Checking In

I just want to take a moment to thank those who read my words, and to let you know that I have been working on a very, very large piece to be published here as soon as it is done.  It has been a work in progress for about a week, adding and editing a bit every day, and I'm hoping to be finished with it by some time in the coming month.  This is why I have been so quiet lately, as I wanted to finish it before starting on another blog entry.

It has, however, come to my attention that tomorrow is the first day of February - and that means that tomorrow begins my month of recipe sharing.  So stay tuned for a new one every day, complete with photos and hopefully witty explanations of how to make whatever delicious thing I'm making that day.  

You could, of course, completely ignore my posts and just eat raw Ramen noodles out of the package.  But I wouldn't recommend it.

Axolotlovin'

I think we should all take a moment and celebrate the cuteness of the Axolotl.

(photo courtesy of Dusky's Wonders)

Do you see that?  That right there is the happiest looking animal on the planet.  Have you ever seen anything cuter?  The answer is no.  No you have not.  

The axolotl is a combination of all of our childhood joys.  Its one part goldfish, one part hamster, one part smiley faced "GREAT JOB!" sticker on our homework.  Its cotton candy and mythical creatures, and teddy bears with button eyes. The amount of adorable packed into this little package should probably be illegal.  In fact, these things are so cute, every time I see one I throw up in my mouth a little bit.  If a higher being actually did sit down one day and create all the living things on our planet, I imagine he said to himself, "I'd like to create a creature whose face will stop all wars and sorrow and bring a smile to anyone's day."  And then he made the platypus.  And when that didn't work, he made the axolotl.  

Axolotls are aquatic salamanders.  They mature in their larval form, making it unnecessary for them to ever fully morph into the land-dwelling salamanders they are capable of becoming.  On rare occasions, they do make the change, and experienced axolotl keepers can trigger the metamorphosis by tweaking temperatures and pH balances in the water, but apparently its not recommended that anybody try to force their change.  They can regrow entire missing body parts, which is why they're frequently used in laboratories for study of their regeneration abilities. 

Personally, I think scientists need to be studying their sunny dispositions.  From what I can tell, their lives consist entirely of smiling, kissing each other, and swimming around being generally adorable.

(C) Caudata.org

I, however, am a very tactile person.  Chalk it up to being female if you want, as I think women are more likely to want cuddles from adorable things than men are, but for whatever reason, I don't keep fish because I don't see a logical reason to pay so much money for a living decoration if I can't pick it up without killing it.  (While I do keep tarantulas, some of them are handleable, and even those that aren't, I could risk a bite if I absolutely could not resist the cute and fuzzy feet and faces.  Tarantulas don't live underwater.)  Axolotl ownership for me could prove extremely dangerous, as I would very quickly drown myself while trying to snuggle it.

And then who would be left to write you all of these witty essays?  Damn you, axolotls.  

Productivity

It probably says something about my personal drive and motivation in this life when I sit down with all intents to write a fabulous blog, and instead, I draw this on MS Paint....

.........and then take a two hour nap.

My gawd, I need a tablet in order to draw things.  I mean, I've got big plans for this blog.

Clearly.

Spotlight: Nhandu coloratovillosus

Occasionally I'd like to put humor aside and lay out as much information about specific species of arachnid as possible, as well as pictures of my own if I happen to have them handy, both for educational purposes, and to help keepers and non-keepers alike better understand our eight-legged buddies.

Today's piece is on one of my personal favorites, the Nhandu coloratovillosus (Schmidt, 1998).  If you don't like Latin, they are commonly known as the "Brazilian Black and White."  However, for the purpose of this article, we're speaking Latin.  Get used to it.

The Nhandu coloratovillosus hails from the grassland regions of Brazil, and as such, doesn't mind things being a tad more on the humid side from time to time.  Its not a requirement, as they're fairly hearty, but if you were an N. coloratovillosus, the world surrounding your little piece of real estate might look something like this:

(photo (c) nature.org)

Lovely, no?

But for mine, her little piece of real estate is a large Kritter Keeper with a water dish, 4 inches or so of substrate, and a little wooden hide - all contained inside of a large, glass-front media cabinet.  And she seems to get on just fine that way.

