This is my hand in the spider's mouth.

Thank you for all of your sweet, kind comments on that post. They made it seem okay.

And then, pretty much right after I wrote it, things got worse at work. Really bad. And since it's all I think/pray/talk about, it's hard to think of what to blog about. I don't want to say much.

This week, the fight was out of me. My fate seemed sealed, and I was ready to just quit before it could get any worse. Not fight, not defend myself, even though there was (is) this mountain of injustice. I just wanted to quit and move on. That's what I WANTED to do. That was the only thing it made SENSE to do.

And then I had this dream. It was an answer to prayer (it probably makes me weird that I dream my answers, but I love them.) and I don't want to forget it:

I'm in a kitchen, trying to make a salad, but the bag of lettuce explodes, and it's all over the counters and I'm frustrated. And then I notice there is an ENORMOUS spider on the counter, flipped on its back, its evil legs waggling wildly. It has bright green markings on its tummy. I scream and my mom and little brother, Gavin, come in to see what's wrong. And I am so upset. I'm stomping my feet and begging Gavin to kill it and thinking it's going to murder us all. Then the spider is rightside up, in a corner of the kitchen, the size of a little yappy dog, and Gavin says, "I think this is the kind of spider that likes water."

I dump a glass of water on the spider's head, and it makes the spider really angry. I can tell the spider hates me now, even though I was trying to give it what it wanted. Gavin comes up to it really slowly, and very gently puts his hand its enormous mouth. I am sure the spider is going to bite his hand off. He says, "I think ..." and rubs its tongue a little. I am horrified. "Yeah," says Gavin. "Its tongue is smooth. That means it's harmless." I am flabbergasted. Gavin says, "I think I'm going to keep it."

And then I wake up.

My mom says Gavin hates spiders with the white hot intensity of a thousand burning suns. He's allergic to them, so they can never be friends. And it seemed like, if he could put his hand in the spider's mouth, I could, too.

And I did. Pouting about it the whole way. But I fought.

I still don't think it will do any good.

But I did it.

I was at my office until 11 working on the fight, and when I came home, Sam I went out to rustle up some dinner. Waiting to turn off of our street, I saw a raccoon walking along a telephone wire. It was dainty and sure-footed. I turned, stopped in the street, and looked up at it. He looked down at me with his elegant black eye mask.

This seemed a good sign.