spiderswelcome (theacidqueen)

thefridayfive

1. What is your favorite childhood memory?
I had a highly pleasant childhood so pretty much all of it. However, the thing I'm most achingly nostalgic for is life before the internet.

2. If you could be reincarnated as anything besides human, who would you want to be?
I'd like to be a spider to know what it's like to spin a web. I'd like to be a snake to know what it's like to slither and climb without limbs.

3. If you had to start your life all over, what are three things you would change?
1) I would cultivate the ability to block out other people's thoughts/feelings/opinions and focus on my own as a child. I'm finally working on that now, but damn if only I had figured out earlier that I needed to do that. Maybe I would have held onto my interests, could've had a more solid sense of self.
2) I would either not go to college, or I would have done the free two years at community college, or I would have just prioritized work and money over education. I just turned 38 and now I feel like I could get something out of school. In my youth I prioritized fun, nothing but fun. For whatever reasons, I never comprehended the value of resources.
3) I would be less sedentary. Easier said than done, because I am naturally a sit-still-and-think type of person. But maybe an interest in one physical activity would have been good. And maybe I could've been a vegetarian earlier in life. I loved tofu as a kid, but of course I never thought I could eat anything outside of what my mom provided. If we got Chinese takeout then I could get my favorite tofu dish, it didn't occur to me that I could commit to not eating meat. I liked meat a lot as a kid, that's also true, but I do feel better without it. Basically, I would aim for a healthier physical existence.

4. If you had to forget everything in your life, except one thing, what would it be?
That's a strange question. How can there be one answer? If I choose something other than myself, do I forget who I am?

5. Do you have a lucky charm?
I used to be very superstitious and definitely did have lucky charms. But then I felt like I was driving myself crazy so I weaned myself off of them. So, currently, no I do not rely on lucky charms.

Dreamwidth hosts a lot of worldly and knowledgeable cool people - and I'm hoping one of you might know something about this table. I paid $20 for it at a flea market 15 years ago. I use it as an art table because it was already a little beat up when I got it. I have no idea how old it is, what kind of wood it is, if it's authentic or if it was a student wood shop project. And this is also a great example of how hard it is to make my brain pay attention to detail: I had no idea there were birds and flowers on it until just now. Fifteen years I've owned this table and if you had asked me yesterday "What's carved on that table?" I would've said "I dunno maybe some people?"



( pics of details )

A nice seasonal daily questions list for October that I found on Pinterest:

( typed them for whoever wants to play )

I'll probably fall behind so here's my October 1st a smidgen early:
1) October goals
I really think I just need to get a ball rolling - pick a ball, any ball, and roll it. Stop thinking about the best way to roll the best ball, just roll a friggin ball. I can't even speculate which ball it might be, because that will cause me to try to prioritize and I don't want to do that because I get stuck there.

In other seasonal news:
I made a delicious mushroom soup, a farmer gifted me a butternut squash because I was so enthusiastic about pumpkins, and the big mama spiders are weaving beautiful webs everywhere.

You've likely heard of the spotted lanternfly, but have you heard of the Japanese beetle? They're just as horrible. Every summer I have to fill my bug jar - a large jar that is usually used to catch and release bugs - with dish soap suds, I have to select a stick from my yard which is suitable for flicking beetles into the soap suds, and every single day - MULTIPLE TIMES PER DAY - I must meticulously scour every rose bush and cypress tree and crepe myrtle for Japanese beetles and I must murder every single one of them. There are thousands. I kill at least 60 every day, possibly 100. Every day for about 4 months. It's the only way to get rid of them. They're invasive and do nothing other than destroy every tasty flower and leaf. They love soft flowers, like roses and crepe myrtle, and they have a notable preference for the lighter colors over the darker colors. But they wreck the light colors so fast that they have to settle for the dark colors. This year they even hit the magnolia flowers, which I thought were too thick for them. Birds and some spiders can eat them, but there are too many. If I weren't hunting them myself, they would be an absolute nightmare. Outside would be like a terrarium for Japanese beetles. There would be zero flowers. They would be crawling all over the place. They would be all over the window screens.

I'm generally a pro-bug person. My username is literal: spiders are welcome here. Here in my home, but especially in my garden. I'm so genuinely happy to see spiders on the roses, building webs in the trees and on the deck, I call them all friends. I also love many other bug friends: moths, dragonflies, butterflies, beetles, earthworms, bumblebees, grasshoppers, crickets, centipedes, millipedes, slugs, weevils. I do struggle with some, obviously wasps are scary haha but I am trying to be their friend too now. Ants are also a struggle because there are so so so so many of them and they bite me when I'm just walking in my yard. Mosquitoes are not friendly at all, but they do feed the dragonflies and bats. Ticks are horrifying, fortunately there don't seem to be any in my yard (in NJ they were everywhere, here in NC I've yet to see a single one!). Anyway, it is truly soul-crushing to have to kill all these Japanese beetles. They're very pretty, and they're totally harmless to anything other than plants. In Japan, they have natural predators that keep them in check. If ever I visit Japan and see one of these beetles, I will gladly just hang out with it. But when thousands upon thousands fly over to my garden just to pig out on all the flowers WHICH MEANS NO FLOWERS FOR POLLINATORS OR SPIDERS then I have to choose sides ... and I'm team flowers. I'll battle all these beetles to keep the flowers blooming.

All I want is to be able to chill in the rose garden, smell the rosy air, say hi to all my spider friends and every lizard and toad and dragonfly and butterfly and bumblebee.

I dreamed that a zombie bit me, and it was great. I felt inspired to spend my last moments as a lucid human in awe of nature; I saw a variety of butterflies, what a gift; I wanted to be near the ocean, and then somehow I was there walking along the shore without fear of a wave or the tide. Several dreams ago, I was in the ocean with many large creatures and I was frozen by fear when one swam towards me. I faux-awoke on the couch and vomited gallons of ocean water. It just kept flowing out of me, and all I thought was "now I have to sleep on a wet couch."

I dreamed that it was time for me to die. I just knew it to be true. Someone was there with me, telling me not to die, but I said no no I have to do it now. My breath shortened, I felt like I was sinking and also ascending, I wasn't afraid but I wondered if I should be. I felt like it was my last chance to feel fear but I couldn't feel it.

This song gets me. That sweet cool darkness!

When I was a kid, I had recurring dreams of floating away all the time. I'd lift up one leg, and then the other leg, and with my knees bent I'd float up into the sky and had no idea how to return to the ground.

What an exciting game of Hearts: four moons shot, I shot it twice and won. Yes, I customized all of the little players. I still don't have any local friends.



R.I.P. Einar, I do sincerely appreciate your games.