The grasslands of Brazil border on tropical, averaging a humidity of about 70-80%.  In captivity, N. coloratovillosus thrive in dryer conditions, as long as they have a water bowl to drink from, preferably on the larger side.  Misting is not necessary (and according to experts like Stan Schultz, author of the Tarantula Keeper's Guide, misting is really never necessary, ever), a simple overflowing of the water dish from time to time and being allowed to evaporate will produce enough humidity to keep your fuzzy bugger satisfied.

Various sources have said that this species has several color forms, though the general consensus among keepers is that they do not, and simply change appearances drastically with each molt.  An adult will be extraordinarily "fluffy" looking.

Nhandu coloratovillosus and other species within the Nhandu genus are New World tarantulas.  This means that rather than medically significant venom, they posses a rather mild bite, and their main means of defense is urticating bristles on the abdomen.  Nhandu hairs stuck in your skin are known to be one of the most uncomfortable experiences imaginable.  Luckily for myself, I seem to have no reaction to them - but I have known a good number of people who have given up their entire collection of this genus to avoid being itchy.  Urticating setae are like tiny bits of barbed wire mixed with fiber glass mixed with itching powder mixed with poison ivy and chicken pox, and these tarantulas readily flick them off their butts and right into your face if they feel threatened.  For unsuspecting, loving hobbyists, this is a horrible inconvenience sometimes, but in the wild, it is a far more effective means of defense against predators.  Think of it this way: in order to bite, you have to press your mouth against your attacker.  If your attacker is a bird of prey, for example, you aren't going to envenomate them via their beak.  But kick up a cloud of painful and airborne urticating bristles, and suddenly you don't look so tasty anymore.  

My Nhandu coloratovillosus is about 6.5 inches in diagonal leg span, which is how tarantulas are measured.  She's an adult female, but not done growing!  The average diagonal leg span of a full grown female is between 6 and 7 inches, and this varies depending on the individual.  Sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more, but the mean is somewhere in between.  Males of any species tend to be on the smaller size.  Which is good - it makes it easier for them to become lunch after mating with the ladies.  Bite-size men are easier to take down.

My beautiful girl has never been bred, but hopefully some time in the future she can have a dinner date with some lucky stud.  They can go out dancing, where they'll do the YMCA, like this:

The average life span of a Nhandu coloratovillosus female is up to 15 years.  Being a faster growing species, they mature in only a few years, which means unfortunately for the males, their lifespan generally maxes out around their third birthday.  Once any male tarantula matures, he gives up on everything besides spreading his seed.  He stops eating, making himself at home, and doing anything that your average spider does on a day to day basis, and starts building sperm webs and pacing back and forth looking for a mate.  If not provided with one, he'll typically allow himself to either starve to death, die of exhaustion, or eventually attempt a post-ultimate molt that is very rarely survivable.  In the wild, a female tarantula rarely goes further than six inches beyond her burrow for any reason.  (This makes it even easier to justify keeping most tarantulas in small, dark enclosures.)  The males, on the other hand, once mature, will wander hundreds of miles in search of a mate.  He will, as they say, get laid or die trying.

And then probably die afterward anyway, because all that mating is hard work, and we girls get the munchies pretty quick when lovin' time is over.

My favorite part about this species, and all species of the Nhandu genus is their general temperament.  They are neither docile nor aggressive, yet somewhere in between, in a gray area I like to call "neurotic basketcases."  They are as anxiety ridden as I am, never seeming to be able to truly make themselves at home.  Those that do settle in tend to take a much longer time than most other tarantula species.  My coloratovillosus girl took six months to stop climbing the walls and ceiling of her first enclosure.  Once we made our move to our new home, during the car ride, she climbed down and into her hide for the very first time.  Only then did she seem to relax.  I unfortunately had to rehouse her afterward into a more suitable (and smaller) enclosure, but it seems the less space they have, the quicker they are to adopt all of it as their domain, rather than continuously searching for something better.  All of the anxious traits I have noticed in mine are traits I can identify with on a primal level.  There is nothing more rewarding than owning a Nhandu who is visibly comfortable in its environment - that's when you know you have done things correctly!

Persephone, using her fangs to pull herself from the catch cup into her second home.

