How Killing Spiders is (95% of the Time) Not as Scary as You Think It Will Be

You know that feeling. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you're brave and calm and lethal. Maybe you're a quiet pacifist and also brave and calm. Maybe the feelings of dread and terror have never enveloped your soul and threatened to completely evict said soul from your chest cavity (because that's where souls live). This dread and terror, often accompanied by a HUGE dose of adrenaline, physical pain, loud shrieks, swear words and/or gibberish and a exceptionally large amount of second-guessing my next move ALWAYS comes upon me when I see a spider in my home or somewhere indoors. Sometimes, even when I see a spider outside.

Let me explain.

Dread and terror. This comes from the feeling that the spider I see is going to do one of two things. Hurt me or disappear somewhere quickly where it will hide so it can later come back when I am least suspecting it and...hurt me. These feelings are always proportional to the size of the spider and the thickness of its legs and body.

Adrenaline. The adrenaline is a by-product of the fear and terror. It's not always there. But mostly it is. When I pulled out the cat litter bag last weekend to fill the boxes up, a giant spider fell between my feet. I saw it and immediately lept off of the edge of the toilet where I'd been perched to across the bathroom and half out the door...IN ONE SWIFT MOTION. I'm not that coordinated when I'm not terrified. It has to be adrenaline. In fact, were I to ever run a marathon, it might help to have spiders along the way, leering at me from perches above me. So I'll run a marathon in the Amazon! Done and done.

Physical pain. This is a little more rare than the adrenaline. It is usually caused by a swift motion performed immediately upon seeing the spider OR during the catching and killing phase, when the spider unexpectedly drops, moves, falls, jumps, etc. It's not that I always bump my head or punch myself in the throat or any of those things (which it sometimes is), but more like an internal compression of all things important, so as to try to become smaller, tougher, more condensed and thus less prone to spider-related injuries.

Loud shrieks. And swearing/gibberish. These kind of go hand in hand. They are often one loud string like: noise-word-noise-kind-of-a-word-noise-louder-noise. I am not, nor have I ever been, a particularly quiet girl. This especially goes for times when I am surprised. It's not the being scared part that makes me yell. I have been scared plenty of times where I have kept quiet. Times as scary as spinning down I-87 in a blizzard! Or, you know, while making my way through a really sketchy part of Brooklyn at 4AM. I am abundantly good at being quiet while scared. But when something jumps out at me and I become surprised + scared? Well, then, my brain doesn't even enter into it. My eyes are connected to my mouth at that point and they cause me to pronounce the most helpful and logical thing that would accompany what just surprised me. Which, the last time I saw a giant spider was, (approx.) "AGHHHJESUS HELP ME HELP ME WAHHHHHHHTHEF*CK JESUS!" So you can see, I've definitely got a system for effectively communicating my needs and concerns to those around me in times of peril.

Second-guessing my next move. I would like to say that I am confident in most everything I do. And that holds true for most things. But when faced with something which, as I mentioned before, could either hurt me OR RUN/JUMP/FLEE to a location where it will remain until it decides to come out and hurt me even worse, I find that no course of action seems strong enough to rid my life of this destructive and terrifying creature IMMEDIATELY. I usually grab tissues first or toilet paper or a paper towel, then think- No! Wait! If I go to grab it, it could bite me through the paper with its spider fangs! So then I go for something larger. A shoe. A book. Something hard and solid. But then I think - No! Wait! What if it jumps just as I go to hit it! I'll miss it and make it angry! So then...I double up. I get tissues and a book and then I'm just uncoordinated and trying to double team the spider and end up squishing it into a corner and it's legs are flailing around and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs and the poor thing gets the worst last vision of all: Me, wild-eyed and confused by the mess I've made, stabbing repeatedly at it with a tissue, screaming for Mother Mary.

As I mentioned before, size and weight of the spider are huge factors in my fear. The tiny "whisper spiders" as I call them (those ones who look like nothing but cobwebs til you get up REAL CLOSE and see - oh yup! That is a spider), I have nothing against. I even let them live sometimes! In my home! I figure they can do all the good spider work, while their larger, beefier counterparts who probably are the ACTUAL ones eating the beetles and mosquitoes and flies, can die by my hand. Or my roommate's hand.

