The Case of Randomly Appearing Things With Legs

There is a beautiful, fucking massively bulbous spider living outside my window.  I named her Sherlotte, because she is ginormous but friendly, and we have had many nervous chuckles together in our 127-hour rapport.  As long as she stays on her side of the window life is good.  But when I can't see her I get all fidgetty, thinking she decided to come inside and join me for hot chocolate.  We are not there yet, Sherlotte.  Slow the fuck down. 

She spun herself a six foot web that stretches across the whole window, but the bulk of it is only on the upper half.  I first saw her when I opened my blinds and I shrieked and tried to scramble up on top of the object closest to me for the protection of higher ground (which was definitely a book).

I texted Al the landlord and told him about her and made him promise not to squish her because that would be very messy, like those videos of draining abscesses, and then I thanked him for my new kitchen chandelier.

About two weeks ago I got a text message from him which read, "you are the proud owner of a golden chandelier" and I was all "baohwr?" and then when I got home from work there was a fancy magic chandelier in my kitchen, and I almost hoped Al the Landlord hadn't texted me because then I would have had a thaumaturgical (thaumaturlogical? thaumaturgenical?) mystery to solve ("The Case of the Appearing Chandelier") and that would have been a very exciting mystery indeed!  For the sake of this blog post I wish the chandelier had eight golden curly arms, but there are only six, and because of that this transitional sentence into the next paragraph functions with less than the rhetorical ease I would normally strive towards--

I'd put her at about an inch and a half without legs.  Sherlotte.  And she has eight of those, by the way, golden black, striped and curled shiny dagger legs.  She is easily the biggest spider I've ever seen in person that was not (a) in a terrarium or (b) nailed to a wall in a museum.  This is Chicago.  Not the outback.

You know how spiders are either plastic or furry (those are the legit biological terms, don't fight it) and sometimes they are just pretty jewels with terrifying knives for arms?  Sherlotte is a very pretty plastic spider.  We're friends, because I have to make friends with things that scare me.  It's a thing.

Still, plastic spiders are way less scary than the furry ones.  Furry things usually come with teeth, and teeth lead to bite marks, and I am a fucking ambrosial peach.  Everyone wants to bite me all the time.  

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