Also, many hobbyists like to have a few spiders they can scoop out and hold.  Nhandu are not typically these spiders.  Aside from rehousing, any instigated movement of Persephone results in her butt aimed at me like a cannon, and her legs poised for kicking.  (This might be due to the fact that I named her after the queen of the Underworld, but its just a guess.)  On the other hand, I have another species of the same genus who is calm as can be, and perfectly tolerant of being touched.  With Nhandu, some might say that their trust has to be earned.  And when you get one that doesn't immediately default to defense mode when presented with your hands, you know you have earned it.

My beautiful girl has loads of personality.  She guards her pooping spot.  She tackles prey with a ferocity that has caused her to topple over onto her back.  I have seen her shove two crickets at once into her mouth using her pedipalps and front legs with a passion that would make Cookie Monster blush.  Her eyehill makes her look slightly crosseyed, and she occasionally takes an upside-down stroll just to freak me out.  Attempts at handling have been met with the butt-cannon, but never a threat posture (the photo above of her in a threat posture came from her previous owner, and to this day I cannot understand for the life of me how he managed to upset her that much), and rehousings/tank maintenance have been a breeze.  She is the gem of my collection, the largest, prettiest girl I've had the pleasure of working with to date.  I wish her a long and happy life with me, and hopefully someday an eggsack of her own bug munching hair kicking basketcase children.

Here's to you, Persephone, and here's to the awesome species Nhandu coloratovillosus. 

A Smoke Free Me

It was Mark Twain who said: "Its easy to quit smoking.  I've done it hundreds of times."

Boy was he right.  I can't count the number of times I've put out a cigarette, and said to myself "okay, that's it.  Never again.  I'm done."  Only to light one up again a few hours later.  The longest I have ever gone without smoking since I started was five days.  And that still astounds me, because since then, every other quit attempt has lasted about five hours or less.  I wonder what I did during those five days to convince myself to stick to it?  And then after I'm done wondering that, I wonder why the hell I didn't keep sticking to it.  After all, it only takes 72 hours for all of the nicotine to be out of your system.  That's a measly three days, and I had made it five, I should have been in the clear!

You non-smokers have no idea how horrible those 72 hours are.  I would prefer heroin withdrawal - not that I have ever experienced that, but if you are a heroin addict who comes forward saying "I want to give up this habit, detox, and stay clean," people clap you on the back with congrats, and set you up with a nice peaceful room in a rehab center with nurses round the clock, a bed, a barf bucket, and even sometimes let you wean off with methadone.  When you're a smoker who says (and probably for the 80th time) "I want to give up this habit, detox, and stay clean!" nobody gives you a nice padded room in a four star rehab hotel.  Nobody sends you a nurse.  You still have to get up and get dressed and go to work or take care of your kids or go to school and do whatever else you would have to do during any other day.  And you're not getting any sympathy.  You can't be waiting a table and throw a Caesar salad in the face of some dickwad customer and say "oh, sorry, I'm quitting smoking."  You're still gonna lose your job, and insurance doesn't cover this kind of sobriety.  I don't think unemployment has a clause for that either.

I'm not one to give advice on quitting, but I can tell you how I managed to stay smoke free for those five days, and how I intend to stay smoke free for the rest of my life.  The rest of my life.  The rest of my life.  The rest of - oh, sorry, got caught in some weird internal echo loop thing.  As I was saying...

Get the facts.
Here's a fantastic website that offers support, software, a forum, and enough horrifying pictures of cancer patients and medical information to scare you away from smoking for good! (Or at least for five days.)  http://whyquit.com/ also offers a small downloadable file that keeps track of how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds you've spent NOT smoking, how much money you've saved, and how many hours of your life you didn't give to tobacco.  Its an excellent encouragement device, not just because it shows your progress, but because if you relapse and smoke even ONE puff of a cigarette at any time, you have to click the reset button and watch all that progress disappear in the blink of an eye.

Remind yourself of these facts.  Do a better job than I did.  I'm thinking I may write them out and tape them in various places around my house:

20 minutes after quitting

Your heart rate and blood pressure drop.

