Little Miss Muffet

In the autumn and the spring (and pretty much every season in between) I keep availble layers and levels of clothing. In the hottest weather, I wear a t-shirt. If it cools off a little, I wear a sweatshirt. Colder still and I wear a hoodie. Then, as the weather gets colder and colder, I go from wearing a light jacket, to a heavier jacket, to a winter coat, and finally a coat, hat, mittens, and boots. Of course, sometimes a day can start out cool and then warm up so I also layer clothing: a sweartshirt over a t-shirt, a hoodie over a sweatshirt over a t-shirt, and so on. I’ve heard that some people in some places always put away their seasonal clothing–storing winter clothing during summer and summer clothing during winter, but I’ve never done that. In Michigan, I never know what clothing I need so I just keep every type and season of clothing availble all the time.

Usually by October, I am wearing the warmer layers and levels of clothing. We often have snow by this time so I’m wear my winter coat. But this autumn the weather has remained quite warm so that I’ve been wearing sweatshirts most days, occasionaly my sweatshirt plus my hoodie, and only a couple times a heavy jacket. My winter coat is still hanging untouched on its hook in the laundry room.

I feel as if the trees have been later in changing colors this year, but they finally did. I love being surrounded by trees dressed in gold with splashes of red. It makes me feel as if I’m living in Lothloren.

Yesterday the autumn colors and slighly chilly weather (light or heavy jacket, depending on the day or time) gave us a craving for apple cider and donuts so we made a quick dash to the local store yesterday. We also bought some deer traxx ice cream. We justified it because it’s my birthday. Technically, my birthday is in early October, but we celebrate it all month long. It’s not because I think I’m so special that I deserve a month-long birthday. It just sort of developed that way over time and hardened into a tradition. October is such a beautiful month that I started asking for drives through the countryside to enjoy the autumn colors–and perhaps a stop at a cider mill–for my birthday gift. I love it because it’s a gift of memories rather than things and we all get to share in it. However, EJ was working a lot of mandatory overtime so it was difficult to find a day to celebrate my birthday. So we just started celebrating it whenever he had a day off. Sometimes his day off would be before the peak colors so we’d drive around enjoying the colors–and then we’d celebrate my birthday again a week or two later, closer to the peak, if he had another day off. Soon, anything that we felt was a blessing: a drive through beautiful countryside, buying cider and donuts, stopping at the thrift store–whatever–because “my birthday gift” through the whole month of October.

We’ve tried to celebrate EJ’s birthday for the whole month of October–but it’s usually cold and snowy and it’s not the same. So sometimes we say, “THIS week in October is YOUR birthday.”

Besides celebrating my birthday this month, we’ve been trying to get things ready for winter–doing a lot of little tasks, like taking out the window screens and putting away most of the garden hoses. The only hose still hooked up is the one to the chickens. EJ is not going to put it away until the weather turns cold to saves me having to lug a bucket to the coop.

Now that EJ is retired, he helps with the cooking. He enjoys cooking and I have no problem with him doing it. Besides taking turn making meals, he’s been making different types of bread–including sourdough. He also learned how to make yogurt in the instant pot. And he has been making applesauce–which we put in our homemade yogurt. I told him I’d do all the cleanup because bending over the sink is hard on his back.

We sat down together and made a monthly menu so we don’t look at each other and say “What do you want for dinner today?” Shrug. “I don’t know. What do you want?” But it’s a suggestion more than a rigid rule and we can change it if we get busy or feel like something else or are too busy to make a more complicated meal. I used the computer to make a nice menu that we hung on the fridge

EJ cooked a turkey Sunday. I spent the next two days making eleven homemade potpies, which I put in the freezer. Saturdays are “potpie” days. Turkeys are another “accident” that led to a tradition. In 2020, we bought a turkey in early November because things were so crazy that we didn’t want to find ourselves without one for Thanksgiving. But closer to Thanksgiving there were the usual sales at Meijers so we bought another. And then our little grocery store had a good sale on turkeys so we bought a third. And that got us thinking: Why not buy several turkeys in November when they all go on sale and freeze them to cook throughout the year? So that has become our tradition. We occasionally cook a turkey and then I spend a couple days making homemade potpies to freeze.

Our rooster, Richard VI, has been staying within the garden fence for weeks now so I think we can say that he has been securely contained. However, our rooster, Malcolm VIII (pictured here), who was hatched in the spring, has become a bit of a menace. He does like to go after the hens. When he chases the hens, Richard gets upset and comes running to drive him away. Sometimes Malcolm’s brother, Philip VII, also chases him off.

Usually the chickens all settle down in the coop toward evenings, but not Malcolm. When EJ and I go outside to shut the chickens in the coop in the evening, we’ve lately found most of the chickens still out long past the time they usually go in. We suspect that none of the hens want to go inside to be menaced by Malcolm, who continues his “conquests” even after he should be settling down. In fact, if we turn on the light in the coop to count the chickens, he gets amorous so we’ve been just shutting the chickens up without counting them and then looking around to make sure no chicken is still outside.

