The Most Monumentally Fucked-Up-Beyond-Any-Semblance-of-Recognition Week

It started Sunday with my teenager acting like a teenager. That is probably all I need to say about that other than my entire day was ruined and I questioned why anyone signs up for this parenting gig anyway.

Then there was That Episode of Breaking Bad. If you've seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about and how difficult it was to function at all either mentally or emotionally on Monday. Knowing that other people were just as shell-shocked as I was got me through the day without overdosing on my anti-depressants.

Next came Tuesday. The day I will forever relate to the Red Wedding episode from this last season of Game of Thrones. Only the blood was shed in the office and it wasn't literal blood but might as well have been. That is what this lay-off felt like. The people that I most admire, respect, and trust all gone in one foul swoop. Until the next day when there was one more. All we've been able to do in the office is huddle together in small groups wiping tears and asking why, why, why? I was able to hold it together in the office until last night when I came home and sobbed for half an hour.

Words like "financial" and "strategy" and "consolidation" were thrown around. Meaningless words to a group of people who have been together for 15, 20, 25 years. At 7 years I am the kid sister of the group. This is a deep loss and it will take time to recover. What comes out of this at the end will forever be changed. Yes, this is a job, but when you work as hard and for as many hours and you come to know the person next to you on a more-than-personal level because you attend their weddings and their funerals and their birthdays and bridal showers and watch their kids grow up, these people become family.

I've spent the last three days processing my feelings. Anger, sadness, insecurity, wariness, a deep loss of trust. It hurts. We're all hurt and feeling bruised and exhausted and drained. And, because I have some bizarre, misplaced sense of needing to be a caretaker, I've made the step to organize a goodbye party so that we can have some form of closure. It's not my job. I haven't been there the longest, I don't know all of the stories and the history. And yet it's the one thing I can do because of the deep gratitude I feel towards these people. I can't change any of it, but I can do this. I can offer a time to say we love you, we honor you, we will miss you.

So, that's enough. Right? Surely that should be enough. If only.

In a moment of weakness I agreed to go to the United Way breakfast this morning. My condition was that it couldn't make me cry. I was promised it wouldn't. I was lied to. The United Way is very good at pulling on your heart strings in order to pull the wallet out of your pocket and they did it again. Because I didn't cry enough last night, I guess.

It's Thursday, we're near the weekend, I might be able to breathe again. I would be very wrong.

Because what did I see when I pulled into the garage at the end of the day? A fucking near-tarantula-sized spider on the wall next to the door into my house. I couldn't even walk into the house. It just sat there, daring me to go past it. If you've spent any amount of time here, you know how I feel about things with eight legs. Thank everything in the heavens above that the Raid was in the garage. Only when I sprayed it, it fell behind a box and now I don't know if it's dead or if it's going to seek revenge on me in the middle of the night in some pesticide-induced craze.

All of this can't be attributed to the full moon, can it? Whatever is going on, the Universe needs to get its shit together. That spider was the last damn straw.

The Asshole In My Shower

No, it wasn't a man. Not that I would know what one looked like if it were. Non-self-imposed celibacy is for the birds.

So, can you guess what I might possibly have found in my shower? Not a million dollars. Not the fountain of youth. A spider! Crazy, right? Because I haven't seen 50 bajillion of those in my house. Guess what else? It was a baby black widow! Awesome, right? Not really. Because of course I didn't see it until I was in the shower. Soaking wet. And guess where it was? Right over my head!! It just gets awesomer, right? (Awesomer is a word. Shut up, spell check.)

So, yeah. This bitch wasn't content to just sit upside down on the ceiling over my head. No, she enjoyed lowering herself up and down on her little yo-yo web, wiggling her legs at me. I almost got shampoo in my eyes trying to keep one on her. Up and down, up and down. I'm sure she thought it was hilarious.

Well, guess who got the last laugh? Yeah, that's right. Did she think I'd never leave the shower? That I was her prisoner? Dumb ass. And even dumber for not hiding while I went to go get the bug spray. Bwa ha ha.....

I swear I should change the name of this fucking blog to The Spider Chronicles.

Nature Is Gross

Yesterday, while walking the river trail, the Wife pointed out a group of male ducks chasing a female and informed me that they were gang raping her. Yeah. Like that's how they mate or something gross. Personally, I don't equate gang rape with mating; I'd rather call it some horrible, disgusting form of impregnating.

Of course I had to Google this phenomenon when I got home. Not that I didn't believe the wife, she knows some shit about birds and animals. It just sounded too horrific. I wish I wouldn't have done that. There were videos. It's definitely rape. Then there was some science-y stuff about how duck penises have evolved to better force entry into duck vaginas and how duck vaginas have in turn evolutionized to better thwart the attempts of the penises. It's all so violent.

Seriously, this is so upsetting that I can't even think that little ducklings are cute anymore now that I know they're really rape babies. Next spring I'll be all, "Oh, look at that duck with her little rape babies." I won't even feel bad about eating duck. As long as it's a male duck.

So then this morning I was noticing the spider webs in my garage. At least a quarter of my blogs are written about my issues with spiders so it's no wonder that I am always on the lookout for them. Specifically black widows. One of the webs in the corner had six or seven egg sacs on it. Ew! Doesn't each sac hold like hundreds of babies? I do not need that in any part of my house. Ever. I looked on the other side of the garage door and the mother bitch was hanging out over there. With three more egg sacs and some recently hatched babies. I sprayed them all with Raid. All of the little motherfucking cocksucking assholes. Every. last. one. And then I swept them out next to the garbage can. And before you ask, the spraying of toxic poisons was not overkill. I wanted to make sure they were dead. Like I need a gazillion baby spiders growing up and taking over my house. No fucking thank you.

Yep. I think I'm done with nature for a while. Cute things are getting creepy and the creepy things are just getting creepier. Mother Nature is a twisted bitch.