Blake's new favorite spot is a large square box that 60 packets of instant oatmeal (Maple & Brown Sugar, Cinnamon & Spice, Apples & Cinnamon, and Regular) came in. He has always loved bags and boxes, and this box is the best yet. He explores to the back corner and nests; he chews his doorway bigger; he stumps around in adolescent pouts and sings his puny yellow head off. He acts all protective of his territory, at least until all the lights go off when he begins to huff.

So anyway, now we call him the Buddy in a Box, and tonight RDC started to torment him by telling him that no child wants to play with a Buddy-in-the-Box. That always sets me off. Damn conformity. "Why didn't Santa know there were children who wouldn't mind playing with a Charley-in-the-Box?" I demanded. (No one's ever suggested anything visibly wrong with the doll, either.)
RDC pointed out, "He's not omniscient, you know."
"That's right. He didn't know that Bumbles bounce."
"If he were omniscient, he wouldn't need a list or to check it twice, would he?"
My mind reeled. My world quaked. Santa's not omniscient.

Barbie called while RDC was in the shower. I suggested we gossip until he got out. "Okay," she started, "Do you know we have something of yours?"
"Noooo," I replied, ruminating upon whatever I might have left at her house.
"It's your black bra and tank top from Halloween."
"I wondered where that bra had got to. Not like my wild nonmonogamous days when losing the odd bra was part of the game."
"Ah yes..."
Underwear stories. Lisa's Panties. No, Lisa's Lingerie, for the alliterative effect.

In grad school I had a fleeting fling with a man I met through a bookstore coworker. They knew each other through Gold's Gym. But 'Lando told me Keith was really intelligent and good to talk to, and I liked 'Lando, so I gave Keith a try. It was a beautiful September day, the first Sunday of autumn, and we drove down to my beach and swam and talked and walked. We went to a lecture on medieval timekeeping, to which I would have invited no one else of my acquaintance who wasn't going anyway. Anyway, I ended up leaving a navy blue bra at his place, which I reminded him of in time for our next tryst, at Cup o' Sun. He brought the bra, but he brought the thing in a brown paper lunch bag.

Barbie laughed, agreeing that that was insulting and immature. Yep.

RDC got out of the shower and put his bathrobe before taking the phone, which of course I narrated to Barbie; she mocked offense in turn.

Who talked about the regenerative properties of flushed spiders? I believe in that as well, but the freakier way spiders propagate is in the vacuum cleaner. I had just dragged out the vacuum cleaner one afternoon when Blake shrieked from the top of his cage, so I followed his line of sight to a spider on the ceiling. I detached the carpet sweeper, pointed the hose to the ceiling, and sucked the little octopod up, just like whichever of Auntie Sponge or Auntie Spiker dispatched the Spider's relation. Then I kept the vacuum trained on that same spot of plaster for a few minutes, just to make sure the spider was not in the attachment and not in the hose but was hopefully asphyxiated in the detritus of the bag.

RDC came home in time to see me vacuuming the ceiling. I hadn't known he was spiderologist until just that moment, when he told me how vacuum cleaners affect spiders the same way water does gremlins. Just to make them as horrific as possible, he made sure to describe the metamorphosed things as orange. He knows my weak spots. Now all spiders in the house are the demon spawn of that one vacuum victim.