(Effect of smoking on arterial stiffness and pulse pressure amplification, Mahmud A, Feely J. Hypertension.2003:41:183)

12 hours after quitting

The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.

(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1988, p. 202)

2 weeks to 3 months after quitting

Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.

(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp.193, 194,196, 285, 323)

1 to 9 months after quitting

Coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair-like structures that move mucus out of the lungs) start to regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.

(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. 285-287, 304)

1 year after quitting

The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a continuing smoker’s.

(US Surgeon General’s Report, 2010, p. 359)

And we're not even talking about a year.  We're still on the first 72 hours!  20 minutes afterward, your blood pressure returns to normal.  Then just what was it doing to your blood pressure before?  Never mind the 12 hour mark....the carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to - wait just a darn minute...carbon monoxide level?  In my blood?  If you have a carbon monoxide leak in your house, the fire department and the electric company rush out to evacuate you and fix the problem.  Because it could kill you.  Excuse me while I evacuate my carbon monoxide filled home, and smoke a cigarette.  I wouldn't want to breathe any of that dangerous shit.

Ask yourself why:

So you've decided to quit.  Why are you doing this?  Why am I doing this?  I don't fucking know, I want a cigarette!  Wait, no.  I'm doing this to restore the natural order of my body.  I'm doing this so I can see my kids and maybe even their kids graduate from high school, or go to college, or get married and have their own babies.  I'm doing this for the sake of vanity, because cigarettes are gross, they stain your teeth and make you look old, they smell bad, and hell, I'm almost 30.  I don't want to look like this next year:

I mean, she's pretty sexy and all, but I'll pass.  

Also, killing yourself is expensive!  One of my favorite things anyone has ever said to me was "you're not addicted if you can afford it."  When you can just go out and buy a pack of smokes and it doesn't hurt your bank account or your overall quality of life, its easy to not think twice about it.  On the other hand, when you're pawning your old VHS movies, scraping up quarters from the couch, and blowing crackheads in alleys for cigarette money...well. 

Make a plan.

I've identified everything that is a trigger for me.  Its a great first step.  Lets see.  Waking up.  Having coffee. Eating.  Drinking.  Pooping.  Getting up off the couch.  Accomplishing anything at all.  Getting irritated.  Getting in the car.  Getting bored.  Getting hungry.  Getting out of the car.  Watching movies where people smoke.  Sex.  Realizing its been a while since my last cigarette.  Going to bed.  Being outside.  Being inside.  Breathing.  Thinking.  Scratching my knee.  Brushing my teeth.  Blinking my eyes.  Writing a blog.

Wow, that's a lot of triggers.  And, in order to break the overall smoking habit, I'm going to have to rearrange my life.  Clearly I can't stop driving.  (Or breathing or blinking or pooping.)  I can't stop a lot of those things, and its my own stupid fault for attaching an association with smoking to just about every single life activity.  But I do find that I want to smoke significantly less when I do the things I normally do, but do them differently.  For example, make your coffee differently.  I have stopped using sugar and started using milk.  The lack of sweet taste doesn't make me want to supplement it with a cigarette.  My mouth will already taste like an asshole, and there's no need to add to it.  

In the car?  Take a different route.  Or go to a different store.  When you're not on autopilot, your mind is thinking way more about where you're going and how you're going to get there, and way less about filling the time it takes to get there with a gross smoking stick of death.  Mmmm...deathstick. 

Remind yourself of why you feel like complete shit.  Did you know that nicotine takes over the regulation of your blood sugar?  Your body stops doing it on its own because the nicotine is doing it for you.  Here's a fantastic article about the whys and hows.  

Nicotine Withdrawal and Blood Sugar

This gives us a clue though, on how to understand ourselves and stay quit.  It is the same with deep breathing.  Half of what makes us so calm when smoking a cigarette is that we're using it to regulate our breath.  This article explains why we start to experience tiredness, irritability, headache, anxiety, and inability to concentrate....on...um...here is a picture of a puppy wearing a hat.

Don't trust your brain for at least 72 hours.

No, seriously.  Because even though your logical mind knows you want to give up a bad habit for the overall health and betterment of yourself and everyone around you, the rest of your mind, the predominant part, and really, the much, much louder part, is doing this:

Its lying to you!!!  Because when you follow it like a dog to the smell of pork chop and light one up, it turns into this:

Every. Time. 

