A little tale from my German ancestors...
Once upon a time, there was this housewife who had a bunch of kids and whatnot, and was always cleaning shit up in her house...
Well, Christmas was coming, and she decorated the whole place for her kids. As she was hanging up strings of Kix and little blue lights, the phone rang. "Well, shit," she said, and picked up. Well, on the other end, it was some guy telling her that the baby Jesus was coming over the next day to bless her house.
So, the housewife, delighted, started scrubbing away at her house to make it more appealing for the baby Jesus. She scrubbed the moldy crap out from behind the toilet. She did the dishes and took out the garbage and threw out all the scary rotten pudding-textured wet cardboard in her porch. And then she tossed a few extra decorations on the tree: an extra Kix chain, and a couple of little Russian candies she'd strung on there with paper clips... The place was sparkling and really gorgeous.
Well, in the process of all of this, the housewife had smushed all of the cobwebs all over the house, and the spiders had been banished to some distant hole in the cardboard-free porch. Well, that night, the spiders all crawled out and decided to go get a closer look at the tree.
Now, spiders have really bad eyesight. I mean, you've got eight eyes, but that just means you have to blink eight times as often. Or something. In any case, they don't see too well. So, they crawled up into the tree and walked all up and down the branches looking at the lovely Kix chains and Russian candies. They were thrilled. And so they spent the whole night wandering up and down the branches. When morning came, they ran back out into their hole in the porch so that the housewife wouldn't see them and smush them. She wasn't really a bitch, but she didn't really like spiders much...
The problem was that the spiders had left their webs EVERYWHERE, all over the tree. And the housewife was PISSED. She was about to smush all of the new spiderwebs when there was a knock at the door and some guy brought the baby Jesus in, in one of those little-kid-carrying baskets. But he stopped her somehow (this part of the story was a little vague). Jesus, you see, loved all of God's creatures and was sympathetic to the plight of the spiders. He poked at the spiderwebs, and they turned into strands of gold and silver. The housewife and her kids were delighted, and all was well. I suppose the spiders were allowed back in the house after that. And ever since then, people have hung tinsel on their trees to symbolize compassion for all of God's creatures.
Or something to that effect...
There are many lessons to be learned from this parable. One is, don't be a bitch to spiders.
A few days ago, I found a spider in one of Neil's hats. It was this tiny little jumping spider. I was about to pick up the hat and bring it outside, because Neil isn't the biggest fan of arachnids, and at least one other member of the household seriously freaks out over them. But Neil stopped me. He didn't mind this one because it was just a tiny little thing, and besides, it was really cool when it jumped. So, we left it there on the hat. A few minutes later, the spider was climbing up Neil's lamp. And for several days now, it has been busy walking all over the lamp, stringing webs along behind it. Jumping spiders are notorious for being fairly mobile, but this one seems to be pleased with sticking around on or near the lamp. There are these beautiful little webs all up and down.
The jumping spider's name is Ferdinand. Neil and I have been showing him off to everybody who will pay any attention. Ferdinand is a cute little shit. I wish he'd go put some tinsel on the Christmas shrub, though...
As I type this, my room-mate is sitting on the floor nearby, sorting through a collection of condoms. She's categorizing them into little piles, apparently according to color. All of a sudden, she busts out laughing hysterically.
"Wow," she says, "I'm glad I didn't say THAT out loud."
"Okay, well NOW I've got to know..." I reply. I look over at the process. The condoms are color-coded, and possibly sorted by expiration date and brand name, as well. She's getting hardcore about this process.
"Well, I was gonna say -- but then I stopped myself because it just sounded WRONG: 'Wow, I get anal with my condoms.'"
Anal, one presumes, as in "anal retentive."
That has me laughing for a good five minutes.
I'm writing about spiders and anal retention.
That wasn't what this entry was supposed to be about.
You see what happens when the Muses want to use me for things other than writing about the things in my head?
Yeah, spiders and anal retention. Yikes.
I had a date today with Neil.
It was among the best dates I've ever had.
We went to the DSHS office with our room-mate, which wasn't particularly fun, although it wasn't bad, either. And then we put her back on a bus bound for home, and walked to the county licensing department.
The lady behind the counter gave us some paperwork to fill out, and charged us fifty-four dollars... And asked us to raise our right hands and swear that everything we said was true, or some crap like that... I wasn't so much paying attention to what I was swearing to. Mostly I was just caught up in the coolness of officially swearing to something with my hand in the air.
...And then the lady gave us our marriage license.
I had to stare at it for a couple of minutes... My name and Neil's name...
Somebody like Neil wants to spend his life with ME?
No, more accurately, NEIL, whom NOBODY is like... wants to spend his life... with ME?
For real...?
This kid I've loved since I first met him? Whom I've adored since our first conversation? Who makes my skin feel tingly by being in the same room with me? This person who understands that different flavors of mint taste like different colors. Who soothes me when I get a leg cramp and looks at me like I'm the most beautiful creature on the planet when I'm stumbling out of bed in the morning. Who stomps in puddles with me. Who has these magic eyes that sort of magnetize people... This man, whom I love absolutely infinitely, loves me? And wants to spend his life with me? Weird little me? With my bizarre anecdotes and my strange compulsions and my love of puddle-stomping?
I always knew I wanted to spend my life with Neil. I was just utterly convinced it would never happen.
He is so wonderful... I am so, so lucky... The universe is so good to me.
We are not married yet -- that's not official until we can find somebody to ask us if we do, and all that.
But whatever. I do anyway.
We had shitty coffee and hot cocoa in an almost-diner downtown. (You cannot call yourself a diner if your customers don't stick to the floor a little. Especially if you serve pretentious made-in-Portland tea instead of shitty little anonymous Lipton things...) Then we bummed around a thrift store for a little while. Neil found a couple of t'shirts and I stumbled across a tiny little infant-sized "I Love NY" shirt. And everything in the store was half off. This is the kind of luck that Neil and I have -- almost all of the time.
And then we went to see the Christmas lights. We stood under trees draped with millions of little bulbs, and it was absolutely perfect... Nothing could have made that moment any better than it was.
Once in awhile, things seem kind of shitty, but I honestly lead a truly remarkable life.
I'm going to go get something to drink and go to sleep now...
It's Christmas Eve Day now, as I'm typing.... Every Christmas Eve since, like, the beginning of time, my mom has read the story of the Christmas spider to me. I think I would like to dream of webs.
~Helena*