Like the time I beckoned her down to the basement. There was a massive black spider hidden among some old lint pieces from the dryer. It made sense to me that the spider would reside in the lint, as that seems comfortable and a nice place to transition from web to ground. (I think about how spiders think sometimes. It doesn't get me very far, but it does get me anxious.) She came down, obligingly, with a roll of paper towels. Two for squishage, and the remainder for clean up, since I did stress how GIANT this spider was. As she walked closer, I was truly impressed by her bravery. She wasn't even wielding a paper towel yet! She leaned down to the floor, leaned in slightly closer, stood back up and turned around.

Jess: "Yup."

Amanda: (terrified) "WHAT? WHAT IS IT? IS IT ALREADY DEAD??!"

Jess: "Yeah. Because it was never alive."

Amanda: "How did it grow to that size then!!! I've never! I don't want to! Agh!"

Jess: "No, dipstick. It's a spider ring from Halloween."

Needless to say, I was embarrassed and a little shocked that my brain couldn't tell that there was a) a ring attached to this spider and b) it was made of crude, poorly shaped plastic. But the mind sees what it wants. And apparently, my mind wants to be terrified at every opportunity.

Now to the title of this post. I said that killing a spider is not as scary as you think it will be, 95% of the time. That is because most of the time, either my tissue or book or shoe plan does work just fine...either immediately or eventually. There may be some blood and tears, but the job gets done. And there I'm left, one fearsome creature dead, one more tiny eight-legged soul on my conscious.

But occasionally, and I made that a number - 5% of the time - things don't go as planned. The spider does jump. Or flee. OR FALL IN YOUR HAIR. And there you are, wearing nothing but '70s running shorts and a bra, screaming for mercy at 3AM in your parents' guest room until your bleary eyed dad comes in and you make him groom you like a monkey for the next ten minutes to make sure that there truly is NOTHING in your hair. And then you start to wonder...if not in my hair, then where? In my bed? My suitcase? My MAKE-UP CASE?! Where is he lurking? Waiting to creep out at the right time...or lunge at me...or travel back to Philadelphia and get ever stronger and more powerful, breeding with other spiders and creating a spider army to avenge my attempt on ending his life!!!

Or maybe, he's on the end of the broom like I had intended, and it was all for naught.

You know, either one.

Spiders are creepy, yes, but I believe my fear truly lies in their capacity for intelligent thought and most of all, vengeance. So please, as winter slowly rolls in this year, and the bugs venture indoors, be careful. Be mindful of your implements. Be confident in your killing choices. And for god sakes, clean up after Halloween. You're going to give someone a heart attack with those spider rings.

Hey everyone! I want to blog again!

I have a new found reason to blog. It's called following the crowd. I have recently been taken in by Miss Allie Brosh's wonderful masterpiece Hyperbole and a Half. She has inspired me to blog more about my own experiences, not because they're deep or meaningful or intensely amazing...but because they're mine! And they're funny! My life is often funny. And here I am, denying all six of my readers the chance to read about my hilarious life.

It's like I'm staring into the face of fun and saying, "No, fun. No. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not for 7 months, will I give these people anything resembling fun on my blog." And I'm pretty sure it's been even longer than that since I have posted anything resembling actual fun.

So I thought for tonight, since it's almost 2AM and I have to get up in...oh, 6.5 hours, that I would just post a list of funny things to come that I could pull upon to write about. This way, you get a preview of coming attractions and I get no excuse to say, "I can't think of anything to write about!" So here goes:

1) How Killing Spiders is (95% of the Time) Not as Scary as You Think It Will Be
2) Something Other than How I Got Called a Floozy
3) The Time I Stress Ate Cupcakes
4) The Best Word I've Ever Made Up
5) How to Motivate Yourself to Do More: Spreadsheets, Charts, Timelines and Graphs!
6) Why I Think I Make a Great Banana Bread
7) Ways to Make Yourself Believe You're Safe When You're Not!
8) Things I Have Woken Up Doing (It's not dirty, don't worry)
9) My Escalator Fantasy
10) That Time When I Forced Myself to Read Anna Karenina (AKA Unemployment)

That's about all I can come up with for tonight. But I am going to try to post at least once a week from now on. If not something funny, at least something human. Because that's what I was doing here to begin with.

Boston 2004 - On People

With windows that begin at eye level,
people pass by me each day with no bodies- no faces, no expressions, no feet or animated hands.

There are no children or adults, no grandparents or uncles.

There are no white women or black women. There are no clothes, purses, strollers, or cars.

There is light, though- morning beams that collide with the window frames, their clean whiteness beaming back out at the world. This crisp early light brings footsteps, clicking quickly until a car door opens somewhere across the small parking lot.

