I used to be so afraid of spiders. I couldn’t even be in the same room with one. The Pacific Northwest is a place full of giant brown spiders, arachnids the size of sand dollars, who don’t spin webs but rather lurk on high ceilings and get trapped in white bathtubs. I remember the way they curl their legs when they die, pointing feet at thoraxes. I am freaking myself out just thinking about this.

Anyway, I was just cleaning out my bedroom closet, putting clothes into long flat boxes. Being reminded of how many cute skirts I own, many of which should truly be hemmed. Having a very shitty and small closet, as I do, it is very easy to lose clothes, to forget what I have available to me, and end up in jeans every day. It’s just a regular doorway, and the width of it stretches off behind the wall, hidden, like the portal into Narnia. I pulled out my selection of cute dresses, irritated at myself for neglecting them so.

I lifted my wedding gown from the back of the closet, safely zipped into its heavy fabric garment bag. Opened the zipper just a little and gazed at the ivory satin and pretty embroidered champagne bodice. Ah. Still love it. I put it into a box with sets of bedsheets, labeled the box, hoped hard it makes it to WA.

Further back in the closet and on the ground, a sturdy paper bag of records. Not many, and few of any value (original presses of Kill Rock Stars compilations, and a green test pressing of Green Day’s first major label record, “Dookie”). I picked up a wad of tissue paper and saw a big black spider skitter loose and crawl into a shoebox full of discarded cosmetics. Shit.

Still in the furthest corner, my old beer box of seven inch singles. I kicked at it but was too scared to reach in and pull it out. I think I will wait. I am a baby.

I have a big pile of clothes on the bed to donate. Crossroads won’t take them, I know that. Ah, money wasted, back in the days when one of my employment benefits was cheap clothing. Oh well. As Brian would say, it’s just money.