On winning the spider web war: Last Friday, a friend stopped by

... and I was on the phone, a conference call at the end of an historic week of work.  Some sixty stories for one client.  Magazine articles for another.  A keynote to write.  An interview to conduct with a pretty cool editor of Gen Y novels (look for the link later this week).  All completed with the mumbling mouth of a recent gum graft refugee. 

The point is, I hadn't cleaned.  I had (is this still the term for it?  does Urban Dictionary have something better?) let things go.  I had left things to the endless arms of compulsive spiders who had decided to knit me a pair of curtains here, a nice little table covering here.  It was all such loveliness in its own right, but it was even lovelier when the sun shined upon the spider's handiwork, illuminating all, adding a few spectral sunshiny reflective colors for fun. 

And then, like I said, a friend stopped by.

I was h o r r i f i e d.  Found out.  Exposed.  My poor friend could barely hide her surprise that her formerly compulsively clean neighbor had yielded her home to vicious animals.  Beth Kephart has given up.  That's what my once-neighbor almost said.

But I am here to report that I am making things right.  I have gotten down on my knees.  I have mopped, ragged, swiped.  I have arranged flowers.  I have dragged the vacuum cleaner from end to end of my tiny house.  I have asserted myself.  I have, until the spiders weave again, won.

Beth Kephart has not given up.  Yet.