Some Distractions are Bigger (and More Terrifying) Than Others

I promise I’ll get back to writing my novel in a minute, but first… AAAAAAAAA!

The world of NaNoWriMo comes with all sorts of support.  There are forums, there are writing groups, there are inspirational pep talks by famous authors, there are meetings, there are apps, and there are at least a dozen tips and strategies for overcoming writer’s block and procrastination.

What there is NOT is any helpful advice about what to do when you sit down to write and see a GIANT SPIDER just outside your office door.

See how it appears to be getting larger in those photos?  Well that’s what it felt like in real life.  (And no, I did not get that close to take its picture, I just zoomed in on the first one I took.)

I know this is not the biggest of all spiders—trust me, I have seen plenty of tarantulas.  But this spider was different from the tarantulas because A) It was in my house, and B) I didn’t know what it was.

I thought for a moment the marking on its back kind of looked like a violin, so I thought it could be a brown recluse.  Then I thought it looked more like a lava lamp, so I thought maybe it was some sort of hippie type of brown recluse. 

Most of you are thinking, Who cares?  Squish it!  I can’t squish it.  When panic overtakes me, the idea of feeling that crunch under my foot or of squishing it but not hard enough to kill it but just hard enough to make it mad or the idea of it jumping at the last second onto my shoe and running up my leg all keep me from being able to move.  Plus, I hate to kill things and then have someone tell me it was harmless.  And, I wasn’t wearing shoes and didn’t think letting the thing out of my sight was a good idea.

When I see scorpions in the house, I put a glass over them and let my husband deal with them when he comes home.  It works for us.  So I decided to try that.  But scorpions are slow and dumb and spiders are fast and (I fear) smarter than I am.  After standing, poised over the thing with a glass in my hand, for several minutes hoping that a UPS guy or a solicitor would show up at my door (I will buy whatever you are selling if you get rid of this thing for me!) I finally trapped the little sucker.  And really made him mad.

However, that was not enough because he has to stay trapped for nine hours.  Sometimes, when I trap a scorpion, the cats play with the glass and scoot it across the floor.  I cannot risk this big, angry, intelligent, possibly deadly, definitely scary spider escaping.  So I put a brick on top of the glass.  Then I put a book on top of the brick.  Then I surrounded the glass with heavy books.   Then I took away the front book because I need to be able to see in to make sure he’s still there.

Well, the closest bookcase to the spider is the one that holds all my horror books.  So… what I made actually ended up looking more like a shrine to the creepy guy than a cage.

Oh well, as long as it works.

And now, I shall get back to work DESPITE the fact that terror lurks right outside my doorway. 

It may only be this:

But it feels like THIS:

[Note:  No one show this blog post to my mom or else she won’t come pet sit for me this weekend.  Also, no one show it to my cousin or I’ll never convince her to come visit me, ever.]