Chocolate and Arachnophobia

This past weekend, I treated myself to an all-day wine tour. I'm in Bordeaux and thus, this was necessary. The weather was perfect; sunny and crisp, tasting of ripe leaves and earth. The tour was small and personal. I found myself cruising through the Bordeaux vineyards with a couple from Australia, a couple from Florida, and a couple from Colby College - one of whom is on the same study abroad program in Paris as a girl I know at Williams - because the world of private, New England colleges isn't small enough already. Over the course of eight hours, we tasted over twenty different bottles of wine in three different tastings, watched short films about wine making with laughably melodramatic voice-overs, ate Sauvignon Franc grapes right off the wine, and listened to an embarrassingly American woman from California talk about "her" grapes as the silent, sturdy Frenchman behind her swiftly and dexterously proved that they were much more his. In between tastings and visits, we stopped in the bucolic and postcard-ready town of St. Emillion for lunch. The couples dispersed and I ambled leisurely along cobbled paths, reminiscent of both San Francisco and Piza, searching for the perfect spot to indulge in a private, three-course meal. I ended up in a surprisingly sprawling cave of a restaurant, with sloping, irregular walls and dim lighting. It was, suitably enough, exactly like a wine cellar. Over the next hour and a half, I never once had to reach into my bag for my book, the just-in-case-I-can't-handle-the-alone-thing backup. I just didn't need it. I was perfectly happy to sit and enjoy myself by myself.

I have felt similar rushes of gratitude in solitude over the past couple of days. Riding my bike home from the university in the setting sun, running along the quays with the wind whipping at my back, cooking dinner to the sounds of Miles Davies streaming from my computer. Recently, I have caught myself indulging in the occasional piece (well, bar) of dark chocolate after dinner. Not only am I getting this whole being alone thing down, I'm also turning into an adult! (My reason being that only adults eat dark chocolate). Needless to say, I've been feeling pretty smug, secure, and grown-up lately. That was, until I walked into my room the other night and found this



His name is Woolf Spider and he is terrifying. He also has nothing to do with my happy little adult dream world. In fact, he makes me want to renounce everything having to do with adulthood and independence. After a panicked few minutes, during which I'd exhausted all of the options involving me not having to do anything - make my mom/dad do it (wrong country), make my boyfriend do it (wrong country AND hates spiders more than I do - sorry, Ev, but it's true), make my neighbors do it (I don't have neighbors that I'm aware of) - I decided to heed the advice of a friend who'd responded to my urgent Facebook message. In the ensuing battle, I squealed a lot, lost the stupid spider, tore my room apart, found him again, and considered moving to Finland where it's too cold for Woolf Spiders. I finally managed to trap him between a folder and a plastic cup, which was barely able to hold him and was also unfortunately transparent. I then threw the whole cup out the window, feeling only a mild pang of remorse for my litter but mostly glad I hadn't given the thing the chance to crawl out of the cup and seek his revenge. It's been two days and still, I find myself scouring the room every couple of hours, certain that his progeny will be back in an organized coup for vengeance.

All of which is my way of saying that dark chocolate, solitary meals, and wine tastings are all well and good, but I still really don't like hairy, crawly, leggy things in my living space and I am perfectly okay with that. And sometimes a bar of Hershey's chocolate is delicious.