Write a letter to your addiction.

So, a couple weeks ago, my friend got me into this show called "My Strange Addiction."  These are people who are addicted to furry conventions, blow up dolls, eating couch cushions, sleeping with their blow dryer...kind of makes me feel better about just being a smoker.  There was even one guy who routinely ate champagne glasses and live ammunition.  Don't let this lead you to the rationalization, however, that if people are surviving the consumption of couches, glass, and bullets, your smoking habit isn't so bad.  I refer you to the previous paragraph.

Anyway, the blow dryer lady went to see a shrink, who recommended that she write a farewell letter to her addiction.  And while it was certainly humerus to read "dear blow dryer addiction", I think there may just be some truth and usefulness to that idea.  I'm going to do just that, right now, so you, the reader, can witness my adieu to addiction. 

Dear Cigarette Addiction:

I'm grateful for the time you spent in my life.  I feel that the added action of socially holding a smoking stick in my hand along with other people really brought some conversations together.  But, you smell pretty bad, and could quite possibly end me.  

I'm ready to say goodbye.  It's been nice knowing you, but as Charles Lamb wrote in his Farewell to Tobacco, "For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die."

An Ode to Broken Homes

I love my parents.  I really do.  They probably don't know it, because I'm not very good at saying it, or even expressing it most of the time.  But the two people who combined their DNA 29 years ago to create me are pretty interesting, funny, quirky, and loving people.  They do the best they can with what they've got, and I'm lucky to have inherited some of their many talents to make up for having also inherited some of their many anxieties. 

But I've always been of the mind that it takes a village to raise a child.  Most of us nowadays come from what experts like to call a "broken home."  I think that terminology is totally bullshit, because when my parents got divorced when I was 11 years old, not only was my home not broken, but I got to have two homes.  That is way, way cooler than one.  That's two bedrooms, two refrigerators, two televisions, two dinner tables, two dial up computers and two landlines (shut up, I'm old, okay?) - two places to feel at home.  It also meant two Christmases, two birthdays, two Thanksgivings, and two parents competing with each other for a while to be the most awesome parent in the world.  You unlucky folks from intact homes only had one of all of those things.  You were missing out!

Another thing us "broken home" kids usually eventually end up with is two more parents.  Not all divorcees remarry, but lets face it, most do.  Especially if they have children leftover that they have to continue raising despite the fact that their lives have just been turned upside down. 

My mother remarried a few years later, an older man named Jack.  (Ironically the same name as my father!) Your classic Jewish Air Force retiree hailing from the Bronx, NY, the man has never been afraid to tell it like it is, even if you didn't want to hear it.  Which I didn't, because if you didn't catch the age I mentioned, well, this poor man married a woman raising a teenager.  My mom is pretty cool, but looking at teenagers today, I wonder if he was not slightly insane.  Then again, insanity is a pretty static quality in my family, which I'm totally okay with.  While my mother was fussing over my fragile teenage mental state, probably fearing I couldn't adapt to the massive change my life had recently endured, Jack was the Cesar Milan of teenager rearing.  If I threw a fit and caused a dramatic scene, he essentially would snap me out of it with a metaphorical "tsst!" (While my mother was on the phone with the closest child psychologist.)  I was a pretty normal teenager for all intents and purposes.  I may not be a normal human being overall, but I certainly wasn't immune to cries for attention, hormonal imbalances, and general asshattery that kids, especially girls, between the ages of 13 and 18 like to inflict on their unsuspecting parents who I'm sure are wondering what alien being has eaten and replaced their calm, level headed 12-year-old. 

My favorite anecdote about my retarded behavior and my step-father is the day my mother went to run some errands and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to go sit in the coat closet and scream my little heart out.  I haven't the foggiest idea why I would do this, but I'm sure at the time it was an ingrained sense of "mommy will make it all better".  Because she did!  At that age, you begin to feel like an adult, but you aren't completely weaned off of the idea that when you cry, mom picks you up and holds you.  (Some people never wean off that idea, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, within reason of course!)  But, my mother wasn't home, and Jack, who had raised a teenager before me (see why he might have been slightly insane?), came over to the closet, opened the door, and said "knock it the fuck off."  Then he closed the door and went back to his computer.  

