The Best Way To Get Rid Of A Spider :)

Neither was it the first time, nor the last, when last week a spider kind of creepily interrupted me while I was in the shower. One just feels extra vulnerable, you know? Although I’m sure they don’t really know the difference between a human with or without clothes on, but because one feels extra vulnerable naked and wet and relaxed and all that, crammed into a relatively small area of a house that we call the tub, one tends to overreact and panic even if a cricket creeps on them, not to mention a spider, (although a worse scenario would be a cockroach, but let’s not get too extreme here!) :D It was indeed only a spider, and I am very well aware that they are probably more afraid of me than I am of them, as most people would be quick to inform me. But wait a minute! I can hear this totally innocent spider say the same thing on the Spider Council to the other spiders…

„My dear brethren, trust me on this, these huge beasts called humans are so stupid and self absorbed that they are probably more afraid of us then we are of them!” He rearranges his glasses for the sake of effect and waits.

After a short silence, a big, fat, hairy spider snorts. Next to him there is a much skinnier looking, strong, shiny, black female.

„Come on, Tegenaria Domestica, they are giants and they are hunting us down! Seriously, did you think you can get away with such a sentimental, liberal idea? They are monsters, they need to be liquidated!” – yells the Black Widow. „I can help you with that! You only bite when you panic, and your bite is worth nothing, let me do the job! At least around this neighborhood!”

„We don’t need to be so violent!” – says the shy but composed Brown Recluse. „We only need to kind of show them who the boss is. I tend to agree with Tegenaria, they are clumsy giants, and we need to scare them so they stay away. Just let me bite them, that will give them a taste of what we are capable of!”

„Oh, for heaven’s sake! Don’t you understand?” – asks the frustrated Jumping Spider. „Whenever they see me, they try to smash me, but of course, they are too stupid to really be a threat! Nonetheless, we can’t assume they are benevolent! We just need to be careful, that’s all, and no matter how agressive they might be, I’m sure with our wit and speed we can manage to coexist with them!’

„I can’t believe my ears!” – cries the Wolf Spider. „Some of you actually suggest trying to co-exist with them? I don’t like their noisy company! It is enough for them to take a look at me and immediately they try to end my life! I sincerely think they only live off of spider-flesh!”

„Brethren, brethren, calm down!” – tries again the innocent little spider with glasses. „They probably think our space is actually theirs, or at least they think they have the right to share it with us, they just simply don’t understand our language and are scared of the cool way we look and hunt and move, because honestly, we’ve got the groove here, right? So I just want every one of us to keep our wits and peace, and…”

The council goes on and on, and who knows what the results may be, but hey, do I really care? A SPIDER IS WATCHING ME WHILE I’M IN THE SHOWER!!! Oooooh, it’s so close, I can sense him and his hunter instincts, and I just wish them to be far, far away from me, as far away as Timbuktu or no, the Mars! That’s it, send them all to Mars! But one can’t shoot all the spiders to Mars in a spaceship, right? Besides, they are very beneficial to humankind, so the biologysts say…

No, I need to act, that’s all that goes through my head at that point. I need to sqeeze them, smash them, smear them, break them,terminate them,  liquidate them! Right now! Before they attack! But with what? With what can I just end their ferocious, beastly, ugly lives?

And here comes my perfect solution, the sole purpose of this blog post! I have tried many, believe me, indeed many ways to end the miserable, evil little jumping lives of these sly, ruthless predators, and you have to give me credit for this, in 99 percent of the cases, I succeeded. But at what cost? By the time I finished, the water got cold, I got cold, I was sweaty, exhausted, frustrated, uncomfortable and absolutely unhappy, since the joyful bliss of the relaxing hot shower got interrupted for a solid 15 minutes of spider-hunt. Yes, my friends, that means jumping, yelling, shrieking, running and doing all sorts of acrobatic exercises for a solid 15 minutes naked and wet and alone in a tiny little space. That is an accomplishment for someone who isn’t crazy about sports!

Let’s take for instance a toothbrush. It has all these bumps and it’s too narrow to be able to do a good job for you, and then, you know, the disgust you feel just looking at it – it was in your mouth a moment ago, and now a dead spider is smeared all over it. Ugh… Or a shampoo bottle. It isn’t even on the bottom, or anywhere, for that matter. Most bottles are just made that way, no squares or rectangles, nicely cut edges, but instead all these curves, so you have to go at the spider a thousand times until you actually get them the right angle to be squished. So, I could go on with all these other items, but as it seems, nobody thinks of liquidating spiders in the bathroom when they create these bathroom supplies, so one has to be smart for themselves…

That’s why I suggest you keep a book in your bathroom at all times. It has the perfect shape, it has cutting edge and if it’s fairly sized, it is the right weight as well, not to mention how well it fits into your hand.

