when dustballs scatter

I am in the middle of a light housekeeping adventure this morning--on my day off. This is an indication of two issues in my life: 1) I don't have one, and 2) what little there is that pretends to be a life is often devoted to the exemplification of the phrase "Cleanliness is next to Godliness".

So there I am sweeping my kitchen floor when a dustball I am trying to sweep into my pile of floor flotsam takes off running and I realize that it has legs and isn't dust at all. Nope. It's a spider, and it's running for its little life. My quandry becomes--kill it or trap it and escort it outside with a stern warning that I get the inside of the house and spidey and all his/her friends and family get the outside. This spider is faster than I am (no special feat that) and I don't capture it, so I now realize that it will probably become one of those six spiders that I am destined to swallow this year, and knowing that I sleep with my mouth open most of the time, I am sure that I get more than my "share" of spidey meals every 365 days! For additional information on this subject read my Christmas letter of 2005. I do believe that most of the spiders I inhale in my sleep are already dead by the time I swallow them up and get my little protein "snack" because I am a drooler and they probably drown if they get anywhere near my mouth. Sometimes I dream that I am drowning and wake up to find that my pillow is fairly sloshing with saliva, so what chance would a spider have? I've had dentists complain about my salivary overproduction as they turn up that spit-sucking instrument to highest intake. That has its downside though because it can "adhere" to my tongue or the inside of my cheek and it takes the dentist, his assistant and the dental hygienist to extract it from my mouth. Life is always an adventure!

So here's the lesson about dustballs that move (and other creatures). If you don't want spiders ganging up on you and broadcasting to the spider nation that you need to be taught a lesson for trying to squash one of their fellow creatures, go easy on the dustballs and never eat shark in any form. I have a theory that, if I eat shark or anything closely related to it, any time I dip my not-so-little self in the ocean, all the sharks will be able to detect that once-upon-time meal of one of their "own", and they will put me on their radar screen, and I will become a magnet attracting them from all four corners of the earth, so I stick with fish sticks or McDonald's fish sandwich in hopes that I will be safe in the waters that cover 75% of the earth. Better yet, I'll be even safer if I just keep my swimming adventures to a chlorinated body of water, a.k.a. the pool where the only shark that lurks is plastic and can be deflated with one poke of a well-filed fingernail!