Luckily, in our case, I’ve managed to hide most of the spiders so well that the geek never even knows that they’re there. He’s happy. The spiders are happy. You look up simpatico in the dictionary and you’ll see a photo of Geekdaddy and me with a spider peering out of his pocket protector and waving. (Probably Dennis.) The only problem I foresee is if we move to California like Geekdaddy would like to when he retires.

A friend of mine who lives in CA recently told me that she found a tarantula and put it in a jar in the ER where she works. She and her coworkers admired it for the day and then released it at the helicopter pad in a field. The next day, there it was, crawling back to the ambulance entrance of the ER like a homing pigeon. Somehow, I think even Geekdaddy would notice huge, black hairy spiders crawling around our retirement hovel. I guess I’ll just have to get very creative if we head west in a few years.

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