I stopped immediately.  After all, what was the point anymore?  Nobody was going to come rescue me, and upon further evaluation, what the hell was I expecting to be rescued from, anyway?  I was just a kid sitting in a coat closet, feeling like an idiot.  I never, ever did that again.  I didn't need a therapist.  I didn't need a hug. What I needed was a person willing to kick my ass when I deserved it.  Thank GOD my mom married just that.

On the other side of the coin, my father remarried a much younger woman named Heidi.  They met while both working for the Rochester Philharmonic, which ironically is where my parents also met in the first place. My mother was a french horn player.  My father was a bass player, now retired.  Heidi was a viola player, and occasionally still is!  He was 50, and she was 25.  And while some people shook their heads and whispered, I thought it was awesome.  It was like having the big sister I'd never had, and a few years into their marriage, they also gave me the little sister I'd never had!  While teenagers certainly do need their asses kicked a good deal of the time, they also need a trusted adult to talk to that will understand them and keep their secrets (provided they are not dangerous secrets).  No teenage girl goes to mommy for advice.  And as kind hearted as my mother is, she can be a bit overbearing.  No offense mom!  So where did I take my drama, dilemmas, and other aforementioned teenage asshattery when I couldn't take it to my mom?  Straight to my step-mom!  She was there to fill the other gap in my life, the adult friend that no teenager can find in their parents.  I told her absolutely everything, and due to the lack of age gap, she absolutely understood. 

There were times that I would pull some stupid stunt that I swear if my son ever pulls, I'll open a can of whoop-ass, and while my mother sought therapists, my step-father told me to shut the hell up, and my father remained as blissfully unaware as he possibly could (he's a sweet man, but I think undeveloped human beings frighten him), my step-mom would be the one asking me point blank, "why would you feel the need to do that?"  And there were just as many times where I needed a calm, rational, friend-approach to make me think, "hmm, why would I feel the need to do that, anyway?" as there were times I needed a good verbal ass-kicking.  

Don't get me wrong - my parents are great people.  And great parents.  My mother has gone above and beyond what I see most moms do these days, and my dad, well, he worked his ass off to put food on the table and wood on the fire.  But at the peak developmental ages of any child, especially me, there was no way I was taking any advice from the people who birthed me.  That is so totally lame, ya know?  But nearly the same exact things, perhaps phrased a little differently, coming from the mouth of somebody else - now that advice is golden.  

I also need to state that after dealing with me for enough years to see what she was getting herself into, my step-mom went ahead and had my sister, who is now 15.  So maybe she was a wee bit insane as well. ;)

But then again, so am I.  Because I'm a mother now, of a 3.5-year-old boy.  Enough of a challenge now, although its fun and I love him to pieces.  I know when he becomes a teenager, myself and his step-father are going to have our hands full.  We also are insane enough to want one or two more!  Go figure.  Digressing, my child, being a product of a "broken home" and all, has not just your average two sets of grandparents.  He has five.  Not all of them are in our lives, for reasons maybe I'll touch on in another blog some day.  But he has my four parents, and Stefan's mother, actively in his life.  As well as my sister, and Stefan's sister and brother, aunt, and uncle!  All of whom he loves dearly and considers family, regardless of whether they share a blood type.  The more influences in a child's life, the better, because it really does take a village to raise a well-rounded, kind-hearted, tolerant, intelligent individual.  And although Stefan is technically not his father, he is certainly his dad.  I never asked him to fill the role, but he stepped up in much the same way my step-parents did, without being asked.  Its certainly partially thanks to him that I feel this child and our future children will turn out a-okay.  

Well, maybe with a touch of insanity.

Just like the rest of us.

Poecilodrama

Those of you who know me know that I really like bugs, and in particular, I really like arachnids.  I have what some people would consider a sizable collection of tarantulas (but yet what most hobbyists would consider a totally dinky collection of tarantulas).  Up until recently, I didn't have enough confidence to trust myself to work with what we call "Old World" tarantulas.  Although no one on record has ever died from a tarantula bite, those from the Old World, aka anywhere that isn't part of the American continents, pack a bit more of a punch than those from our New World.  Being a working mother, I knew I couldn't afford to be laid up for three to five days vomiting, pooping, sweating, and being generally whiny and pathetic due to a spider bite, so I decided to wait until I was absolutely ready before delving into the dark side of arachnophilia.

