Tarantula

On showers, German Shepherds, and black and tan brownies.

Jennifer Ann Blair writes. Food, wine, a German Shepherd named Archie, and whatever the day brings.

I walked to the back room.

How is it 2 pm and the bed is still unmade?

Folded shorts piled on my arm, shirts that need to be hung, rolled over the pants, quietly wrinkling directly out of the dryer. The room smells like attic air, the AC overhead doing its best, rose geranium lavender lotion, and essential oils from the laundry, and underneath all of it, Archie. He needs a bath. He won’t go near water voluntarily, which means I have to chase him around the yard with a hose. He loves every minute of it. I do not.

Some days seem simpler, slower. Today is not that day.

The sun is sinking in from the west at 100 degrees. Ah, the bed. Always undone. I drop the laundry on the bathroom counter, scoot over to pull the gray sheets that were once white up over the pillows, tuck them in, and tidy the blanket so it looks like an adult lives here, not a hot mess. Who’s going to see it anyway? Just me.

Back to the clothes. I should shower.

My scattered brain is all over the place. Studying for wine tests, trying to remember every winemaking tool, all the steps needed to establish a vineyard, how a particular machine works. Really, all I want to do is drink the wine. A glass of Endless Crush Rosé of Pinot Noir from Inman Family Wines, pale, ballet-pink, crisp acidity, ruby red grapefruit and honeysuckle and watermelon, while sitting in the vineyard. The rest of it is science. Important, yes, I suppose. But my creative brain prefers taste, feeling, aroma, connection, memory, ritual. The stories are so much more interesting than the machinery.

Anyway. Shower.

The people who lived here before me, lunatics, I say this with love, had issues with doors and windows and removed all of them, including the shower doors. Which is why there’s a curtain. Organic cotton, sapphire design, white and sage, five years old. I lean toward the shower, pull the curtain, drag it to the right to make room, and barely turn the water on, just a trickle warming up, when I JUMP.

Is that a tarantula?

OMG OMG OMG.

WAIT.

Is that Archie?

That is my dog. Curled up in the back corner of the shower, his paws the only thing visible from where I stood. Black, tan, white, and fluffy. The tile was cool. The skylight pours heat in during the afternoon, which is exactly why spiders love this shower, and apparently, so does a 90-pound German Shepherd who needed somewhere to think.

I stood there hyperventilating.

He was warm on his ears when he finally got up. The top of him quite warm. He stretched, one long, slow, unbothered stretch, then walked straight out of the back of the shower, across the tile in front of me, out of the bathroom, and directly onto the bed. The one I had just made.

He didn’t apologize.

I stood there, still panting, laughing out loud at nothing. That’s when the idea came. Make brownies. Dark and unsettling and surprisingly welcome, just like the thing I thought had taken up squatting in my shower for the afternoon.

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Jennifer Ann Blair writes about living. Food, wine, memory, and whatever the day puts on the table. All essays are free at jenniferannblair.com.

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