It came in through the bathroom window

The joys of summer!

Just now in the bathroom there was the world's biggest spider. It must have measured three inches across! Luckily it was the delicate spidery kind, not the big hairy meaty kind. Isn't that disgusting, to think of a meaty spider? That was the word Howard came up with. Howard says from my description the spider was a Daddy Long Legs.

Well, I stood there in Leonard Pennario's bathrobe looking at this Daddy Long Legs. Then I turned to get a wad of, ahem, bathroom tissue with which to squash it.

That is a phrase I love, bathroom tissue.

But then I turn around. And the thing is gone!

How can a spider like that just disappear?

But it did!

I hope it did not into the cosmetics drawer. If you see me running around without any makeup in the next few days, looking like some kind of hippie...

... that will be the reason.

On the other hand I do not enjoy killing these creatures and I have a kind of affinity toward big animals. I like big dogs best, elephants, the buffalo at the zoo. The German word for buffalo is great. It is Buffel!

So it is just as well the spider disappeared.

One thing, though: Spiders are not cute, I do not care about "Charlotte's Web." When the movie "Charlotte's Web" came out a few years ago, I remember thinking: It is an uphill battle to try to make Charlotte cute. I am sorry but it is. And giving it the voice of Julia Roberts does not help.

While I guess Julia Roberts has certain things going for her a nice voice is not one of them. Once my dad saw her interviewed on a talk show and could not get over how badly spoken she was.

"Y'know," he would imitate Julia Roberts saying.

Well, let me get past this spider thing. This is not indicative of how the day will go. After all I am wearing a great pianist's bathrobe and you know what else? It turns out the letter to Vladimir Ashkenazy was not the letter stamped ignobly by yesterday's deranged post office clerk.

But zut alors, the letter was going to British actor James Fox. He has an OBE. That is Order of the British Empire and you cannot send members of the Order of the British Empire envelopes with stamps half on and half off.

Problems, I have problems!

And they all started with that spider this morning.