And I don’t just mean the book that you would bring in with you for bathroom breaks because it’s so good that you don’t want to waste precious minutes not reading them, and besides, the bathroom is the best place to read anyway, because those books are too important to use them as weapons against a spider. I did that once, and it just broke my heart, if you know what I mean, – to see the fair, new cover getting spider-gross smears on them, I don’t even want to think about it…  Then again, you don’t want to have a totally non-important book there either, because once or twice you might actually forget bringing in there a book you like, and then it’s the end of the world, right? Because you would have to just browse on your phone or read the spider-killing telephone book, and that would be a waste of time, right? So, I suggest you bring in there a book you started but couldn’t finish, because it just got boring or stuck at that place that was very much like the author got writer’s block or something and you didn’t have that feeling anymore, you know? So you just said to yourself: “Ah, I’ll read it later, let’s read something else now!”. So, this way you might actually finish it someday, or at least try, or re-read the parts you liked, and at the same time kill as many spiders as it’s absolutely necessary (after all, I’m not a heartless murderer!!! If you can shove it out the window, be my guest!). But to make things even more comfortable, make sure it’s a hardcover book – it is so sad when you have to break the spine of a soft cover just because it’s not strong enough to squish a spider with it’s own weight and hard cover…  And if you are squeamish, choose a book that is relatively big, at least bigger than your hand, so that your hand wouldn’t even have to get close to the unwanted intruder, and that has a plastic filming on it, just for protection, you know, against the spider-blood, because even though it’s not the best book, you still wouldn’t want it eaten by spider-acid and painted by their cursed blood…

So, there you have it! You’re welcome! 😀

P.S. Watership Down is NOT a book I will ever use to kill a spider! I might actually just let the spider live if it was the only two options I had. I mean, seriously, Richard Adams is awesome! Such a massive novel, interesting, engaging, charming and all that, about BUNNIES! Way to go! 🙂

Kids Are One of the Best Inspirations

I collected some funny things kids around me said. They can be the source of the best stories!

• Something was very loud. The child said: “The air sticks my head through my ears.”
• The child was playing when I crossed the room. “Aren’t you dizzy?” he asked. “Aren’t you afrain you will fall into the sea?”
• Looking at old family photos: “When I wasn’t, where was I?”
• At a funeral, listening to the preahcer: “Mother, this isn’t eternal life!”
• Playing hide and seek: “When I come close to you but I cannot find you, please yell: Here I am! So that I may find you!”
• “Don’t throw the banana away! It is half full!”
• “The surprize shouldn’t be that there’s no surprize!”
• “Father, when you will have a birthday, give some to me as well!”
• “When I am afraid at night, I wish the angel would come and sleep with me in my bed.”
• It was a thunderstorm. “The clouds are angry.”
• To the Nanny: “When you weren’t old, who were you?”
• About a deaf friend: “The words come out through her eyes.”
• After the first time she heard the expression: et cetera, she called her doll Etcetera.
• “When I pray, my heart feals like it’s chocolate.”

Where Ideas Come From

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I imagine ideas must grow on the idea-tree. If you know where to find it, you may come to it whenever you wish and pick a mellow idea to feast on it!

Goodbye, Boredom!

Truth be told, boredom can infest the most active and creative minds as well.

But when you’re an avid writer, you’ve got no time to be bored.

Here’s why:

1. Curiosity (contrary to popular belief, it did not kill the cat!)

Those who say curiosity killed the cat know nothing… Curiosity is the power that keeps the world moving. And a writer knows that!

Curiosity lets you see things like when the first time you saw things – from a child’s perspective: fresh, unbiased, adventurous, optimistic, not easily disinterested.

Curiosity lets you see things the way a scientist does – on its own, placed under a magnifying glass: with a critical, cautious mind, prepared to show everything in their true color.

Curiosity makes you observe things the way an investigator does – everything in their place, not taking anything out of context, knowing the importance of the surrounding and environment, placing the ever broken bits of verity back together, knowing that the truth may never be found out or a lifetime of research might still not be enough to retell in its whole form. Nevertheless curiosity is the power that helps you still keep going and not to give up the search for the true nature of things or the true nature of happenings.

Curiosity puts you in danger and saves you from danger, puts you in another’s shoes and makes you embark on a walk that otherwise you would’ve never dreamed of.

2. Books

An avid writer is an avid reader. No exceptions! If there’s someone who disagrees then that writer must be a malformation!

I dare you find another pastime that keeps you away from boredom as much as reading! I must be biased, I admit, but I speak of experience! 🙂 I love creating things with my hands and sauntering in nature, I love taking photos and playing board games, taking a swim and cooking a hearty meal, but still…

Stories are the looms that weave the world together, give meaning to human life, create a frame for us to connect to each other. We’re nothing without stories, and we’re less than nothing without each other.

Where do you find stories that make you a co-creator? Books. The writer created half of the story, the reader stitches to it the second half: their mind’s imagination. Books are the tools that keep the stories for us and generate more stories in us. Books are stories that continue in us. They keep our minds and bodies busy alike.

A writer reads in the bathroom, in the dining-room, on the bus, in the car (hey, what are audibles for?), at the dentist’s, in the restaurant, on the sidewalk, in the park, in the garage, in the courtyard, under the umbrella, in a crowd, in the library, in the bedroom, in the morning, at night, at work (oops!), on top of the roof, while collecting garbage, on the internet, on their e-reader, in an entertainment park, while avoiding their obnoxious neighbour, on a trip… Never being bored even after they finished the last chapter!

3. Thinking

I know for some this seems to be such an overrated thing, and those usually don’t like being near me: they think of us as those silly, good-for-nothing contemplators, who day-dream instead of doing something already! But thinking isn’t overrated to a writer…

Thinking is still considered to be a very useful pastime among writers. Being studious, thinking before acting or speaking, being slow to judge, contemplating the issues at hand, being levelheaded before making a decision could be wise hobbies for anybody, but for the writer thinking in itself is a work, not just a means to an end.

Asking: what if? Asking: why? Asking: how so? Just asking. They always have questions, and that must be very irritating to the people who always like to have answers. But they are the ones who must be bored all the time (and wrong as well). The thinker is never bored. That is one thing you cannot take away from anyone, and that can keep you sane, free and entertained all the time.

What other things keep writers away from boredom and how a writer can use this coveted talent of not being able to feel boredom? – That is a topic for another post!