But when I finally realized that I had enough experience under my belt, I also realized that I really wanted one of these:

(photo courtesy of bighairyspiders.com)

What we pretentious asshat Latin speaking folk call a Poecilotheria rufilata, and what you way less awesome laymen would call a "Red Slate Ornamental."  (Don't ask me why, because they are clearly not even a little bit red.  This is why we speak Latin, people.)

Because A.) They're green.  B.) They're perdy.  And C.) They're green!

Before I continue, I feel I have to point out to you non-tarantula-keeping vast majority of the population the fact that just because a spider is from the Old World and has a potent bite, it does not mean this makes them more likely to bite.  I did more research than could fit in my mushy little brain before I spent money on something that could seriously injure me, and Poecis aren't the type of tarantula that want to eat your face off.  They are shy, prefer to run and hide, and bite reports from them are rather rare unless you're one of those people with something to prove by having to post pictures all over the internet of your perfectly tame venom-mobile chillin' on your hand.

That said, it really didn't make me any less nervous.  God gave them more than just knock-your-socks-off biting ability.  S/he gave them an even more heart pounding attribute: the ability to teleport.  And if there's anything more scary than the downtime I'd experience taking a bite from a spooked Poeci, its the idea of having to chase one moving at warp speed all over the house with a deli cup before my non-tarantula-loving counterpart got home from work.

Here are some step by step instructions for how to bite off more than you can chew, and learn to adapt to the circumstance.

Step one: Get drunk and order a Poecilotheria rufilata.

Step two: Receive said spider in the mail, and proceed to unpack it and house it into an incredibly awesome beautiful realistic looking enclosure where you am certain it will forget the plastic walls and believe itself to be back in India where her people hail from.  (What I really mean by this is, put packing materials into the enclosure after chewing off all of my nails, while an amused friend sits in the bathroom with me on top of the toilet waiting to laugh at my first dumbass mistake.)

Step three:  A day later, feed the beast!  (This was so cool, watching her chase a cricket all over the place.)

Step four:  Discover the bolus of said cricket hanging out on the side of the enclosure, and judging by the size of it and the body language of your pet, realize that she really, really wants it out of there.  (A bolus, by the way, is like the sandwich-crust of tarantula lunchtime.  And over time, if you leave it laying around your house, it will rot and attract gross things, like mites.)

Step five:  Lock your bathroom down like Fort Knox.  Get 10 inch tweezers.  Open container and proceed to try to extract bolus.

Step six:  Fail miserably.  Your spider has actually wedged the bolus between a thick piece of cork bark and the curves of the plastic container, in a location so tight, even your tweezers can't open once you get them in there.  Meanwhile, the spider you were so nervous about sits patiently still and watches you suck at life.  Eventually the bolus gets pushed down more and more until its buried in the substrate.

Step seven:  Curse a little, and then decide your spider looks hungry.

Step eight:  Roaches are delicious.  So you get a perfectly sized roach in your tweezers and drop it right next to your lean, mean, green machine, who gets so excited about food that she turns around and stands on it.  Meanwhile, your roach will play dead just long enough for your tarantula to forget what it was doing and let its guard down so the damn thing can burrow to the bottom of the dirt, never to be seen again.

Step nine:  Get the brilliant idea to flood the roach out.  Your spider likes humidity anyway, and at that size has no water dish.  What'll it hurt to wet the substrate, right?  You're a genius.  Flood the substrate, and Voila!  Congratulations, you have created a swamp with a rotting cricket bolus and likely a drowned roach.  You're considering just redoing the entire enclosure, but remember the fact that you're working with a teleporting ouch-factory.

Step ten: Say fuck it and order some isopods.

****

Go ahead, its okay to laugh at me.  After this experience, though, I am far less nervous about working with this particular spider.  He or she was wonderful throughout the entire ordeal, sitting in mostly one place as calm as could be, while probably laughing her little spider butt off at how badly I suck.  She was perfectly cooperative, and gave me nothing to be afraid of.

