For the first time in my life, I'm not a fan of the time change. In the past, gaining an extra hour would make me jump for joy (straight into my bed, to snooze), but now my trail running time is in the dark! I'm not sure how well R and I would fare 3 miles into the woods and unable to see the trail markers. The leaves obscure any hint of the trail underfoot, so we'd be pretty much out of luck until we happened upon a bridle trail.
Rain, rain, rain. All it does is rain.
I had weird, unsettling dreams last night. At one point, my parents were driving me to the chiropractor (?), and the car broke down along this stretch of summery, vaguely ominous forest. The vegetation was so lush that it was almost rotting and there was a sickly sweet smell in the air. We decided to cross a dilapidated bridge strung over a series of boggy weirs. I fell through the bridge and into the tepid, weedy brown water. I knew I was standing on bones at the bottom of the pool. I HATE the idea of clumping around in nasty pools of water, and I spent a good amount of in-dream time slogging in the muck and suppressing panic. I remember trying to gain a foothold on a submerged log that was clean on one side and covered in leechlike worms on the other.
Later on in the dream, I'd been taken hostage by a militant group of native Americans in their little shantytown in the woods. I got to wear bright beaded skirts that I was rather fond of. A girl who had drowned and never been found suddenly rose up from the bog and staggered into town. She cursed us in a horrible, gurgling voice and then her head fell off and rolled into a dusty alleyway. The village wisewoman told us all to touch the girl's sodden, rotting body and say a prayer.
Yesterday during an afternoon nap, I had a strange dream that I was creating a character for a videogame. I was cycling through the options for eye color, and I looked at S's face. He blinked and suddenly he had mako eyes, with vertical pupils. It was very vivid and unnerving.
Speaking of unnerving, last Thursday, R and I met at the state park for our usual 5-miler. I was waiting for her to finish getting ready at the rest area, which had a little log bench under the eaves, looking out over the forest. I made a running leap onto the bench and stood triumphantly surveying the landscape. I took a few deep breaths and then slowly turned to the left --- and found myself nose to nose with a HUMONGOUS ORB WEAVER, in an orb web about 2 feet across! Her bulbous abdomen was maybe 3/4 of an inch across at least and the diameter of her body + legs was about 2 inches. My heart rate went from 60 bpm to maybe 160 in about 10 seconds. I don't hate spiders and I enjoy admiring them from safe distances, but being so close to such a huge one in her ginormous web... She could've jumped on my face and nommed my eyeball. I bet she was waiting for her bumbling human dinner to fall, terrified, into her clutches.
So, I was viewing her web from the side, and it puffed in the breeze like a spiral galaxy drifting through space. I slowly inched to the right, hoping that I wasn't somehow attached to one of the anchor lines of her web... Relief! I wasn't, by about a centimeter! I finally reached a safe distance away and wrapped my arms around my chest, totally creeped out, watching her striped, prickly legs pick meticulously at the strands of her web. That's when I noticed that there were about 6 or 7 other spiders in webs just as large, strung all over the eaves! Gah, gah, gah! For the next 10 minutes, I was sure that I'd run into a web at every turn and expected to feel the thump of one of those hefty orb weavers against my t-shirt.
Rain, rain, rain. All it does is rain.
I had weird, unsettling dreams last night. At one point, my parents were driving me to the chiropractor (?), and the car broke down along this stretch of summery, vaguely ominous forest. The vegetation was so lush that it was almost rotting and there was a sickly sweet smell in the air. We decided to cross a dilapidated bridge strung over a series of boggy weirs. I fell through the bridge and into the tepid, weedy brown water. I knew I was standing on bones at the bottom of the pool. I HATE the idea of clumping around in nasty pools of water, and I spent a good amount of in-dream time slogging in the muck and suppressing panic. I remember trying to gain a foothold on a submerged log that was clean on one side and covered in leechlike worms on the other.
Later on in the dream, I'd been taken hostage by a militant group of native Americans in their little shantytown in the woods. I got to wear bright beaded skirts that I was rather fond of. A girl who had drowned and never been found suddenly rose up from the bog and staggered into town. She cursed us in a horrible, gurgling voice and then her head fell off and rolled into a dusty alleyway. The village wisewoman told us all to touch the girl's sodden, rotting body and say a prayer.
Yesterday during an afternoon nap, I had a strange dream that I was creating a character for a videogame. I was cycling through the options for eye color, and I looked at S's face. He blinked and suddenly he had mako eyes, with vertical pupils. It was very vivid and unnerving.
Speaking of unnerving, last Thursday, R and I met at the state park for our usual 5-miler. I was waiting for her to finish getting ready at the rest area, which had a little log bench under the eaves, looking out over the forest. I made a running leap onto the bench and stood triumphantly surveying the landscape. I took a few deep breaths and then slowly turned to the left --- and found myself nose to nose with a HUMONGOUS ORB WEAVER, in an orb web about 2 feet across! Her bulbous abdomen was maybe 3/4 of an inch across at least and the diameter of her body + legs was about 2 inches. My heart rate went from 60 bpm to maybe 160 in about 10 seconds. I don't hate spiders and I enjoy admiring them from safe distances, but being so close to such a huge one in her ginormous web... She could've jumped on my face and nommed my eyeball. I bet she was waiting for her bumbling human dinner to fall, terrified, into her clutches.
So, I was viewing her web from the side, and it puffed in the breeze like a spiral galaxy drifting through space. I slowly inched to the right, hoping that I wasn't somehow attached to one of the anchor lines of her web... Relief! I wasn't, by about a centimeter! I finally reached a safe distance away and wrapped my arms around my chest, totally creeped out, watching her striped, prickly legs pick meticulously at the strands of her web. That's when I noticed that there were about 6 or 7 other spiders in webs just as large, strung all over the eaves! Gah, gah, gah! For the next 10 minutes, I was sure that I'd run into a web at every turn and expected to feel the thump of one of those hefty orb weavers against my t-shirt.
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