The morning brings music, an answer to the question of what people listen to in Boston at 8 AM while driving. Laughter floats through the window, often above the voice that precedes it. Angry silence never reaches my window.

Glaring couples in the throes of a noiseless argument do not walk by my apartment. Of course people who are angry sometimes shout, and then, to me, they exist. Usually they are hurrying someone else along, by the sound of it, impatient to get going somewhere, as so many people are in this city.

I suppose not everyone is hidden to me, though. Not everyone glides unseen and eavesdropped upon, beneath my view, coming so near the inhabitants of a room they’ve never seen. Some people, I’m sure, have seen me. Changing my clothes before bed, probably, from their windows across the driveway. The apartments surrounding the little parkway between Naples Road and Comm Ave. are in tall buildings. They’re the overflow of urban height from Boston, right before the street turns into the less threatening, more neighborly Brookline. Split by a ribbon of pavement, my neighbors and I silently watch one another, and are greeted by the early risers, the mid-day flood of construction workers, the evening glow of sunset, and young men (or women) cruising slowly by, playing reggae at three in the morning. The woman I particularly think of when picturing the apartments across the way lives in the top left corner of the left building, closest to the dumpster side of the parkway. She is not one I have ever seen folding laundry, pacing on a cell phone, or turning on the television. I do no know her name or in fact, if she owns the building. She could be my landlady, for all I know (because I am only a sublettee), but she has made her mark by being the only one person who seems to know or care when we, unauthorized of course, throw trash into the dumpster.

“I’m gonna have you evicted!” she growls from above, claiming she has already gathered photo documentation of our crimes. She is an angry shadow to me, one that I pity for having nothing to do but watch a dumpster. I feared her the first time, urgently thinking I should go up and make a peace offering…something better than my garbage of course. Maybe muffins, or some jam. But the impulse passed, and so far, with continued usage of the dumpster, we have yet to be kicked out. I suppose she is not my landlady after all. Her shouting has not been the only thing that keeps me from the giant bin, a contained wasteland, sitting squatly on its concrete beach. Some days, in the kitchen, what sounds like pirates hollering reaches my ears as I stir vegetables in the frying pan. In a language I can’t quite place, several men seem to argue about nothing in particular, taking turns throwing themselves into the side of the dumpster for dramatic effect in punctuating their sentences. I always wonder whether they’re just bickering over an old kitchen chair left behind or if there is true hate in their voices, shouting about things of significance in a tongue that will never reveal itself to me. Maybe someday, I’ll go outside and get a good look at them. For now, I’m sitting in my room, listening to water…what I’m sure is a hose, but I pretend is a city stream, cutting through the T tracks and the sidewalks and the gravel, passing unseen under my lofty windows.

The inclination to talk to strangers on the subway is unnerving. Because there is little you can know about a single stranger aside from the way she looks, what she is holding, and how she carries herself, it is easy to find yourself attracted to someone, but the urge to actually speak is rare. Pity is the most common motive, coming in second would be attraction and then usually the desire to quiet someone down; a drunk or disorderly crazy person. I’ve definitely been that person. I hope I’ve never been pitied, but knowing how I can leave the house sometimes, I wouldn’t put it past the kind bourgeois of Boston. When I am faced with an odd attraction, so out of character and so alarming as to disallow my concentration on my latest novel…well, I start to think fate is involved somehow. Today, I rode the E line out to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to fill out three hours worth of paperwork for a sleep study I may get into (please, oh, please?). I rarely ride the E line. Quite a project in getting there itself, it involves an inbound ride of at least 20 minutes, followed by another outbound ride of 10. I was reading, seated upon a brightly painted green wooden trunk, locking away some sort of MBTA gear that I know nothing about. She approached gracefully; catching my eye was her long dark coral skirt, being teased around her jean-clad legs by the July breeze. An odd combination of clothes to begin with, I slowly gazed up the side of her as she settled against the fence, waiting with her giant portfolio folder in her arms. A tank top, snugly pulled over a tie dyed T shirt that could have been washed inside a blender, hugged her frame. It was her arms that drew me in, staring at her for what seemed like several minutes. They were, along with her face and neck…and feet, come to think of it…were covered in grayish smudges, like she’d been working on charcoal drawings all day. That must be what was in the portfolio, or in the giant rolled up stack of paper at her side. She was intriguing, not quite pretty, definitely not clean, but with such a strong sense of self, I was overwhelmed and intimidated without her speaking a word, without her being wealthy or arrogant. Well, that I knew of, then again. Her hair was thick, a deep honey blond that Bob would’ve loved to cut (and wash and wash and wash), and wound around itself and a beaded headband that was slipping down onto her forehead. Hair like this belonged on farm girls, I thought, not eccentric artists. It gave her brilliance I had never seen. I didn’t speak to her. I decided only to admire her grace for the moment, then forget her. Admiration was easy. Forgetting, obviously, has not been.

