Ugh…

Here’s something both sad and gross: A few moments ago, as I sat on my tuffet, typing away about Victorians, a spider came along and hung out very close to the tuffet. I’m currently in a phase where I am trying to spare the lives of innocent spiders, but it was so big and scary, and it is two in the morning, so I dropped a book on it. It squooshed, and then zillions to teeny-tiny spiders spilled out all over our floor—like black dandelion fluff on a windy day. I had to kill them too. It doesn’t make me happy. It’s kind of disgusting, and I feel bad for the spider(s), and I’m a little scared of going to hell. As a child, my conception of hell was spending eternity with all the spiders I had killed. Since then, I’ve been exposed to more sophisticated theological propositions, but those formative beliefs tend to stick with you.