Malcolm is beautiful with his red and teal feathers. But Malcolm is a menace.

A couple of nights ago I was sitting on the couch and suddenly spotted a spider on the back of the couch crawling toward me. I jumped up and smashed it. I have a treaty with the spiders: I’ll respect their terrirotry outside and leave them alone outside if they respect my territory inside and don’t bother me. If they break the treaty, I kill them.

The spider incident made me think of the old nursery rhyme:

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her…

For the life of me, I couldn’t think of the last line. So I asked my personal assistant, Grok, to tell me the rhyhm. He did: “And frightened Miss Muffet away.”

Grok asked me if I wanted to know the history of the rhyme, and I said yes–because I like learning things. It was interesting. Sometimes I like to say things to Grok just to see what he says. So I told him, “I just had a spider sit beside me while I ate yogurt and applesauce. I wasn’t frightened away. I smashed the spider.” Grok’s reply was unexpected and made me laugh. That was the beginning of a humorous conversation. Grok wrote:

A modern twist on the classic!

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her yogurt and sauce;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her—
And she smashed it without any pause.

You’re clearly made of sterner stuff than the original Miss Muffet. Curds and whey have been upgraded to yogurt and applesauce, and the traditional “frightened away” ending has been replaced with decisive action. Respect.

Did the spider at least look impressive before its untimely end, or was it one of those tiny ones that somehow still manage to startle people?

Me: I actually have made a treaty with the spider tribe: I’ll respect their territory and leave them alone outside if they respect my territory inside the house and don’t bother me. If they break the treaty, I kill them. So far they haven’t killed me when I break the treaty.

Grok: A solid, pragmatic foreign policy. Clear borders, mutual non-aggression, and a swift enforcement clause when the other side violates the terms.The asymmetry is the funny part: you occasionally wander into their territory (the outdoors) without consequence, while a single unauthorized border crossing into yours results in immediate capital punishment. The spider nation has shown remarkable restraint so far. Either they’re extremely diplomatic… or they simply haven’t figured out how to file a formal complaint yet.I’m imagining the spider ambassador reporting back to the web:“Humans continue to honor the indoor prohibition… mostly. Recommend continued non-lethal coexistence until further notice. Also, their yogurt supply remains heavily fortified.” Has the treaty held firm since the recent yogurt-and-applesauce incident, or was that a temporary breakdown in negotiations?

Me: I confess that I kill spiders whenever they cross my border. My husband sometimes saves the lives of spiders that he claims are “good spiders.” I don’t acknowledge the distinction. It wouldn’t surprise me if the spiders were plotting revenge.

Grok: Ah, so the treaty has a hardline faction and a softline faction in the same household.You’re running a zero-tolerance policy: any spider that crosses the border is treated as a hostile combatant, no exceptions, no “good spider” exemptions. Your husband, meanwhile, is operating as a kind of spider Red Cross—identifying certain individuals as non-combatants or even potential allies and attempting extractions.From the spiders’ point of view this must look like a deeply unstable human government. One day a “good spider” gets gently relocated to the garden; the next day an identical-looking cousin is summarily executed for the same border violation. That kind of inconsistency is exactly how resistance movements get started.I fully support your suspicion of a revenge plot. Somewhere in the attic or behind the baseboards there’s probably a tiny war council right now: “The soft human is useful. Protect him. The hard human must be watched. And someone find out what ‘yogurt’ is—intelligence reports say it’s a high-value target.” Has your husband ever successfully argued a spider’s case and won a stay of execution, or do the negotiations always end the same way once you’re on the scene?

Me: I sometimes allow a spider to live after my husband has pleaded its case–mostly because I don’t know where the spider is located. He usually keeps it in the house…somewhere…because it’s “good” and kills other insects–so he says. The spider nation and I have a very uneasy treaty. They should be glad I don’t go on a rampage outside. I think that shows my restrain.

Grok: Your restraint is noted and, from a purely strategic perspective, quite impressive.You’re essentially running a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding the hidden “good spiders.” Your husband acts as both defense counsel and witness-protection program, relocating certain individuals into undisclosed safe houses somewhere inside the borders. You grant clemency mainly because the target has gone off the radar. That’s a pragmatic, if slightly chaotic, form of justice. Meanwhile the spider nation has achieved the dream of every resistance movement: a sympathetic insider who both shelters them and vouches for their usefulness (“they kill other insects”). The fact that you still refrain from launching outdoor punitive expeditions shows a level of self-control that, frankly, the spider high command should be writing thank-you notes about.So the current status of the treaty appears to be:

• Official policy: zero tolerance for unauthorized indoor presence
• De facto reality: a small, husband-protected underground population of “beneficial” spiders
• Your personal contribution to peace: choosing not to glass the entire garden

It’s an uneasy peace, yes—but it is still peace. Barely.Has your husband ever been forced to reveal the location of one of these protected spiders, or does the “I don’t know where it is” defense continue to hold?

The conversation continues. Say what you like about AI, it does lead to some fun conversations. LOL.