I guess I just wonder about people too much. It’s not my concern or my judgment; it’s curiosity. I wonder if anyone’s wondered about me…I will never know.

But I’ll always wonder.

How sick is too sick?

I have a cold. It's the pestering coughing and sniffly kind that you see cure commercials for all winter long. I've actually purchased several of these OTC remedies in the past day. So far...not cured. Sorry, Mucinex and Zicam.

My question posed today is this- as I sit in the office, slowly accomplishing things and coughing little bits of myself into the air- When is sick too sick for the office? And when does coming in despite all odds triumph? I have a double standard in my head, I believe, from many days stayed home from school in my younger days. You should stay home and rest if you are sick. But if you don't come in (to school, to work, etc.) you are weak. Weak and lame and unlikely a child of a school teacher or nurse. I got it in my head that staying home means that yes, you're sick, but you're also just plain lazy. Unless you are at deathbed status (which, thankfully, I'm pretty far from), you should truck it on in. And it's this quest to be tough and to ride it out that brought me onto the train and into work this morning.

I got to the train just fine today. But as I sat, riding into Center City, the quiet desperate coughing began. The kind where you try not to cough until your throat feels like there are spikes being shoved in from all angles. And then...the cough arrives. Looking around with just my eyes, I was taking stock almost immediately of who seemed germophobic, who was recoiling from my very existence and who seemed not to care. It was then that, despite the Halls train ads beckoning me to "Stay strong," I began to feel guilty for exposing the public and my coworkers to whatever it is that has decided to inhabit my system as of this past weekend. Guilty, but of course, still very strong.

Arriving at the office, I took on the start of the day with gusto. I made coffee, I made conversation, I wrote some very important emails. And then, the long, slow fade begun. I stepped out around 10 to acquire the supposed miracle cure for my cough (aforementioned Zicam), but am still, as of 1:25, on the "quite awful" side of bad-sounding.

I guess I just think there should be guidelines somewhere. Guidelines that we can all adhere to. Because I know there is part of me that, if I have a meeting, will want to come in at all costs. And another part of me that will know that if I look enough like crap, I will not be taken seriously and should just pack it all in. Is it a fever? Visible sickness? Audible sickness? Where is the line drawn between sick and pushing through and just rampant germ exposure to the world?

I need answers. But for now, I just need to stop this ridiculous coughing.

Last published - October 29th!?

I guess there's no way around that. Unless I surreptitiously posted 12 posts in the middle of the night, spanning the days between November and February. But I'm an honest guy- I wouldn't do that.

So much has been happened- it would be a long one if I tried to go into all of it. Went to another close friend's wedding (Congrats Steph and Jimmy!), attended my dad's 61st birthday dinner (and my brother's 21st had just happened), went off to Ireland with my friend and roommate Jess for a whole week, had my second-ever Thanksgiving away from my parents here in Bryn Mawr, had many holiday happy hours, a fantastic office holiday party and cocktail party, one wonderous snowy weekend with what seemed like 109 dogs, a journey back to upstate NY to see friends (but not nearly enough of them), family, and make merry for the holidays. The new year has brought some challenges- in body, in mind, in love and in work.

Reading back over old posts, I can laugh a little bit at how confident I was in my existence over the summer. But the ebb and flow of that confidence is what makes me me I suppose. I don't think I'm going to try and catalog the events of the past three months, but rather pick up right where we left off, chugging right along.

Today, I am chasing a cold away with hot whiskey, getting some work done for the upcoming week and eating vegetarian chili with Jessica. It's Superbowl Sunday! Rejoice America! And we know that in the past, that's meant wings and pizza and beer. Not today, my friends, not today.

Cheers to a new year (a month and a week in) and new adventures :)

Chug Chug Chug! (Like the train, not the beer chant.)

I've been nose to the grindstone lately, making an attempt to get caught up (or- gasp!- ahead) at work so I can jet off to Ireland in peace. Or at least semi-peace, knowing my coworkers won't be bombarded by BS I've had to leave behind. I'm excited about Ireland, of course, but equally stressed out about how I am going to pay all of my bills (the spreadsheet could choke a digital horse) for November and December and still make the following happen: Halloween celebrations, Steph's wedding weekend, IRELAND, Thanksgiving, Christmas...I have already slacked on some birthdays lately and though I have big dreams for making more money next year and enhancing my credit score (think bows and ribbons on a janky Charlie Brown tree enhancements,) but I don't want to count any chickens pre-hatch.

