It looks different around here, doesn’t it? But I’ve got some tweaking to do. A fair bit of it. Am not settled on the shades of white to gray thing. I’m doing the web equivalent of This Old House while I am trailing tissue paper all over the place. And so has been H.o.p. When I got up today, it looked like some suburban prepubescent boys had happened by and rolled the place. A veritable joy of tissue streamers spiderwebbing wall to wall, which is appropriate as the last thing I did on the computer last night was scream bloody murder when I finished writing some mailing labels (yes, practicing my actual lack of penmanship skills) and turned back to the computer to see a big old spider hopping across the keyboard. Of course I screamed and Marty leaped from the bedroom (ten feet away, and no, come to think of it, I had to yell five times for him) and H.o.p. jumped up and down in crowing delight. I used to be able to deal with things like this but have turned into a wimp over spiders and bees and things as I get such toxic reactions to their even looking at me. The last time I was bitten by a spider, the first day we started our trip out West back in September, I had a nasty systemic reaction that lasted a couple of months. So I see spiders and run and scream for someone else to deal with the situation. Yes, I know I’m a sniveling coward and others would have me take the spiders to a garden and release them. But when that very innocuous looking spider landed on my hand in September and I gently brushed it away, look what I got for my tenderness. It bit me anyway, my hand swelled up and then I was covered in hives for weeks. Because that’s what spiders do. They bite when threatened. Just like lots of people do.<\/p>\n