We’re accidentally living with a cellar spider who moved in sometime before the holidays. I’d had the back door open for a while so I could bring in decorations from the storage closet, and it decided that the bottom portion of our stairway looked like a nice new home. I can’t blame it because we really do have a cute little stairway, especially at the bottom because there’s one yellow wall and a self-portrait of Eli hanging above the coatrack. I thought it was a harvestman spider and that it would die soon enough without me killing it. Both of these theories have proven false. It’s a cellar spider and it’s thriving. I can’t find it to catch it, but it keeps building these spooky webs in the corners of my ceiling. I’m not necessarily bothered by the spider (I haven’t researched whether or not I should be terrified because ignorance is bliss/I’m busy), but I wanted to tell you about it now in case this escalates into a full-scale cellar spider invasion, like Arachnophobia or something, and then I bring it up and you’re like, “why didn’t you tell us you were living with a cellar spider??”
Here are some things we missed while I was vacuuming spider webs.
You Should Go or Do or Give
+ Support Geek Loves Punk: A Comedy About a Lesbian Geek and Her Friends!
Queer as in F*ck You
+ Facebook Rolling Out Suicide Prevention and New Gender Options.
+ Michelle Garia brings us Seven Queer Women Making Sure We All Know That #BlackLivesMatter.
+ I didn’t realize Andrew W.K. had an advice column because I live high atop a truffula tree, but here he is giving solid, loving advice to a trans woman: Ask Andrew W.K. — How Do I Make My Family Understand I’m Transgender?
+ Nebraska Lifts Ban on Gay People Being Foster Parents.
+ 34 Countries In Europe Make This Nightmare for Trans People a Reality.
+ A.J. Campbell has Queer Jewish Women Need to Create Their Own Spaces.
+ First Lesbian Kiss on South Korean TV Sparks Complaints.
Doll Parts
+ How Issa Rae Learned Her Worth.
+ Stef really loved this and then so did I so here it is, a gift. I’ve Gotta Take This: Ladies On Landlines from my new favorite place, Grown Ass Lady.
+ Angela Davis’s Legacy of Collective Solidarity by Jenevieve Ting.
+ Elori Kramer would like to introduce you to One of New York’s Only Two Female Iron Workers.
+ Oh wow, the many levels on which I relate to this: A Queer Feminist Hears Sleater-Kinney for the Very First Time Live at Terminal 5 by Rebecca Weinberger, my new friend crush.
+ Caty Simon interviewed Monica Jones for Tits and Sass: Nothing Scarier Than a Black Trans Woman With a Degree.
Saw This, Thought of You
+ This should probably go in the LLL, but maybe you don’t read the LLL (I’m not here to pass judgment), and maybe you don’t think of yourself as the kind of person who gives a single shit about Miranda July, and maybe you’re right, but also maybe you’re wrong. So here’s Our Date with Miranda July by Lorrie Moore for The NY Review of Books. Read ittttt.
+ Why Is It So Hard to Prove a Civil Rights Crime? Damn but this is a depressing read/reality.
+ Fascinating: What Blogging Has Become.
+ Heralded by Laura as “the smartest thing I’ve read about racism in the US in 2015,” here’s How Liberalism and Racism Are Wed.
+ Goddamnit why didn’t I write this. Girl Scout Cookie Wine Pairings by Kristin Hunt.
Local Autostraddle Meet-Ups
NOTHING.
And Finally
A project for when the sun starts shining in your towns and cities again! Use the sun to print photos onto fabric. IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES.
Thanks for that Lorax reference on such an appropriate day :) Also, the photo printing kit looks like fun!
<3 <3 <3
Can I tell you my best spider story?
My son’s tarantula escaped one day. We found her in the back bedroom near a window. We captured her and put her back in her cage, but she escaped again. This time the window was open and when we couldn’t find her, we assumed she had gone out.
Five weeks later in my kitchen, in the corner, I saw what had to be the dead body. I felt terrible, the spider had to have hydrated. I walked over to pick up her corpse and she crawled away!
That means for more than a month I had a free range spider crawling around in my house, probably on my face at night. Not cool.
well sara i hadn’t considered that the spider might be crawling on my face at night so this has been a REAL TREAT.
did you ever find the tarantula??
I caught her that day in the kitchen! Once I knew she was still creepy crawling around, I had to lock her up.
She’s a good guard spider, though! She kept half the house safe when whoever broke in was afraid to pass her tank to explore the rest of the house.
Dagnabit, my picture didn’t work.
wait your spider story keeps getting better!
Unless it ends with “we burned down the house and salted the earth,” I’m not going to ever feel better.
Present Me is now hysterical and twitchy on behalf of Past You.
Future me isn’t going to sleep tonight.
the landline article! that really took me back to a simpler time when i thought all i needed to be a successful badass boss lady was the right telephone. when i was really small, i would play with my mom’s broken telephone non-stop and answer: “hello. this is betty” (which was my sitter’s name) over and over with all the authority and importance i could muster. i was basically running shit from that phone. and then later in life, there was clarissa’s aspirational landline phone which led to hours in my room with a hot glue gun and a complete disregard for safety and order. never did achieve the look i was going for but a nine-year-old on a mission for ultimate coolness needs to do what she needs to do you know?
OH MY GOD LOMY
i did a clarissa phone in 5th grade with my dad’s help and won a freaking 4-h prize for it, which i my friend jennifer had to accept on my behalf because i was home sick with shingles!! BUT THE POINT IS i used that phone for seriously yearrrrrrs and it was the highlight of my life!
what if you made a podcast called “hello this is betty”.
+1 for “hello this is betty” podcast!
I think I have a spider bite on my neck!
ON YOUR NECK riese you should get this looked at.
what if there was a recurring spider section in the aaa. idk just throwing it out there. now it’s out there! anything could happen.
i feel very excited and pleased about the iron workers article
yeah i would really like to talk about spiders and issues facing spiders more than we do.
In Brazil “spider fight” is slang for lesbian sex.
!
Well, there was that adrenaline junkie spider cartoon…
i think i could make this work.
Elizabeth Henstridge is down with Jemma Simmons getting a girlfriend.
That sounds like a perfect reciprocal relationship: cellar spider catches flies, and you provide a warm home and cute stairway.
yes this is basically my thinking.