On the love end of things, I'm just adrift. I'm connecting with people- a lot of boys actually, which is new and different- and feeling a lot of great things. But I still haven't felt heart-wrenchingly, knock-the-wind-out-of-you stabbed by anything. Not since that one boy fell off the radar. That's OK. We can't feel big things everyday, or else we would all probably be a mess and never able to get work done or get to the gym. But I hope, someday, I end up with someone who makes me feel small pieces of a big things everyday. Talking with friends in long term relationships lately- healthy ones, at that- I have come to realize though I am enjoying the dating world so much, I do, in the back of my head, just want someone to cook dinner for, wash the dishes with and cuddle up with for a movie. It's fun staying out late and discovering hidden corners of the city and meeting new people and unearthing miscellaneous facts about them, but come on...a girl can only remember so many things about so many people. Or make out with a certain number of people til she starts wondering the value of half empty kisses. And I mean half empty on my part...Counting chickens may not be a good idea in this realm either, but putting eggs in one basket...as I've said before...might not be so bad. We'll have to see.

On the creative side of the world, I have been having lots of fun. I have been working on a secret project since May and it's starting to take some fun shape. I have been updating my roommate's company's website and working on monograms for a friend's wedding...creating a logo for an LA a capella group and pixelating pictures for my friend's apartment wall art project. I love that people come to me with ideas and projects, but I sometimes feel guilty that I can't do more or put more time into them. I feel like balancing these things into the equation makes for a happier Amanda, but spending more than a few hours a week on each just leads to me getting less sleep. Not good.

But this, my friends, is all for now. For it is time for lunch. And then back to work. I will write more soon and I apologize to some people who feel coughcoughrichcoughcough like I've been slacking....Love to all. Watch the leaves fall.

Project Mission: Day Twenty-Seven

Well, it has been said before. I am often unable to fully commit to projects I throw myself into. I usually finish things, but it often takes a few days. Or weeks. Or sometimes, a hiatus of years (I speak of a particular mission to grow my hair to my waist.)

Looking back to days 1 and 3, I was looking to achieve a more relaxed balance for life. I think in many respects, this has gone well. I am more comfortable leaving the office at 5 even if every single thing hasn't been taken care of. This may sound like poor work ethic, but I will say this much- working 13-15 hours a day for multiple days in a row keeps stress at a very high level and makes for a poor Amanda ethic.

In a more personal sense, I have refound that feeling that I've had before...that I don't need to prove my worth to any person, place or ideal on this earth. I often get wrapped up in new people or new situations or commitments that become "be all, end all" for a hot minute and I forget that I am perfectly fulfilled without those anxieties. Balancing a social life and a professional life has also become slightly easier or messier, which ever way you view it since the arrival of
this little buddy.

On the eve of my running out of cell phone minutes for this guy,

I realized that I had another resource. I am not a heavy cell phone user as it is. I don't chit chat, really. Simple necessaries, I call it, though I lived many years without having the ability to communicate these "necessaries" on the road...and I survived. As demonstrated in July, I can live without a cell phone just fine. But I feel taking small advantage of my resources to keep life organized is a smart choice.

I have also resigned myself to the fact that I do need money for food every week. Sounds like something the obvious girl could have told me, but gosh, in the tizzy of getting every bill paid every month, I often forget. I forget that food doesn't extend to the backs of the cupboards and that I will often walk into the office kitchen, seeking what combination of leftovers and gift basket condiments could possibly be a meal today.

So pulling it all together, I have worked hard to put the correct pieces on each side of the scale, and though it's still wobbling and things fall off and get placed back on, we are somewhat balanced today, these days, and hopefully, in the days to come.

So the mission for day 27 and beyond...to be more graceful in all things. This will have to be a continuation of the original combination of relaxed balance, but incorporating a more steady heart and mind and applying beauty to the whole damn thing. That will be the mission. Graceful balance. Like walking with an unabridged dictionary on my head in 5 inch stilettos in Shelton Hall in 2004, I will probably tip over and crash into people. And I will probably resort to sitting on the ground and eating olives and laughing hysterically. But if not for trying to grow, we would all stay small and unremarkable. Here we go, here we go, here we go again. Here we go again.