So I find myself in my mother’s living room at 4 AM, supposedly sleeping on the sofa, while my mother is out cold in her recliner, sleeping to the faint sounds of early morning weirdness from PBS. Somehow the scene reminds me of one from a Beavis and Butthead episode.

So much for the theory of me going somewhere where my coughing won’t disturb anybody.

Still, she’s a trooper and seems to be able to sleep through all but the worst of my hacking. (Ironically, my cold has shifted gears into the dehydration phase, so the hacking is somewhat limited.) I keep expecting her to wake up and go to bed, but nope, she’s good where she is apparently.

I, on the other hand, am awake at 4 AM. I’d blame the TV, but the reality is that i rarely sleep my first night in a strange place. And at 4 in the morning, it feels stranger than most.

I love road trips.  There’s nothing quite like piling your essential shit into the car, grabbing a friend or three, and heading off into the great, wide yonder.

[Game voice chattering]

Aack: blah, blah, blah, plot, blah, blah, blah

Me: How’s it going?

Aack: They want me to pretend I’m a slave, so I left all my stuff, but they kept attacking me. So the hell with the plot, I’m gonna kill them all and let god sort em out.

[Aack reloads her game]

[Silence. After a moment, the sound of violence.]

Aack [loudly and distressed]: They took my shit! [Pauses for a moment, then sounding incredulous] They took my shit!!

Aack: VSC, they took my shit!

[I snicker]

Aack: It’s not funny, they took my shit! You don’t understand, at this level, I had some really good shit!!

[Clatter of keys]

Aack [to herself]: I’ll show those fuckers. I’m gonna get my shit and fuck them up.

[a few minutes of silence other than the occasional mouse click and keyboard clatter.]

Aack: oh shit.

Me: what?

Aack: I loaded my saved game, and dropped off my shit in town so they couldn’t steal it, but I did it a scene too early, and now I’m running around in my underwear.

—–

[gunfire]

[explosion]

[Aack laughing]

Aack: Ohhh… [giggling] Whoops. An escaped slave accidentally ran over a grenade and blew up. [explosion. Aack laughs until she snorts] There goes another one.

—–

I love this game. Specifically, I love Aack playing this game

But that’s not nearly as funny as the vacation from hell parts.

I packed up my stuff and cleaned up a bit, all without seeing the spider in question.

Until I went to empty the garbage can.  Sitting right on top of the garbage was the spider.  (Admittedly, in daylight, and NOT JUMPING ON ME, the spider was smaller than I remember, and turned out to be brown, not black.)

That was the end of me emptying the garbage.

Later on it was requested that I put the garbage can outside so the spider could leave.  I took the can outside, and as my last act of “communing with nature”, I dumped the can out, shook the spider out of the can and over the edge of the deck, and picked up the garbage.

The little fucker had built a web inside an empty toilet paper tube.

I’m ready to go home.

I went to bed late (around 4 AM).  Last stop before bed: the bathroom.  As I turn to close the bathroom door, this gigantic, beefy black spider launches itself from the vicinity of the toilet, LANDS ON MY CHEST, then launches itself back into the vicinity of the toilet.

I used the other bathroom.

I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.

Note: they only do this when The Squirrel is not around.

For the second day in a row we went out on the boat, cruising around the lake, trying to use up the last of the fuel. We stopped at Part Time Point again (still an island), and took a swim out to the buoys. Last time we were there I found a small fish which seemed to be living in or around the buoy. I wanted to see if it was still there. After sitting quietly for a few minutes, the fish appeared and swam around me. Yay!

My compatriots were at the next buoy out. As I swam over to join them, I saw a bug, trapped on its back because it’s wings were stuck on the surface tension of the water. I wasn’t sure what to do about this because I couldn’t tell if it was a bee or a bee mimic. (A type of fly that looks like a bee.) I was trying to get a better look when all of a sudden a small fish came up from the depths, and mostly swallowed the insect in question. I say mostly swallowed, because the butt end (where the stinger could possibly be) was sticking out of it’s mouth. And then the little fucker turned and swam straight at me.

Suffice to say there was a LOT of screaming and flailing. (I’ve never been stung by a bee and I don’t intend to start now, thank you very much.)

At that point I was done with the water, but the fish weren’t done with me. A small german speckled trout decided I was its new home, and spent 50 yards or so hanging out in the crook of my arm, in my cleavage, and being shooed away from my nether regions. Any flailing resulted in the fish disappearing for a moment, before it came back to hang out again. It was very cool.