Getting Into A Two And Eight

OK, OK! I get the message already. I blog four entries in June and now I'm expected to make a habit of it? Someone posted a comment positing the theory that I was making some sort of exotic (non-? ) existential demonstration of the futility of work. That was so good, such a sharp and well-honed observation, witty and brief as well as having all the hallmarks of a highly developed sense of the ridiculous, that I felt goaded; I have to feel spurred or impelled before I decide to do anything. My problem , I now appreciate, has less to do with laziness per se than it has to do with emotional constipation. When I began this mess I was deep in the throes of a mild, but chronic, clinical depression. It wasn't a place I had ever been to before but it's a place that I am not ready to visit again. At the time I thought, hey! Why the hell not? I'll just begin a blog and open my soul and write down all my thoughts and maybe someone'll be able see where I went wrong ... Bad idea! I am emotionally constipated. Ask me how I am. Go on, then ... "I'm fine, thanks!" (And here's one of my big, cheesy patented sunny smiles) See what I mean? I've been going through these motions (oh help, please lord, if I need a three-legged thing for me to sit on please don't let it be a stool!) all of my life. I don't really say what I feel until, when I finally do I end up falling out with someone. Oops there goes another relationship. Yes my house is still the sort of place that attracts flies rather than good housekeeping awards. Most days I think I would choose to have teeth filled without anaesthetic rather than clean something. Cleaning is so pointless ... it only gets dirty again. Last week, for example I went all week without getting into the bath. Why? I was too lazy to evict the arachnid who had abseiled into the tub overnight. OK Too scared as well. Arachnophobia is another foible I have. The beast in question was a monster in UK terms (meaning that it was approximately the size of Wales) ... it also had a particularly malevolent glint in most of its eight eyes and whenever I looked, cautiously, over the edge in hopes of finding that it had turned turtle and died, decently, of -- presumably -- hunger or dehydration I was partly relieved (I'm not by nature a sadist) and partly disconcerted to see it still standing there, in enamel valley, trying to look like it was rolling up its shirt-sleeves prior to physical combat. For four days that fearsome sight was enough to send me scuttling away to do something as unstrenuous as possible. Sadly on the fifth morning I had an appointment with a therapy group (more of that another day) and although I tried my level best to convince myself otherwise I had to admit that I had acquired an aroma. I did not yet stink, but I was moving in that direction. Call it pride. Call it anything but I was darned sure I wasn't going to sit in a room with other people I hardly know if I wasn't utterly content with the olfactory signals I would be transmitting. What I found much more worrying was the realization that this piece of pridefulness was far too sane and sensible. Maybe I should just go out all stinky. I'd given her a name by now. Charlotte . (I know! Cheesey isn't it?) What I had figured was this. Spiders can't get a grip on the enamel which is why they get stuck; they cannot climb out because the sides of the tub are too slippery ... even in my filthy house where bathtubs hold archeological records in their fossilized scum rings (only joking ... even I like a clean bath tub!) Anyway, I figured that being large, Charlotte would also be smart and that, given enough time, she would work out that if she built herself a stairway with silk she would be out of the tub in a jiffy. (Ever noticed how much silk there is stuck to the sides of a tub that's had a spider in residence for a day or two?) Well. She hadn't. I needed the tub and she was still there and if looks could kill she would still be there. And if I had less pride she might still be there, too. OK. I admit it. I hate myself enough as it is. One more admission isn't gonna kill me. She went up the Dyson. I could see her all supine and toes-together amongst the assorted cat hairs and skin flakes that make up what passes for household dust in my residence. I felt a deep well of remorse yawn open before me like nightmare gateway into a hell-for-spider-killing-lazy-people and then I shrugged and turned on the hot water .... It was later, as I laid my head back against the steamed up tiles, that I remembered about the silk that spiders leave attached to the sides ....