Before I conclude this episode of failure, I don't want to leave you with a negative view of this wonderful hobby and the people and animals in it, just because I was a tiny bit afraid of a little one inch Poeci.  (Did I mention she's only one inch?  Shut up, peanut gallery.)  The vast majority of tarantulas, and arachnids in general including true spiders (of the order Araneae), scorpions, solfugae, and anything else classified therein - are far more afraid of you than you could ever be of them.  Many are gentle and docile and don't seem to mind, perhaps even enjoy, being held.  Others are shy and flighty, and would far prefer to run into the sanctity of their burrow than ever lay a fang on you.  While all spiders and scorpions posess venom, very few are actually deadly to humans.  The venom is mostly there for the ability to incapacitate their prey.  There are of course the occasional exceptions to this rule, but as long as you take the proper precautions for your situation, they are truly not an animal you have to worry about at any point in your life.

To prove that there are indeed big hairy spiders that have no issues living peacefully side by side with us bigger scary humans, here are a few pictures of some of mine, fully tolerating my love for them.

An Open Book

One of the goals of this blog is to be completely honest about everything possible, including myself.  I intend to keep negativity off here as much as possible (but you know, can't have the good without the bad sometimes, right?), but if there is an ugly truth about myself or my life, I won't hesitate to tell it like it is.  If it bothers you to read, remember that even an ugly truth is more beautiful than the prettiest lie.

I've never believed much in privacy.  I run my Facebook page much like a true news feed.  No, I don't post what I had for dinner (although as Stefan lovingly pointed out, I do sometimes post what my pets had for dinner, which may or may not be even worse).  But like the news, it is open to the public.  Like the old adage, "the people have a right to know," I feel that if you are going to put yourself in the public eye, (and lets face it, the internet is as in-the-public-eye as you can get) you cannot expect privacy.  You have to be unashamed.  You have to be an open book.

And if there is something you don't want anyone to know about, you don't say it.  Because saying anything on the internet, regardless of privacy settings, is like standing on the empire state building with a megaphone, and if you really don't want people to know what you had for dinner, you're shit out of luck.

This is why I did away with privacy.  It goes against everything I stand for.  If I ever do keep anything about myself quiet, it is only in order to protect others who might be negatively affected to an unmanageable degree.  (Being butt-hurt about something does not count!)

Therefore, here - like everywhere else in my life - I am an open book.  I am unashamed, unabridged, and unaccommodating.  And no matter what the truth costs you, remember that the truth will also set you free!

And being free is priceless. 

Welcome to my world..

So here it is - my very first blog.  I have created this to share my various projects throughout the year, and the progress they make!  

Stefan and I bought our first house near the end of 2012, and this will be the first year I spend in a home that could very well be permanent, or at least long-lasting.  We will raise our children here, experience trials and tribulations as well as make extraordinary memories.  We are working parents, keeping up on a house, a family, and our jobs, while still having to find the time to appreciate one another, and ourselves!  Having lived in many places before, this chapter of our lives differs from all the others in that we are solely responsible for every aspect of this life now - we have each other and a will to build a legacy. We have truly thrust ourselves once and for all into the * ominous music*...Real World.

Every day is a new possibility, and an adventure.  I hope to share these adventures with you!

**

Come February, I will be doing a 28 day project : 28 days of recipes.  Right smack in the middle of my 365 days of 2013 photo project with, you guessed it, a photo a day!  The photo-a-day project can easily be followed on facebook, my URL being www.facebook.com/phazoninjected (who says I can't hold onto my roots in the real world?)  Each day in February I will be sharing a recipe.  It will either be something I invented, something I found online, something that has lived in my family for generations, or even my take on any simple classic favorite.  From lunches and breakfasts to dinners, snacks, and smoothies, every day will have something new.  I'll share the recipe, step by step instructions, and a photo tutorial of the process, one for every day of the month.

Any suggestions for what to do with the rest of the months of the year are welcome!

Until next time, I will be sharing the best of the photos I have amassed so far this year.  To see the others, feel free to follow the project on facebook.  

Happy trails, reader.